Healing Trauma Quotes

“Hyperarousal causes traumatized people to become easily distressed by unexpected stimuli. Their tendency to be triggered into reliving traumatic memories illustrates how their perceptions have become excessively focused on the involuntary search for the similarities between the present and their traumatic past. As a consequence, many neutral experiences become reinterpreted as being associated with the traumatic past.”
― Marion F. Solomon, Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and Brain

“When the traumatic event is the result of an attack by a family member on whom victims depend for economic and other forms of security (as occurs in victims of intrafamilial abuse) victims are prone to respond to assaults with increased dependence and with paralysis in their decision-making processes. Thus, some aspects of how people respond to trauma are quite predictable - but individual, situational and social factors play a major role in the shaping the symptomatology.”
― Marion F. Solomon, Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and Brain

“... the roots of security and resilience are to be found in the sense of being understood by and having the sense of existing in the heart and mind of a loving, caring, attuned and self-processed other, an other with a mind and heart of her own.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and Brain

“Evolutionarily, the function of attachment has been to protect the organism from danger. The attachment figure, an older, kinder, stronger, wiser other (Bowlby, 1982), functions as a safe base (Ainsworth et al., 1978), and is a presence that obviates fear and engenders a feeling of safety for the younger organism. The greater the feeling of safety, the wider the range of exploration and the more exuberant the exploratory drive (i.e., the higher the threshold before novelty turns into anxiety and fear). Thus, the fundamental tenet of attachment theory: security of attachment leads to an expanded range of exploration. Whereas fear constricts, safety expands the range of exploration. In the absence of dyadically constructed safety, the child has to contend with fear-potentiating aloneness. The child will devote energy to conservative, safety enhancing measures, that is, defense mechanisms, to compensate for what's missing. The focus on maintaining safety and managing fear drains energy from learning and exploration, stunts growth, and distorts personality development.”
― Daniel J. Siegel M.D., Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and Brain

“New evidence (2002) indicates that reparative adult experiences enable those with attachment traumas to increase their ability to cope with stress and restore a sense of security. Healing through new relationships occurs frequently, and makes a person who has experienced trauma increase the ability to cope with stress and negative affect. Religious or 12-step experiences, therapeutic experiences, and intimate relationships all offer possibilities for repair.”
― Marion F. Solomon, Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and Brain

“Our REM sleep in 90-minute bursts, in a 24 hour cycle "digests" trauma that is experienced on a daily basis. In dreaming, the brain compares the trauma with early memory traces of similar experience, and files the memories of the day's events according to an affect-based associative system for further use and potential survival value. Comforting figures may appear in the dream to give care, advice, counsel, and relief, if necessary. The nightly dream process helps the dreamer receive positive resolution of his or her experience, and the dreamer moves on to the next day's activities restored, refreshed, and prepared for survival-based action.”
― Marion F. Solomon, Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and Brain

“One form of insecurity of attachment, called "disorganized/disoriented", has been associated with marked impairments in the emotional, social, and cognitive domains, and a predisposition toward a clinical condition known as dissociation in which the capacity to function in an organized, coherent manner is at times impaired.

Studies have also found that youths with a history of disorganized attachments are at great risk of expressing hostility with their peers and have the potential for interpersonal violence as they mature (Lyons-Ruth & Jacobwitz, 1999; Carlson, 1998). This disorganized form of attachment has been proposed to be associated with the caregiver's frightened, frightening, or disoriented behavior with the child. Such experiences create a state of alarm in the child. The parents of these children often have an autobiographical narrative finding, as revealed in the Adult Attachment Interview, of unresolved trauma or grief that appears as a disorientation in their narrative account of their childhoods. Such linguistic disorientation occurs during the discussion of loss or threat from childhood experiences. Lack of resolution appears to be associated with parental behaviors that are incompatible with an organized adaptation on the part of the child. Lack of resolution of trauma or grief in a parent can lead to parental behaviors that create "paradoxical", unsolvable, and problematic situations for the child. The attachment figure is intended to be the source of protection, soothing, connections, and joy. Instead, the experience of the child who develops a disorganized attachment is such that the caregiver is actually the source of terror and fear, of "fright without solution", and so the child cannot turn to the attachment figure to be soothed (Main & Hesse, 1990). There is not organized adaptation and the child's response to this unsolvable problem is disorganization (see Hesse et al., this volume).”
― Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and Brain

“As parents move from defensive processes to increased empathy for their children, the children's attachment security increases.

Thus, on one side we have the continuity of psychic organization over time and the power of early experience to shape mind, brain, psyche, and behavior of both the individual and future generations. On the other side, there is the equally compelling evidence of the psyche's exquisite responsiveness to current conditions, especially when these conditions favor the activation of the individual's self-righting, self-healing mechanisms.”
― Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and Brain

“Still other times are more difficult, even "toxic", when we may become overwhelmed with anger that directly interferes with our ability to be in tune with our children. At these times, children may become filled with a sense of shame and humiliation, being left with an urge to turn away and with a sense that the self is defective. Repair is essential when there is a rupture, especially of this latter toxic sort. Repair is an interactive process that involves an acknowledgment of the disconnection and an attempt to move forward and reconnect.”
― Marion F. Solomon, Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and Brain