“Models like the Polyvagal Theory suggest that we’ve got it backward. It’s the body that detects danger and initiates a defense strategy meant to help us survive. That biological strategy is called immobilization, and it manifests in the mind and the body with a set of symptoms we call depression.”— Alison Escalante M.D., psychologytoday.com
“Most great instigators of social change have intimate personal knowledge of trauma. Oprah Winfrey comes to mind, as do Maya Angelou, Nelson Mandela, and Elie Wiesel. Read the life history of any visionary, and you will find insights and passions that came from having dealt with devastation.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“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
“Mainstream trauma treatment has paid scant attention to helping terrified people to safely experience their sensations and emotions.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“The emotional brain initiates preprogrammed escape plans, like the fight-or-flight responses. These muscular and physiological reactions are automatic, set in motion without any thought or planning on our part, leaving our conscious, rational capacities to catch up later, often well after the threat…”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“I can’t begin to imagine how I would have coped with what many of my patients have endured, and I see their symptoms as part of their strength—the ways they learned to survive. And despite all their suffering many have gone on to become loving partners and parents, exemplary teachers, nurses, scient…”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“Trauma constantly confronts us with our fragility and with man’s inhumanity to man but also with our extraordinary resilience.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“Traumatized people are afraid of conflict. They fear losing control and ending up on the losing side once again.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“Chronic childhood abuse causes very different mental and biological adaptations than discrete traumatic events in adulthood.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“The stress hormones of traumatized people, in contrast, take much longer to return to baseline and spike quickly and disproportionately in response to mildly stressful stimuli.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“The most primitive part, the part that is already online when we are born, is the ancient animal brain, often called the reptilian brain.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“Our rational, cognitive brain is actually the youngest part of the brain and occupies only about 30 percent of the area inside our skull.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“After trauma the world is experienced with a different nervous system. The survivor’s energy now becomes focused on suppressing inner chaos, at the expense of spontaneous involvement in their life.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“Being traumatized means continuing to organize your life as if the trauma were still going on—unchanged and immutable—as every new encounter or event is contaminated by the past.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“Trauma affects the entire human organism—body, mind, and brain. In PTSD the body continues to defend against a threat that belongs to the past.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“Trauma by nature drives us to the edge of comprehension, cutting us off from language based on common experience or an imaginable past.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“Adrenaline is one of the hormones that are critical to help us fight back or flee in the face of danger. Increased adrenaline was responsible for our participants’ dramatic rise in heart rate and blood pressure while listening to their trauma narrative.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“When people are forced to submit to overwhelming power, as is true for most abused children, women trapped in domestic violence, and incarcerated men and women, they often survive with resigned compliance.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“Mindfulness has been shown to have a positive effect on numerous psychiatric, psychosomatic, and stress-related symptoms, including depression and chronic pain.”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com
“Silence about trauma also leads to death—the death of the soul. Silence reinforces the godforsaken isolation of trauma. Being able to say aloud to another human being, “I was raped” or “I was battered by my husband” or “My parents called it discipline, but it was abuse” or “I’m not making it since I…”— Bessel Van Der Kolk, amazon.com