Bessel van der Kolk Quotes
We are a hopeful species. Working with trauma is as much about remembering how we survived as it is about what is broken.
Bessel van der Kolk
Quotes to Explore
-
There are two indices of genuine art: it is inimitable and it is ineffable.
Auguste Renoir
-
The ant is knowing and wise, but he doesn't know enough to take a vacation.
Clarence Day
-
The ideal condition would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct; but since we are all likely to go astray, The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach.
Sophocles
-
Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.
Epictetus
-
I and me are always too deeply in conversation.
Friedrich Nietzsche
-
He who finds a thought that lets us a little deeper into the eternal mystery of nature has been granted great peace.
Albert Einstein
-
Healthy, well-informed, balanced criticism is the ozone of public life.
Mahatma Gandhi
-
If you want to know what to do with a thief that you may find stealing, I say kill him on the spot, and never suffer him to commit another iniquity.
Brigham Young
-
My life has been one long journey.
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
-
Social support is not the same as merely being in the presence of others. The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling that we are held in someone else’s mind and heart. For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety. No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love: These are complex and hard-earned capacities. You don’t need a history of trauma to feel self-conscious and even panicked at a party with strangers—but trauma can turn the whole world into a gathering of aliens.
Bessel van der Kolk
-
A trauma can be successfully processed only if all those brain structures are kept online. In Stan’s case, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) allowed him to access his memories of the accident without being overwhelmed by them. When the brain areas whose absence is responsible for flashbacks can be kept online while remembering what has happened, people can integrate their traumatic memories as belonging to the past.
Bessel van der Kolk
-
When one of those skirt-bearing animals has set herself up above all by permitting herself to be deified, no power on earth can be as proud as she.
Honore de Balzac
