Trauma Quotes
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In that very moment in my office, Bill was obviously seeing the same images, smelling the same smells, and feeling the same physical sensations he had felt during the original event. Ten years after helplessly holding a dying baby in his arms, Bill was reliving the trauma in response to an inkblot.
Bessel van der Kolk
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In contrast, EMDR, as well as the treatments discussed in subsequent chapters—internal family systems, yoga, neurofeedback, psychomotor therapy, and theater—focus not only on regulating the intense memories activated by trauma but also on restoring a sense of agency, engagement, and commitment through ownership of body and mind.
Bessel van der Kolk
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While we all want to move beyond trauma, the part of our brain that is devoted to ensuring our survival (deep below our rational brain) is not very good at denial. Long after a traumatic experience is over, it may be reactivated at the slightest hint of danger and mobilize disturbed brain circuits and secrete massive amounts of stress hormones.
Bessel van der Kolk
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Integrating the cut-off elements of the trauma into the ongoing narrative of life, so that the brain can recognize that “that was then, and this is now.
Bessel van der Kolk
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Traumatic experiences are often lost in time and concealed by shame, secrecy, and social taboo, but the study revealed that the impact of trauma pervaded these patients’ adult lives.
Bessel van der Kolk
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Trauma has shut down their inner compass and robbed them of the imagination they need to create something better. The neuroscience of selfhood and agency validates the kinds of somatic therapies that my friends Peter Levine13 and Pat Ogden14 have developed. I’ll discuss these and other sensorimotor approaches in more detail in part V, but in essence their aim is threefold.
Bessel van der Kolk
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People can learn to control and change their behavior, but only if they feel safe enough to experiment with new solutions. The body keeps the score: If trauma is encoded in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching sensations, then our first priority is to help people move out of fight-or-flight states, reorganize their perception of danger, and manage relationships. Where traumatized children are concerned, the last things we should be cutting from school schedules are the activities that can do precisely that: chorus, physical education, recess, and anything else that involves movement, play, and other forms of joyful engagement.
Bessel van der Kolk
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It took the Fire Brigade a day and a half to secure the remains of the house enough to recover Crew Cut’s body, which was described by Dr Jennifer Vaughan as ‘suffering from crush trauma’ and by Dr Walid as ‘mostly flat’.
Ben Aaronovitch
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I think middle-class people have the biggest trauma if they have nice imagey parents, all smiling and dolled up.
John Lennon
The Beatles
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The essence of a therapeutic relationship: finding words where words were absent before and, as a result, being able to share your deepest pain and deepest feelings with another human being. This is one of the most profound experiences we can have, and such resonance, in which hitherto unspoken words can be discovered, uttered, and received, is fundamental to healing the isolation of trauma—especially if other people in our lives have ignored or silenced us. Communicating fully is the opposite of being traumatized.
Bessel van der Kolk
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The thing that always interests me from a storytelling point of view is how that moment of trauma, whatever the trauma is, even divorce, your dog dies, whatever it is, the consequence, in terms of people's emotional lives and the way it resonates behaviorally for a long time, is really the stuff that interests me.
Steven Bochco
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Most incarcerated women have stories that are similar to mine. They suffered great trauma as children.
Susan Burton
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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.
Bessel van der Kolk
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Tendency to superimpose their trauma on everything around them and have trouble deciphering whatever is going on around them. There appeared to be little in between.
Bessel van der Kolk
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In my practice I use neurofeedback primarily to help with the hyperarousal, confusion, and concentration problems of people who suffer from developmental trauma. However, it has also shown good results for numerous issues and conditions that go beyond the scope of this book, including relieving tension headaches, improving cognitive functioning following a traumatic brain injury, reducing anxiety and panic attacks, learning to deepen meditation states, treating autism, improving seizure control, self-regulation in mood disorders, and more.
Bessel van der Kolk
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Sadly, our educational system, as well as many of the methods that profess to treat trauma, tend to bypass this emotional-engagement system and focus instead on recruiting the cognitive capacities of the mind. Despite the well-documented effects of anger, fear, and anxiety on the ability to reason, many programs continue to ignore the need to engage the safety system of the brain before trying to promote new ways of thinking. The last things that should be cut from school schedules are chorus, physical education, recess, and anything else involving movement, play, and joyful engagement. When children are oppositional, defensive, numbed out, or enraged, it’s also important to recognize that such “bad behavior” may repeat action patterns that were established to survive serious threats, even if they are intensely upsetting or off-putting.
Bessel van der Kolk
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Trauma, whether it is the result of something done to you or something you yourself have done, almost always makes it difficult to engage in intimate relationships. After you have experienced something so unspeakable, how do you learn to trust yourself or anyone else again? Or, conversely, how can you surrender to an intimate relationship after you have been brutally violated?
Bessel van der Kolk
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Trauma is hell on earth. Trauma resolved is a gift from the gods.
Peter A. Levine
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Trauma increases the risk of misinterpreting whether a particular situation is dangerous or safe. You can get along with other people only if you can accurately gauge whether their intentions are benign or dangerous. Even a slight misreading can lead to painful misunderstandings in relationships at home and at work. Functioning effectively in a complex work environment or a household filled with rambunctious kids requires the ability to quickly assess how people are feeling and continuously adjusting your behavior accordingly. Faulty alarm systems lead to blowups or shutdowns in response to innocuous comments or facial expressions.
Bessel van der Kolk
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The challenge is: How can people gain control over the residues of past trauma and return to being masters of their own ship? Talking, understanding, and human connections help, and drugs can dampen hyperactive alarm systems. But we will also see that the imprints from the past can be transformed by having physical experiences that directly contradict the helplessness, rage, and collapse that are part of trauma, and thereby regaining self-mastery.
Bessel van der Kolk
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Our scans showed that Broca’s area went offline whenever a flashback was triggered. In other words, we had visual proof that the effects of trauma are not necessarily different from—and can overlap with—the effects of physical lesions like strokes. All trauma is preverbal.
Bessel van der Kolk
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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.
Bessel van der Kolk
