Unfuck Your Brain Quotes

“We should honor the past, we should remember it, and we should respect what it has taught us. But we don’t have to keep living there. That house is crumbling and toxic and far too small to contain you. It doesn’t support your present experience and it sure as fuck doesn’t fit into your future goals.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“We either win or we learn. So take the fuck-ups as new ways of getting good information about yourself.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-Outs, and Triggers

“We don’t just tell stories because we want to…we HAVE to. It’s a biological human drive. In fact, we are so wired to tell stories that we even do it in our sleep. This is why we dream.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“It takes far more strength to accept help than to reject it.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-Outs, and Triggers

“Most of us have to get up every day, deal with real life, and try to figure out the getting better part during that process.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“No matter how well you know someone, you don’t know their inner processes. They may not even know their inner processes. If you know someone well, you may know a lot. But you aren’t the one operating that life. Telling someone what they should be doing, feeling, or thinking, won’t help. Even if you are right. Even if they do what you say…you have just taken away their power to do the work they need to do to take charge of their life. There are limits to how much better they can really be if they are continually rescued by you.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“Trauma puts us in survival mode for that first thirty days. And traumas may be coming so fast and furious that we don’t have a moment to stop and breathe. So our brains shut down the trauma-processing experience so we can continue to survive.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“Episodic memories get stored in the hippocampus as our stories—our interpretation of events with our emotional responses attached to them. These are memories that are tied to serious emotional reactions. If something happened in your life that was really significant to you, the emotions tied to that memory become attached like cat hair or static cling. So when we have an emotional response in the future, the amygdala immediately pulls this EAM file in order to decide how to respond. What fires together, wires together.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“Anger is a Secondary Emotion And you know what is REALLY fucked up about anger? This emotion that we culturally believe is driving us to success? It isn’t even a primary emotion. I know, you are now asking: And what the FUCK is that supposed to mean, fancy PhD lady? It means that while anger may be the first emotion we recognize at some level in ourselves, and the emotion we act (or react) upon, I guarantee you it actually isn’t the first thing you feel in any given situation. Anger is a secondary emotion. The best model I have seen to explain anger uses the acronym AHEN. AHEN is as simple a conceptualization as you can get. ANGER is triggered by Hurt Expectations not met Needs not met Of course, it is a little more complicated than that in that we aren’t usually limited to just one of these triggers but a big glob-ball of all of the above.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“The prefrontal cortex takes in some outside information. The amygdala says I REMEMBER THAT! LAST TIME THAT SHIT HAPPENED, IT HURT! HURT SUCKS! And the brainstem tells the prefrontal cortex GET THE FUCK UP OUT OF THERE! WE DON’T LIKE TO HURT!”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“If you squeeze your eyes shut, you will continue to bump into shit. If you keep your eyes open to the terrain, you can start putting together a map. When you catch yourself doing the thing, ask yourself to retrace what led to it. The HALT acronym is a big one in addiction treatment…am I hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired? If you pair awareness triggers with accountability for your actions it becomes increasingly hard to stay on the addiction path.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“We have a tendency to separate mental health from physical health. As if they don’t affect each other in a continuous fucking feedback loop, or something.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“For example, maybe you grew up in a house where no one talked about their feelings, It wasn't encouraged and everyone else became uncomfortable if you tried. You learned pretty quickly that talking about your feelings was clearly against the rules.
You weren't abused, you weren't traumatized. But, at the dinner table, you said "My best friend and I had a fight today and I'm really sad and angry," it would elicit a response of "That happens sometimes, dear, please pass the potatoes.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-Outs, and Triggers

“you are worth the time it takes to focus on yourself and your healing.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“Our emotions influence our thoughts and behaviors. They are meant to be a physiological signal to the rest of the brain.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“We now even know that trauma can actually create genetic changes that can be passed down through generations. If you have a great-grandparent, grandparent, or parent with a serious trauma history, you are wired for a different response than someone who had family members without a lot of life drama.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“Human beings are hardwired for relationships. We need the stability of relationships in order to be well. Our brains know this, even when society tells us “You don’t need no one but your own DAMN SELF, playa’!” That’s some bullshit.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-Outs, and Triggers

“You deserve every opportunity to heal.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“Damn, Self, do you have to be all 50 shades of batshit crazy?”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“Reminding yourself that you were doing the best you could with the information and skills you had at the time is hugely important. And remembering that the people who have hurt us are also broken and fucked up is almost as important.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“Some addictions are clear. The homeless woman with the fresh track marks over years of scars. The man who loses his home and car to gambling debts and now is hiding from dangerous creditors. Some addictions are softer, easier to engage in and still get up and function every day. Those of us who take out a bag of chips or tray of muffins after a tough day. Or go shoe shopping for our 8th pair of black sandals that we are never going to wear. There are addictions that excuse us from society altogether, those that keep us barely afloat within it, and those that become a barrier between us and the rest of the world. It’s only a matter of degree, in the end. How do we define when we cross over into addiction territory? As a relationally-trained therapist, my answer is a simple one. When our addiction becomes our primary relationship. Maybe not in our hearts and heads. But in our behaviors, definitely. When we don’t have control over our addictions, we are spending time, resources, and energy on the addiction instead of the people we love. And instead of, let’s face it…ourselves.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“When we lose our fucking minds on a regular basis, we are wiring our brains into a constantly heightened state that eventually fries our circuits (and pushes away everyone we love in the process). We program ourselves to always be on the alert. So we react with far greater speed than we used to, and perceive more situations as being dangerous, hostile, or threatening. We are constantly jumping at shadows. Our brains never get to rest and recharge and we start struggling with many other conditions associated with this wiring change. Added up, those conditions are known as autonomic nervous system dysfunction. Many common health problems (heart disease, high blood pressure, food allergies) as well as many common mental health issues (depression, anxiety, PTSD) are related to a continued heightened response.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“Cue twenty years in the future. Your Boo wants you to talk about your feelings. You go into this weird-ass emotional fog whenever you try. Anxious, guilty, frustrated. Boo is all “WTH?” and you have no idea.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“Life does what it does, and half the time we are just hanging on for dear life.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“This will help boundary your role, and keep you from setting up scenarios when you rescue or enable dangerous and/or self-sabotaging behavior. You may need to set hard limits. You may need to protect yourself. This isn’t just for your well-being, but will help you model the importance of doing so to your loved one. Love the entirety of them. Remind them that their trauma doesn’t define them. Allow them consequences of their behavior and celebrate the successes of newer, healthier ways of being. Be the relationship that helps the healing journey.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“we create great ways to avoid our trauma responses so we don’t have to deal with them.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“Our ability to discriminate between real danger and perceived danger is an imperfect system. The brain is going to err on the side of caution, even if that means you shut down when you don’t actually need to.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“Our brains are wired to crave certainty.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“Imagine you are an Air Force base. Everything is fine then all of a sudden all the lights go out and the radar goes dead. You aren’t going to assume that just because a second ago everything was fine it still is. You are going to assume an attack. When you have a mood disorder your radar has lost communications to the rest of the base, so it assumes an attack, all the time. We are going to reconnect communications so your threat detector, which we assume is doing its job, is talking with the threat response unit again.”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers

“Our behaviors are responses to the bullshit we have to deal with day in and day out. Our brains respond not just to big, life altering traumatic events but also to day to day toxic relationships and interactions…the small ways people push our buttons, violate our boundaries, and disrespect our need for safety. It’s a hot mess combination of the two. And THEN feeling fucked up becomes a vicious cycle. We feel weird and crazy for feeling weird and crazy. We feel like we are weak. Or broken. Or fundamentally flawed. And that is the most helpless feeling in the world. Fundamentally flawed means un-fixable. So why bother trying?”
― Faith G. Harper, Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers