More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
May 4 - May 20, 2025
It takes tremendous energy to keep functioning while carrying the memory of terror, and the shame of utter weakness and vulnerability.
“The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves.”
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?
leads to bewilderment about the difference between love and terror; pain and pleasure.
“I think this man is suffering from memories.”
traumatized people have a tendency to superimpose their trauma on everything around them and have trouble deciphering whatever is going on around them.
Imagination is absolutely critical to the quality of our lives.
Somehow the very event that caused them so much pain had also become their sole source of meaning. They felt fully alive only when they were revisiting their traumatic past.
war is not the only calamity that leaves human lives in ruins.
It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think.
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.
We now know that more than half the people who seek psychiatric care have been assaulted, abandoned, neglected, or even raped as children, or have witnessed violence in their families.
most human suffering is related to love and loss and that the job of therapists is to help people “acknowledge, experience, and bear” the reality of life—with all its pleasures and heartbreak. “The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves,” he’d say, urging us to be honest with ourselves about every facet of our experience. He often said that people can never get better without knowing what they know and feeling what they feel.
Healing, he told us, depends on experiential knowledge: You can be fully in charge of your life only if you can acknowledge the reality of your body, in all its visceral dimensions.
The mere opportunity to escape does not necessarily make traumatized animals, or people, take the road to freedom.
many traumatized people simply give up. Rather than risk experimenting with new options they stay stuck in the fear they know.
traumatized people keep secreting large amounts of stress hormones long after the actual danger has passed,
Scared animals return home, regardless of whether home is safe or frightening.
In many places drugs have displaced therapy and enabled patients to suppress their problems without addressing the underlying issues.
our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another.
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;
The right is intuitive, emotional, visual, spatial, and tactual, and the left is linguistic, sequential, and analytical. While the left half of the brain does all the talking, the right half of the brain carries the music of experience.
No matter how much insight and understanding we develop, the rational brain is basically impotent to talk the emotional brain out of its own reality.
During disasters young children usually take their cues from their parents. As long as their caregivers remain calm and responsive to their needs, they often survive terrible incidents without serious psychological scars.
Being able to move and do something to protect oneself is a critical factor in determining whether or not a horrible experience will leave long-lasting scars.
The most important job of the brain is to ensure our survival, even under the most miserable conditions. Everything else is secondary.
Psychological problems occur when our internal signals don’t work, when our maps don’t lead us where we need to go, when we are too paralyzed to move, when our actions do not correspond to our needs, or when our relationships break down.
If you feel safe and loved, your brain becomes specialized in exploration, play, and cooperation; if you are frightened and unwanted, it specializes in managing feelings of fear and abandonment.
emotion is not opposed to reason; our emotions assign value to experiences and thus are the foundation of reason.
Victims of childhood sexual abuse may anesthetize their sexuality and then feel intensely ashamed if they become excited by sensations or images that recall their molestation, even when those sensations are the natural pleasures associated with particular body parts.
shame becomes the dominant emotion and hiding the truth the central preoccupation.
Knowing that whatever is happening is finite and will sooner or later come to an end makes most experiences tolerable. The opposite is also true—situations become intolerable if they feel interminable.
Desensitization may make you less reactive, but if you cannot feel satisfaction in ordinary everyday things like taking a walk, cooking a meal, or playing with your kids, life will pass you by.
almost all mental suffering involves either trouble in creating workable and satisfying relationships or difficulties in regulating arousal (as in the case of habitually becoming enraged, shut down, overexcited, or disorganized). Usually it’s a combination of both.
Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.
social support is the most powerful protection against becoming overwhelmed by stress and trauma.
Gangs, extremist political parties, and religious cults may provide solace, but they rarely foster the mental flexibility needed to be fully open to what life has to offer and as such cannot liberate their members from their traumas. Well-functioning people are able to accept individual differences and acknowledge the humanity of others.
achieving any sort of deep intimacy—a close embrace, sleeping with a mate, and sex—requires allowing oneself to experience immobilization without fear.
chronic emotional abuse and neglect can be just as devastating as physical abuse and sexual molestation.
How could they make decisions, or put any plan into action, if they couldn’t define what they wanted or, to be more precise, what the sensations in their bodies, the basis of all emotions, were trying to tell them?
Knowing what we feel is the first step to knowing why we feel that way.
Many of my patients have survived trauma through tremendous courage and persistence, only to get into the same kinds of trouble over and over again. Trauma has shut down their inner compass and robbed them of the imagination they need to create something better.
The price for ignoring or distorting the body’s messages is being unable to detect what is truly dangerous or harmful for you and, just as bad, what is safe or nourishing.
Self-regulation depends on having a friendly relationship with your body.
Her body felt the sadness that her mind couldn’t register—she
alexithymia—Greek for not having words for feelings.
They learned to shut down their once overwhelming emotions, and, as a result, they no longer recognized what they were feeling.
All too often, however, drugs such as Abilify, Zyprexa, and Seroquel, are prescribed instead of teaching people the skills to deal with such distressing physical reactions.
patients who have been physically or sexually violated face a dilemma: They desperately crave touch while simultaneously being terrified of body contact. The mind needs to be reeducated to feel physical sensations, and the body needs to be helped to tolerate and enjoy the comforts of touch.
They also felt loved by at least one of their parents, which seemed to make a substantial difference in their eagerness to engage in schoolwork and to learn.
