The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships QUOTES

101 " James Coan says, "In truth, because so many neural structures are involved in one way or another in attachment behavior, it is possible to think of the entire human brain as a neural attachment system. "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

102 " Over our years of practice and in our daily life, we will have many opportunities to become aware of our vulnerabilities. It isn't helpful to imagine they will one day all be healed, although some will surely lessen as they receive the care we need.

One or two trustworthy people with whom we can safely share even what feels most embarrassing to us, knowing we will simply be received without judgement, are the indispensable companions for this walk. "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

103 " Paradoxically, the kind of leading we want to offer is the opposite of taking control.

Instead, it begins with accepting responsibility for getting support for our inner world and healing process to such an extent that the need for control recedes in favor of trust in the inherent healing capacity that is awakened when the necessary interpersonal sustenance arrives. "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

104 " Relational neuroscience increasingly assures us that we are continually shaping one another's embodied brains, and that the safety provided by deep listening offerings a unique support for engagement. However it is one thing to believe it cognitively and quite another to grow into the practice of this belief. "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

105 " May we each find a forest-bathing path that can be a daily balm in this taxing world. "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

106 " We are so immersed in an acclimated to the experience of our fast-paced, digital lives that it is challenging to gain a sense of the traumas subtly embedding each day. "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

107 " we may never know exactly when or how this began, but if we acknowledge this little one, she will somehow know that we are listening to her. "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

108 " For me, hearing a relational history at the beginning of our work helps me form pictures of some encounters that bought pain and others that offered empathic support. Early in life, who comforted this person? Who kept her safe? Who was distant? Who needed her to regulate them? Who felt dangerous? Who bought confusion or chaos? Who criticized and who was accepting? We might quickly discover that one person brought contradictory experiences - the confusing one also comforted, or the dangerous one at home was a primary support of safety in the outside world. All this helps us begin to feel into the qualities of relatedness our person has taken in. "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

109 " A client's seemingly irrational, out-of-control presenting symptom is actually a sensible, orderly, cogent expression of the person's existing [experience] of self and world, not a 'disorder' or 'pathology "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

110 " the implicit is awakening in search of healing rather than trying to harm us "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

111 " ... when an experience is too strong for our current internal and external regulatory resource to manage ... [chemical changes activate to] tuck these pathways into our ... body.

In this way, our ongoing lives are protected from the constant incursion of the raw pain and fear and the injured parts of ourselves are partly shielded from new injury.

We might say they have been enwombed, awaiting the arrival of support.

At the same time, the memories also remain malleable enough that they can be touched and awakened, which is essential for healing.

However, we also remain vulnerable to them being brought into activity when support isn't available... a frowning face (man or woman), certain breathing patterns, and even sensory fragments (the color of a person's shirt or hair, the smell of alcohol on someone's breath) all have some probability of awakening the terror.

The widely dispersed individual streams that make up these memories are all gathered into the neural net that formed at the time of the initial experience, and when our outer or inner world tugs on any strand, there is some probability that more of the neural net will open, bringing the rush of embodied feelings. Most often, the explicit memory does not arrive at the same time, so there is no context for the flood of sensations and emotions, which feels as if they are related to what is happening right now ....

What can look like an out-of-proportion response to what is happening in the moment is exactly in proportion to what is unfolding internally.

If we sense this so deeply that this knowing is viscerally available when our patients are having strong emotional experiences, we will be able to offer them acknowledgement of the validity of their experience rather than having to control or change it. "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

112 " When we experience a break in connection followed by repeated attempts at repair until the bond is restored, we build implicit pathways of resilience.

We come to know in a visceral way that when things break down interpersonally, someone will return to help us come back into relationship.

That wired-in optimism and expectation makes it much more likely that we will form relationships that have this quality.

Most of the people who come to us haven't had this experience consistently in their lives, so when they encounter it with us, it is often surprising to the point of tears.

As we accept and then rejoice in our humanness, we offer this vital gift of rupture and repair to those around us. "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

113 " I was transfixed by the way her internal mother had simply arrived and begun to tell her story in the sand. "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

114 " lack of agenda is the primary essence of safety, giving our people implicit permission to bring forward any aspect of themselves that needs attention. "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

115 " How do we be with the paradoxes our people bring? We can align with one side of the conundrum and dismiss the other in an effort to relieve the unsettling experience that the logically unresolvable contradiction brings to us and our people. However, if we do this, we are stepping away from our person's experience because he or she is living inside the paradox and can't move away. Staying present asks us to hold the full paradox within our own minds and bodies, to enter the suffering that entails. If we are able to do this and remain in a ventral state, it seems that something happens and we may be able to enter a state in which the paradox begins to reveal its value a little differently than ever before ... As we settled into this broader acceptance together, I believe we made room for the possibility of the arrival of a resolving third thing in its own time. "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

116 " Sometimes people begin, discover how much pain and fear they are holding, and adaptively decide to take whatever gains they have made and stop. Occasionally we reach the limits of our competence or capacity and must help one of people find someone or a nest of people who can hold their wounds when we can't. We could likely add other situations in which we have parted with someone early in the relationship or at a time that seemed premature. All of this is part of human limitation in both of us. "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

117 " This may be the signature of the right-hemisphere's leadership -- that over time the left is infused with knowledge and wise principles based on repeatedly perceiving experience through the lens of the right, a kind of true nourishment for optimal relatedness between the two. Then, when the left speaks, it can support and add stability to the interpersonally rooted vision of the right. "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

118 " When our SEEKING system is pulled into the service of only pursuing tasks, goals, solutions, and success, its primary purpose of maintaining connection is subverted to the point it eventually gives up and we fall into despair. "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

119 " Warm curiosity about what is happening is a different kind of experience than judgement. It can help us open to the bigger picture beyond this moment of what feels like failure. We may consider our person's history and our own. We might bring in our left-hemisphere emissary to see how we could understand where we are in the process. In this quieter internal place, sometimes an intuitive sense of trust will come even when we can't figure it out. "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

120 " It wasn't that I gave up on her healing, but, as she continued to struggle to get in the door and actively needed her self-hatred to stay functional, I began to realize more deeply that her patterns had meaning and that it wasn't useful for me to predetermine what recovery might look like for her. "

― , The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships