“The brain gets very confused. And that leads to problems with excessive anger, excessive shutting down, and doing things like taking drugs to make yourself feel better.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, sideeffectspublicmedia.org
“If you’re an adult and life’s been good to you, and then something bad happens, that sort of injures a little piece of the whole structure. But toxic stress in childhood from abandonment or chronic violence has pervasive effects on the capacity to pay attention, to learn, to see where other people a…”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, sideeffectspublicmedia.org
“It's about becoming safe to feel what you feel. When you're traumatized you're afraid of what you're feeling, because your feeling is always terror, or fear or helplessness. I think these body-based techniques help you to feel what's happening in your body, and to breathe into it and not run away fr…”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, sideeffectspublicmedia.org
“We just did a study on yoga for people with PTSD. We found that yoga was more effective than any medicine that people have studied up to now. That doesn't mean that yoga cures it, but yoga makes a substantial difference in the right direction.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, sideeffectspublicmedia.org
“But if you're in an orphanage for example, and you're not touched or seen, whole parts of your brain barely develop; and so you become an adult who is out of it, who cannot connect with other people, who cannot feel a sense of self, a sense of pleasure. If you run into nothing but danger and fear, y…”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, sideeffectspublicmedia.org
“The human brain is a social organ that is shaped by experience, and that is shaped in order to respond to the experience that you’re having. So particularly earlier in life, if you’re in a constant state of terror; your brain is shaped to be on alert for danger, and to try to make those terrible fee…”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, sideeffectspublicmedia.org
“The greatest hope for traumatized, abused, and neglected children is to receive a good education in schools where they are seen and known, where they learn to regulate themselves, and where they can develop a sense of agency. At their best, schools can function as islands of safety in a chaotic worl…”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“You may have internalized early in your life that your needs were not as important as others’ needs were. Lack of empathy from a parent or caretaker, neglect, blame, criticism, failure to accept you as you are and appreciate your qualities and other such experiences have shaped your belief that othe…”— Nina W. Brown, amazon.com