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Managing your terror all by yourself gives rise to another set of problems: dissociation, despair, addictions, a chronic sense of panic, and relationships that are marked by alienation, disconnections, and explosions. Patients with these histories rarely make the connection between what has happened to them a long time ago and how they currently feel and behave. Everything just seems unmanageable.
Bessel van der Kolk -
The organism itself also has a problem knowing how to feel safe. The past is impressed not only on their minds, and in misinterpretations of innocuous events (as when Marilyn attacked Michael because he accidentally touched her in her sleep), but also on the very core of their beings: in the safety of their bodies.
Bessel van der Kolk
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For real change to take place, the body needs to learn that the danger has passed and to live in the reality of the present.
Bessel van der Kolk -
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.
Bessel van der Kolk -
Emotion is not opposed to reason; our emotions assign value to experiences and thus are the foundation of reason.
Bessel van der Kolk -
Looking at this spectrum of angry to sad expressions, the abused kids were hyperalert to the slightest features of anger.
Bessel van der Kolk -
Almost all had in some way been trapped or immobilized, unable to take action to stave off the inevitable. Their fight/flight response had been thwarted, and the result was either extreme agitation or collapse.
Bessel van der Kolk -
Generally the rational brain can override the emotional brain, as long as our fears don’t hijack us. (For example, your fear at being flagged down by the police can turn instantly to gratitude when the cop warns you that there’s an accident ahead.) But the moment we feel trapped, enraged, or rejected, we are vulnerable to activating old maps and to follow their directions. Change begins when we learn to "own" our emotional brains. That means learning to observe and tolerate the heartbreaking and gut-wrenching sensations that register misery and humiliation. Only after learning to bear what is going on inside can we start to befriend, rather than obliterate, the emotions that keep our maps fixed and immutable.
Bessel van der Kolk
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The different sensations that entered the brain at the time of the trauma are not properly assembled into a story, a piece of autobiography.
Bessel van der Kolk -
They learned to shut down their once overwhelming emotions, and, as a result, they no longer recognized what they were feeling. Few of them had any interest in therapy.
Bessel van der Kolk -
Karlen and her colleagues had expected that hostile/intrusive behavior on the part of the mothers would be the most powerful predictor of mental instability in their adult children, but they discovered otherwise. Emotional withdrawal had the most profound and long-lasting impact. Emotional distance and role reversal (in which mothers expected the kids to look after them) were specifically linked to aggressive behavior against self and others in the young adults.
Bessel van der Kolk -
People who are terrified need to get a sense of where their bodies are in space and of their boundaries. Firm and reassuring touch lets them know where those boundaries are: what’s outside them, where their bodies end. They discover that they don’t constantly have to wonder who and where they are. They discover that their body is solid and that they don’t have to be constantly on guard. Touch lets them know that they are safe.
Bessel van der Kolk -
Porges coined the word “neuroception” to describe the capacity to evaluate relative danger and safety in one’s environment.
Bessel van der Kolk -
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.
Bessel van der Kolk
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Great detail will help people to leave it behind. That is also a basic premise of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which today is taught in graduate psychology courses around the world.
Bessel van der Kolk -
Exploring physical sensations and discovering the location and shape of the imprints of past trauma on the body.
Bessel van der Kolk -
Is it possible to help the minds and brains of brutalized children to redraw their inner maps and incorporate a sense of trust and confidence in the future?
Bessel van der Kolk -
Most teachers we work with are intrigued to learn that abused and neglected students are likely to interpret any deviation from routine as danger and that their extreme reactions usually are expressions of traumatic stress.
Bessel van der Kolk -
If you were not there, it’s difficult to describe and say how it was. How men function under such stress is one thing, and then how you communicate and express that to somebody who never knew that such a degree of brutality exists seems like a fantasy.
Bessel van der Kolk -
It is not that something different is seen, but that one sees differently. It is as though the spatial act of seeing were changed by a new dimension.
Bessel van der Kolk
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As my friend Ed Tronick taught me a long time ago, the brain is a cultural organ—experience shapes the brain.
Bessel van der Kolk -
Trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies.
Bessel van der Kolk -
It is amazing how many psychological problems involve difficulties with sleep, appetite, touch, digestion, and arousal. Any effective treatment for trauma has to address these basic housekeeping functions of the body.
Bessel van der Kolk -
Agency is the technical term for the feeling of being in charge of your life: knowing where you stand, knowing that you have.
Bessel van der Kolk