The Body Keeps the Score / Trauma and Recovery / Hidden Healing Powers

“If a mother cannot meet her baby’s impulses and needs, [quoting Donald Winnicott] ‘the baby learns to become the mother’s idea of what the baby is.’ Having to discount its inner sensations, and trying to adjust it its caregiver’s needs, means the child perceives that ‘something is wrong’ with the way it is. Children who lack physical attunement are vulnerable to shutting down the direct feedback from their bodies, the seat of pleasure, purpose, and direction.”

“Many traumatized individuals are too hypervigilant to enjoy the ordinary pleasures that life has to offer, while other are too numb to absorb new experiences – or to be alert to signs of real danger. When the smoke detectors of the brain malfunction, people no longer run when they should be trying to escape or fight back when they should be defending themselves.”

“While reliving trauma is dramatic, frightening, and potentially self-destructive, over time a lack of presence can be even more damaging. This is a particular problem with traumatized children. The acting-out kids tend to get attention; the blanked-out ones don’t bother anybody and are left to lose their future bit by bit.”

“Language gives us the power to change ourselves and others by communicating our experiences, helping us to define what we know, and finding a common sense of meaning”

“Our brains are built to help us function as members of a tribe.”

“Rage that has nowhere to go is redirected against the self, in the form of depression, self-hatred, and self-destructive actions. One of my patients told me, ‘It is like hating your home, your kitchen and pots and pans, your bed, your chairs, your table, your rugs.’ Nothing feels safe – least of all your own body.”

“When people are compulsively and constantly pulled back into the past, to the last time they felt intense involvement and deep emotions, they suffer from a failure of the imagination, a loss of the mental flexibility. Without imagination there is no hope, no chance to envision a better future, no place to go, no goal to reach.”

“If you have a comfortable connection with your inner sensations - if you can trust them to give you accurate information - you will feel in charge of your body, your feelings, and your self.”

“Our culture teaches us to focus on personal uniqueness, but at a deeper level we barely exist as individual organisms. We are part of the tribe that even when we are by ourselves... most of our energy is devoted to connecting with others.”

“The rational, executive brain is good at helping us understand where feelings come from… However, the rational brain cannot abolish emotions, sensations, or thoughts.”

“The acting-out kids tend to get attention; the blanked-out ones don't bother anyone and are left to lose their future bit by bit.”

“Once the mother comes to see the child not as her partner in an attuned relationship but as a frustrating, enraging, disconnected stranger, the stage is set for subsequent abuse…[citing two related studies in 1996 and 2003 led by Karlen Lyons-Ruth] Emotional withdrawal had the most profound and 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…Lyons-Ruth concludes that infants who are not truly seen and known by their mothers are at high risk to grow into adolescents who are unable to known and to see.”

“The social environment interacts with brain chemistry. Manipulating a monkey into a lower position in the dominance hierarchy made his serotonin drop, while chemically enhancing serotonin elevated the rank of former subordinates.”

“Freud had a word for such reenactments: ‘The compulsion to repeat.”