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Trauma Through a Child's Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing QUOTES

Trauma Through a Child's Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing QUOTES

1 " Trauma happens when any experience stuns us like a bolt out of the blue; it overwhelms us, leaving us altered and disconnected "

― Peter A. Levine , Trauma Through a Child's Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing

2 " The foundational truth imparted by the authors is that the adult’s first task is to attend to his or her own emotional state, since it’s only in the adult’s calm, competent, and reassuring presence that children find the space to resolve their tensions. "

― Peter A. Levine , Trauma Through a Child's Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing

3 " When children are asked to “turn the other cheek,” “put on a happy face,” or “strike back” in situations where they are experiencing daily terror, they do not learn character. On the contrary, they lose self-confidence and a sense of safety necessary to succeed. "

― Peter A. Levine , Trauma Through a Child's Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing

4 " Such experiences can act even on the unborn child. A recent study found that, at one year of age, the infants of women traumatized during their pregnancies by the 9/11 tragedy had abnormal blood levels of the stress hormone, cortisol.2 According to numerous human and animal studies, adverse early experiences may lead to permanent imbalances of essential brain chemicals that modulate mood and behavior. "

― Peter A. Levine , Trauma Through a Child's Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing

5 " Many “ordinary,” everyday happenings that we take for granted as inevitable facts of life can become traumatic, and the younger the child, the less obviously harmful those occurrences need be in order to leave a traumatic impact. A “minor” fall, for example, can become traumatic if the child is not supported in processing it in a healthy way and especially if she is shamed for “over-reacting” or labeled as “too sensitive.” An elective medical procedure can also have long-term negative effects if the child is not adequately supported and prepared, and if his reactions are not empathically received. "

― Peter A. Levine , Trauma Through a Child's Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing

6 " The key is allowing and encouraging children to flow through the natural trajectory of their emotional shock reactions to difficult events without attempting to censor or control these reactions, preaching to our children, or projecting our own fears and anxieties. "

― Peter A. Levine , Trauma Through a Child's Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing

7 " His face is a stage on which heartbreaking emotions play out. Sometimes he looks lost, a boy alone. Other moments he seems sad, his gaze downcast. Other times, terror bolts across his face, like a child who wakes from a bad dream confused by what he has seen. He has not spoken much of his time alone. "

― Peter A. Levine , Trauma Through a Child's Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing

8 " The highly regarded neurologist Antonio Damasio, author of Descartes’ Error and The Feeling of What Happens, discovered that emotions literally have an anatomical mapping in the brain necessary for survival.4 That is to say the emotion of fear has a very specific neural circuitry etched in the brain corresponding to specific physical sensations from various parts of the body. "

― Peter A. Levine , Trauma Through a Child's Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing

9 " Who we are being is more important than what we are doing. "

― Peter A. Levine , Trauma Through a Child's Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing