Bessel van der Kolk Quotes
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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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Acting is an experience of using your body to take your place in life.
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If you’ve been hurt, you need to acknowledge and name what happened to you.
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two critical aspects of the adaptive response to threat that is basic to human survival.
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Victims are members of society whose problems represent the memory of suffering, rage, and pain in a world that longs to forget.
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There is something very empowering about having the experience of changing your brain’s activity with your mind.
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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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When I go to Europe to teach, I often am contacted by officials at the ministries of health in the Scandinavian countries, the United Kingdom, Germany, or the Netherlands and asked to.
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The structures along the midline of the brain are devoted to your inner experience of yourself, those on the side are more concerned with your relationship with your surroundings.
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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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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.
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While you need to be able to stand up for yourself, you also need to recognize that other people have their own agendas. Trauma can make all that hazy and grey.
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We deliberately tried to collect just isolated fragments of their experience—particular images, sounds, and feelings—rather than the entire story, because that is how trauma is experienced.
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We can assume that parents do the best they can, but all parents need help to nurture their kids. Nearly every industrialized nation, with the exception of the United States, recognizes this and provides some form of guaranteed support to families.
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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.
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Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, revised edition.
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Our sense of Self depends on being able to organize our memories into a coherent whole.
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It takes tremendous energy to keep functioning while carrying the memory of terror, and the shame of utter weakness and vulnerability.
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Trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies.
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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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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?
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It is not possible to manage life and maintain homeostatic balance without data on the current state of the organism’s body.”9 Damasio calls these housekeeping areas of the brain the “proto-self,” because they create the “wordless knowledge” that underlies our conscious sense of self.
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In a statement released in June 2011, the British Psychological Society complained to the APA that the sources of psychological suffering in the DSM.
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How do horrific experiences cause people to become hopelessly stuck in the past?