The Body Keeps the Score

"The five men who saw nothing in the blots had lost the capacity to let their minds play. But so, too, had the other sixteen men, for in viewing scenes from the past in those blots they were not displaying the mental flexibility that is the hallmark of imagination. They simply keps replaying an old reel."

"After trauma, the world becomes sharply divided between those who know, and those who don't."

"Somehow, the very event that caused them so much pain, had also become their sole source of meaning."

"For real change to take place, the body needs to learn that the danger has passed on to live in the reality of the present."

"The limbic system is created in response to experience."

"Whatever happens to the baby contributes to the emotional and perceptual map of the world that its developing brain creates."

"Those early explorations shape the limbic structure devoted to emotions and memory, but these structures can also be significantly modified by later experiences: for the better by a close friendship or beautiful first love, for example, or for the worst by a violent assault, relentless bullying, or neglect."

"Isolating oneself into a narrowly defined victim group promotes a view of others as irrelevant at best and dangerous at worst, which eventually leads to further alienation. Gangs, extremist political parties, and religious cults may provide solace, but they rarely foster the mental flexibility needed to be fully open to what life has to offer and as such cannot liberate their member from their tramas. Well-functioning people are able to accept individual differences and acknowledge the humanity of others". p.93

"[..] but we get our first lessons in self-care from the way we are cared for." p. 131

"The more responsive the adult is to the child, the deeper the attachment and the more likely the child will develop healthy ways of responding to the people around him."

"Babies can't regulate their own emotonal states, much less the changes in heart rate, hormone levels, and nervous-system activity that accompany emotions. When a child is in sync with his caregiver, his sense of joy and connection is reflected in his steady heartbeat and breathing and a low level of stress hrmones. HIs body is calm, so are his emotions. The moment this music is disrupted - as it often is in the course of a normal day - all these physiological factors change as well. You can tell equilibrium has been restored when the physiology calms down." p. 134

"If a mother cannot meet her baby's impulses and needs, 'the baby learns to become the mother's idea of what the baby is."

"Whether their parents or caregivers are loving and caring or distant, insensitive, rejecting or abusive, children will develop a coping style based on their attempt to get a least some of their needs met."

"Unable to choose between seeking closeness and avoiding the parents, they make rock on their hands and knees, appear to go into a trance, freeze with their arms raised, or get up to greet their parents and then fall to the ground. Not knowing who is safe of whom they belong to, they may be intensely affectionate with strangers or may trust nobody." p.139

"Chronically failing to calm her baby down and establish an enjoyable face-to-face interaction, the mother is likely to come to perceive him as a difficult child who makes her feel like a failure, and give up on trying to comfort her child." p. 141

"The sequences are designed to create a rhythm between tension and relaxation" p.324