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As the ACE study has shown, child abuse and neglect is the single most preventable cause of mental illness, the single most common cause of drug and alcohol abuse, and a significant contributor to leading causes of death such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and suicide.
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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.
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Exploring physical sensations and discovering the location and shape of the imprints of past trauma on the body.
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I like to believe that once our society truly focuses on the needs of children, all form of social support for families - a policy that remains so controversial in this country - will gradually come to seem not only desirable but also doable. ... if we feel abandoned, worthless, or invisible, nothing seems to matter. Fear destroys curiosity and playfulness. In order to have a healthy society, we must raise children who can safely play and learn. Currently, more than 50 percent of children served by Head Start have had three or more adverse childhood experience like those included in the ACR study: incarcerated family members, depression, violence, abuse, or drug use in the home and periods of homelessness... Trauma is now our most urgent public health issue, and we have the knowledge necessary to respond effectively. The choice is ours to act on what we know.
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In a series of elegant studies Stickgold and his colleagues showed that the sleeping brain can even make sense out of information whose relevance is unclear while we are awake and integrate it into the larger memory system.
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When you're sick, who does the shopping or takes you to the doctor? Who do you talk to when you are upset?" In other words, who provides you with emotional and practical support? Some patients gave us surprising answers: "my dog" or "my therapist" – or "nobody".
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People who suffer from alexithymia tend to feel physically uncomfortable but cannot describe exactly what the problem is. As a result they often have multiple vague and distressing physical complaints that doctors can't diagnose. In addition, they can't figure out for themselves what they're really feeling about any given situation or what makes them feel better or worse. This is the result of numbing, which keeps them from anticipating and responding to the ordinary demands of their bodies in quiet, mindful ways. If you are not aware of what your body needs, you can't take care of it. If you don't feel hunger, you can't nourish yourself. If you mistake anxiety for hunger, you may eat too much. And if you can't feel when you're satiated, you'll keep eating.
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Trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies.
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Trauma interferes with the proper functioning of brain areas that manage and interpret experience.
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The most important predictor of how well his subjects coped with life’s inevitable disappointments was the level of security with their primary caregiver during the first two years of life. Resilience could be predicted by how lovable mothers rated their kids at age two.
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Most human beings simply cannot tolerate being disengaged from others for any length of time. People who cannot connect through work, friendships, or family usually find other ways of bonding, as through illnesses, lawsuits, or family feuds.
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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.
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Focus on that sensation and see how it changes when you take a deep breath out.
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two critical aspects of the adaptive response to threat that is basic to human survival.
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Erratic caregiving produced kids who were chronically physiologically aroused. The children of unpredictable parents often clamored for attention and became intensely frustrated in the face of small challenges. Their persistent arousal made them chronically anxious. Constantly looking for reassurance got in the way of playing and exploration, and, as a result, they grew up chronically nervous and nonadventurous.
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Those new disciplines are neuroscience, the study of how the brain supports mental processes; developmental psychopathology, the study of the impact of adverse experiences on the development of mind and brain; and interpersonal neurobiology, the study of how our behavior influences the emotions, biology, and mind-sets of those around us. Research from these new
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How do horrific experiences cause people to become hopelessly stuck in the past?
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As we’ve seen, the essence of trauma is feeling godforsaken, cut off from the human race.
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The essence of trauma is that it is overwhelming, unbelievable, and unbearable. Each patient demands that we suspend our sense of what is normal and accept that we are dealing with a dual reality: the reality of a relatively secure and predictable present that lives side by side with a ruinous, ever-present past.
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Make us vulnerable to others’ negativity, so that we respond to their anger with fury or are dragged down by their depression.
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Agency is the technical term for the feeling of being in charge of your life: knowing where you stand, knowing that you have.
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It takes enormous trust and courage to allow yourself to remember.
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Porges coined the word “neuroception” to describe the capacity to evaluate relative danger and safety in one’s environment.
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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.