A Dance to Freedom Quotes

“It’s also important to realize that unresolved trauma will always catch up with us. “Merely forgetting early traumas and early neglect is no solution,” Alice Miller writes.23 Instead, we have to go back in time and deal with the true feelings we had as children. Only then can we free ourselves from overwhelming fear, shame, guilt, anger and frustration.”
― Sylvie Imelda Shene, A Dance to Freedom: Your Guide to Liberation from Lies and Illusions

“An inadequate or traumatic caregiving relationship is deeply damaging, especially during those early years when the brain is forming chemically and structurally. That part of the brain that allows the baby to feel connected with another person can be lost or greatly impaired. Absent adequate nurturing by an emotionally competent caregiver, the baby faces an unpredictable tide of unregulated emotions. … If a baby’s experiences are pathological and steeped in chronic fear early in development, the very capacities that mitigate against violent behavior (including empathy, the capacity for self-regulation of strong emotions and the emotional modulation essential for complex problem-solving) can be lost. As these children grow into adolescence and adulthood, impulsive and aggressive behaviors are so often the outcomes. Moreover, genetic proclivities toward mental illness also are exacerbated. Communities inevitably absorb the consequences. We ignore the root of the problem at our peril.”19”
― Sylvie Imelda Shene, A Dance to Freedom: Your Guide to Liberation from Lies and Illusions

“Studies on abandoned and severely mistreated Romanian children revealed striking lesions in certain areas of the brain and marked emotional and cognitive insufficiencies in later life,” Alice Miller writes. “According to very recent neurobiological findings, repeated traumatization leads to an increased release of stress hormones that attack the sensitive tissue of the brain and destroy existing neurons. Other studies of mistreated children have revealed that the areas of the brain responsible for the ‘management’ of emotions are 20 to 30 percent smaller than in normal persons.”12”
― Sylvie Imelda Shene, A Dance to Freedom: Your Guide to Liberation from Lies and Illusions