Bessel van der Kolk Quotes
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After having been traumatized, people automatically keep repeating certain actions, emotions, and sensations related to the trauma.
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Children whose parents are reliable sources of comfort and strength have a lifetime advantage—a kind of buffer against the worst that fate can hand them.
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Taking the scattered and reactive energies of your mind and focusing them into a coherent source of energy for living, for problem solving, for healing.
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That happens only when you feel safe at a visceral level and allow yourself to connect that sense of safety with memories of past helplessness.
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While trauma keeps us dumbfounded, the path out of it is paved with words, carefully assembled, piece by piece, until the whole story can be revealed.
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Many of our patients are barely aware of their breath, so learning to focus on the in and out breath, to notice whether the breath was fast or slow, and to count breaths in some poses can be a significant accomplishment.
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I was stunned: Tom’s loyalty to the dead was keeping him from living his own life, just as his father’s devotion to his friends had kept him from living.
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Thalamus also acts as a filter or gatekeeper. This makes it a central component of attention, concentration, and new learning—all of which are compromised by trauma. As you sit here reading.
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Trauma radically changes people: that in fact they no longer are “themselves.” It is excruciatingly difficult to put that feeling of no longer being yourself into words.
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When the media report an environmental link to a 30 percent increase in the risk of some cancer, it is headline news, yet these far more dramatic figures are overlooked.
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We are a hopeful species. Working with trauma is as much about remembering how we survived as it is about what is broken.
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How did his brain come to derive comfort from fishing rather than from compulsive sexual behavior? At this point we simply don’t know. Neurofeedback changes brain connectivity patterns; the mind follows by creating new patterns of engagement.
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The trauma may be over, but it keeps being replayed in continually recycling memories and in a reorganized nervous system.
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Three responses to threat. 1. The social engagement system: an alarmed monkey signals danger and calls for help. VVC. 2. Fight or flight: Teeth bared, the face of rage and terror. SNS. 3. Collapse: The body signals defeat and withdraws. DVC.
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Anyone who has come into contact with extreme pain, suffering or death has no trouble understanding Greek drama.
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This suggested that for many traumatized people, reexposure to stress might provide a similar relief from anxiety.
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Rachel Yehuda at Mount Sinai in New York confronted us with her seemingly paradoxical findings that the levels of the stress hormone cortisol are low in PTSD. Her discoveries only started to make sense when her research clarified that cortisol puts an end to the stress response by sending an all-safe signal, and that, in PTSD, the body’s stress hormones do, in fact, not return to baseline after the threat has passed.
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How well we get along with ourselves depends largely on our internal leadership skills - how well we listen to our different parts, make sure they feel taken care of, and keep them from sabotaging one another. Parts often come across as absolutes when in fact they represent only one element in a complex constellation of thoughts, emotions, and sensations.
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That the object of writing is to write to yourself, to let your self know what you have been trying to avoid.
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He was afraid that he was becoming just like his father, who was always angry and rarely talked with his children—except to compare them unfavorably with his comrades who had lost their lives around Christmas 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge.
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There is always a sense of fear in everything I do. It doesn’t look like I am afraid, but I am always pushing myself. It is really difficult for me to be up here.” I reflected, “A witness can see how uncomfortable you feel pushing yourself to be here,” and she nodded.
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It is one thing to process memories of trauma, but it is an entirely different matter to confront the inner void—the holes in the soul that result from not having been wanted, not having been seen, and not having been allowed to speak the truth.
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Since emotional regulation is the critical issue in managing the effects of trauma and neglect, it would make an enormous difference if teachers, army sergeants, foster parents, and mental health professionals were thoroughly schooled in emotional-regulation techniques. Right now this still is mainly the domain of preschool and kindergarten teachers, who deal with immature brains and impulsive behavior on a daily basis and who are often very adept at managing them.
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The opening line of the grant rejection read: “It has never been shown that PTSD is relevant to the mission of the Veterans Administration.