Bessel van der Kolk Quotes
The elementary self system in the brain stem and limbic system is massively activated when people are faced with the threat of annihilation, which results in an overwhelming sense of fear and terror accompanied by intense physiological arousal. To people who are reliving a trauma, nothing makes sense; they are trapped in a life-or-death situation, a state of paralyzing fear or blind rage. Mind and body are constantly aroused, as if they are in imminent danger.
Quotes to Explore
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I've been quite fascinated by the relative insignificance of human existence, the shortness of life. We might as well be a letter in a word in a sentence on a page in a book in a library in a city in one country in this enormous universe! And that kind of fear and insignificance has kept me awake at night.
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Fear rules almost every newsroom in the country.
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I like writing a lot more than I used to. I used to find it scary but now I've got used to it once it gets going. I used to find it hard to start. Fear of the blank page. The first thing you write down won't bear any relation to what's in your head and that's always disappointing.
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The biggest challenge or biggest crisis knocking on the doors of humankind is fear and intolerance.
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You don't talk to terror organizations!
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It can be difficult to get cast as something that is off-center from you, and my biggest fear is to be typecast.
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Horror and the unknown or the strange are always closely connected so that it is hard to create a convincing picture of shattered natural law or cosmic alienage or 'outsideness' without laying stress on the emotion of fear.
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When someone fears losing your affection, he or she will strive to keep it. Perhaps you have strived to keep someone's affection, too. Fear of loss is not love.
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I found that being online has opened a window for me to look into other people's lives... The greatest fear that I have is losing touch.
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Your timeless self does not age and has no fear of the future. Contemplate your physical self and all its possessions, and practice laughing peacefully at it all.
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I am somebody who focuses on a dialogue between generations - that's the drive of my work. I believe the young generation take the power; they'll take over at one point, but the older generation, they'll push it away only because of the fear. I'm the opposite; I'm curious.
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Your pretended fear lest error should step in, is like the man that would keep all the wine out of the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy, to deny a man the liberty he hath by nature upon a supposition that he may abuse it.
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My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.
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In times of violence, personal predilections for niceties of colour and form seem irrelevant. All primitive expression (like the myths) reveals the constant awareness of powerful forces, the immediate presence of terror and fear.
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Under the influence of fear, which always leads men to take a pessimistic view of things, they magnified their enemies’ resources, and minimized their own.
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Some dreams tell us what we wish to believe. Some dreams tell us what we fear. Some dreams are of what we know though we may not know we knew it. The rarest dream is the dream that tells us what we did not know.
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I got a tattoo saying, 'Freedom From Fear' because of 'Black Water Transit.'
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It's tough sometimes for groups of people and animals to let go of that fear that can so easily bubble back up to the surface.
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Never before have I imagined my life without him—like this house, he is my only point of reference in this difficult existence, this unstable and frightening world. The thought of his leaving home fills me with a terror so strong, it takes my breath away. I feel like one of those seagulls covered in oil from a spill, drowning in a black tar of fear.
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Fear is like water. You need it. And it's good for you, as long as you have the right amount.
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Whatever else the religious Right may be, it is a bonanza for its opponents... Reports of the great terror that is upon us are raising millions of dollars in fund appeals by Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Organization for Women, Norman Lear's People for the American Way, and others who claim to believe that the religious Right is the greatest peril to American democracy since Joe McCarthy.
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Bonnie and Clyde were almost like a modern-day Robin Hood, stealing 'the government's money.' I think that's a bit of why they were glorified.
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I was always determined that one way or another I would force a book on the world, even if I had to resort to writing one about a tabby cat who solves mysteries.
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The elementary self system in the brain stem and limbic system is massively activated when people are faced with the threat of annihilation, which results in an overwhelming sense of fear and terror accompanied by intense physiological arousal. To people who are reliving a trauma, nothing makes sense; they are trapped in a life-or-death situation, a state of paralyzing fear or blind rage. Mind and body are constantly aroused, as if they are in imminent danger.
