Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology Quotes

“Integration is not the same as blending. Integration requires that we maintain elements of our differentiated selves while also promoting our linkage. Becoming a part of a "we: does not mean losing a "me." Integration as a focus of intervention among a range of domains of integration becomes the fundamental basis for how we apply interpersonal neurobiology principles to the nurturing of healthy relationships.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind

“if we use how we were taught yesterday to teach our children today, we are not preparing them well for tomorrow.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind

“The mindsight tripod. Openness, objectivity, and observation are the three processes that stabilize the mindsight lens in order to see and shape the inner world with clarity, depth, and power. With openness, we accept things as they are; with objectivity, we realize that what we are aware of is just one element of our experience and not the totality of our identity; with observation, we have a sense of ourselves as observers witnessing the unfolding of experience as it emerges moment by moment. Copyright © 2010 by Mind Your Brain, Inc. Used with permission by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., from Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation (2010).”
― Daniel J. Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind

“Automatic pilot (Res/App):A way of being that is driven by a state of mind that is devoid of active reflection and that often involves top-down processing. It is reflected in reactive and enduring patterns of thought and bodily posture and movement, in which the past is shaping present perceptual biases, emotional responses, and behavioral output.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind

“We can feel compelled about something or someone, and this feeling may be influenced by survival reactions from the brainstem’s input and the evaluative activities of the limbic area as much as it is a fair assessment of a present situation. Awareness of the comings and goings of limbically induced states can help create an internal mental space of awareness in which to observe and not react to limbic lava or limbic withdrawals when they occur. This mental space enables us to pause and reflect, giving time for the wash of feelings to move on and for new states to be created.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind

“Many fields have explored the nature of mental life—from psychology to philosophy, literature”
― Daniel J. Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind

“* Compassion (Res/App):A term with several meanings including “feeling with” another person, sensing another’s pain, and even the enacting of behaviors to help reduce the suffering of others (as in an act of compassion). There is also a universal (nondirected) compassion, or a sense of care and concern toward the world of living beings. Compassion can also be toward the self, “self-compassion,” and includes qualities of kindness, acceptance, feeling a part of a larger human journey, and letting go of judgments about the self.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind

“* Integrative communication (App):When individuals are honored for their differences and become linked through respectful and compassionate communication.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind

“Mindful awareness practice (App):A skill-building training that focuses attention on intention and the cultivation of awareness of awareness. Repeated and regular practice has been shown to strengthen the ability to regulate emotion and attention, improve empathy and insight, promote healthy immune functioning, move the electrical activity of the brain toward a “left shift” of approaching challenging situations, and increase the activity and growth of regulatory and integrative regions of the brain.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind

“Mindful awareness / Mindful (Res):Awareness of present-moment experience, with intention and purpose, without grasping on to judgments. Traits of being mindful are having an open stance toward oneself and others, emotional equanimity, and the ability to describe the inner world of the mind.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind

“Mental space (App):The openness to possibilities enabling a pause before acting on a thought, behavioral impulse, or emotional reaction. If the mind is seen as a self-organizing, emergent process of energy and information flow, then “mental space” refers, literally, to the distribution of probabilities that are embedded within the full range of possible energy patterns. Mental space, then, is the opening of probabilities in a movement toward the plane of possibility, a shift that overlaps with the metaphor of the hub of the wheel of awareness. See also Space of mind.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind

“* Awakened mind (App):A state of awareness that is not on automatic pilot and can use the power of intention to drive attention to shape the firing of neurons in new and helpful ways. A state of clarity and focus that make choice and change possible.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind

“Given that the limbic area shapes how we appraise the meaning of events, knowing the hand model and seeing the limbic area’s distinct location from the higher areas of the cortex can help us realize that sometimes a “feeling” is indeed not a fact.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind

“One implication of the limbic area is that it is an interface between the more impulsive and “primitive” brainstem and the higher, often more rational cortex. Integration in the brain would therefore honor the differences in these regions and promote their linkage* through collaboration, not internal warfare. An interpersonal neurobiology* approach enables the activity stemming from these regions to be known and then linked with other areas.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind

“the hypothalamus, as a part of this limbic region as it controls the impact of hormones on the body and the brain itself.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind

“This means that more than 95% of the psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, masters-level therapists, occupational therapists, educational therapists, movement therapists, dance therapists, art therapists, music therapists, and others had never been given a lecture defining the mind.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind