121
" Our conscious memory is full of gaps, of course, which is actually a good thing. Our brains filter out the ordinary and expected, which is utterly necessary to allow us to function. When you drive, for example, you rely automatically on your previous experiences with cars and roads; if you had to focus on every aspect of what your senses are taking in, you’d be overwhelmed and would probably crash. As you learn anything, in fact, your brain is constantly checking current experience against stored templates—essentially memory—of previous, similar situations and sensations, asking “Is this new?” and “Is this something I need to attend to?” So as you move down the road, your brain’s motor vestibular system is telling you that you are in a certain position. But your brain is probably not making new memories about that. Your brain has stored in it previous sitting experiences in cars, and the pattern of neural activity associated with that doesn’t need to change. There’s nothing new. You’ve been there, done that, it’s familiar. This is also why you can drive over large stretches of familiar highways without remembering almost anything at all that you did during the drive. This is important because all of that previously stored experience has laid down the neural networks, the memory “template,” that you now use to make sense out of any new incoming information. These templates are formed throughout the brain at many different levels, and because information comes in first to the lower, more primitive areas, many are not even accessible to conscious awareness. "
― Bruce D. Perry , The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook
137
" As we will talk about much more, relationships are the key to healing. But for James, every relational interaction resulted in disengagement. To him, ‘others’ were not safe. In his worldview, people hurt you or left you. Others could not be trusted. The lesson for me was that a key aspect of ‘What happened to you? Is What didn’t happen for you? What attention, nurturing touch, reassurance-basically, what love-didn’t you get? I realized the neglect is as toxic as trauma. "
― Bruce D. Perry , What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
139
" The dissociative response is used when there is inescapable, unavoidable distress or pain. Your mind and body protect you. Because you cannot physically flee, and fighting is futile, you psychologically flee to your inner world. So going back to the infant with the disengaged parent, the infant’s fight or flight response is to cry. But if no one comes-or they come and are angry-the helpless infant will dissociative to survive this inescapable distressing situation. The same if true for children, youth, and adults faced with any inescapable, unavoidable pain and distress-they dissociate. And a whole set of neurophysiological changes helps you do that, including the release of your body’s own opiates. "
― Bruce D. Perry , What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
