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    “The ability to do hard things is perhaps the most useful ability you can foster in yourself or your children. And proof that you are someone who can do them is one of the most useful assets you can have on your life resume. Our self-image is composed of historical evidence of our abilities. The more hard things you push yourself to do, the more competent you will see yourself to be. If you can run marathons or throw double your body weight over your head, the sleep deprivation from a newborn is only a mild irritant. If you can excel at organic chemistry or econometrics, onboarding for a new finance job will be a breeze. But if we avoid hard things, anything mildly challenging will seem insurmountable. We’ll cry into TikTok over an errant period at the end of a text message. We’ll see ourselves as incapable of learning new skills, taking on new careers, and escaping bad situations. The proof you can do hard things is one of the most powerful gifts you can give yourself.”

    Nat Eliason

      “If you’ve been hurt, you need to acknowledge and name what happened to you. I know that from personal experience: As long as I had no place where I could let myself know what it was like when my father locked me in the cellar of our house for various three-year-old offenses, I was chronically preoccupied with being exiled and abandoned. Only when I could talk about how that little boy felt, only when I could forgive him for having been as scared and submissive as he was, did I start to enjoy the pleasure of my own company. Feeling listened to and understood changes our physiology; being able to articulate a complex feeling, and having our feeling recognized, lights up our limbic brain and creates an ‘aha moment.’ In contrast, being met by silence and incomprehension kills the spirit. Or, as John Bowlby so memorably put it: ‘What can not be spoken to the [m]other cannot be told to the self.'”

      Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 234) | ★ Featured on this book list.

        “That’s how love is: It simply gives, it enjoys giving. Whoever is willing to receive, receives it. He need not be worthy, he need not fit any special category, he need not fulfill any qualifications. If all these things are required, then what you are giving is not love; it must be something else. Once you know what love is, you are ready to give; the more you give, the more you have. The more you go on showering on others, the more love springs up in your being. Ordinary economics is totally different: If you give something, you lose it. If you want to keep something, avoid giving it away. Collect it, be miserly. Just the opposite is the case with love: If you want to have it, don’t be miserly; otherwise it will go dead, it will become stale. Go on giving and fresh sources will become available.”

        Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 38)

          “Activists in the early campaign for AIDS awareness created a powerful slogan: ‘Silence = Death.’ 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 got back from Iraq,’ is a sign that healing can begin.”

          Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 234) | ★ Featured on this book list.

            “Drugs cannot ‘cure’ trauma; they can only dampen the expressions of a disturbed physiology. And they do not teach the lasting lessons of self-regulation. They can help to control feelings and behavior, but always at a price—because they work by blocking the chemical systems that regulate engagement, motivation, pain, and pleasure.”

            Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 226) | ★ Featured on this book list.

              “Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart––to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.”

              Mary Oliver

                “Desensitization to our own or to other people’s pain tends to lead to an overall blunting of emotional sensitivity.”

                Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 224)

                  “Patients who have been brutalized by their caregivers as children often do not feel safe with anyone. I often ask my patients if they can think of any person they felt safe with while they were growing up. Many of them hold tight to the memory of that one teacher, neighbor, shopkeeper, coach, or minister who showed that he or she cared, and that memory is often the seed of learning to reengage. We are a hopeful species. Working with trauma is as much about remembering how we survived as it is about what is broken.”

                  Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 215) | ★ Featured on this book list.

                    “The critical question is this: Do you feel that your therapist is curious to find out who you are and what you, not some generic ‘PTSD patient,’ need? Are you just a list of symptoms on some diagnostic questionnaire, or does your therapist take the time to find out why you do what you do and think what you think? Therapy is a collaborative process—a mutual exploration of your self.”

                    Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 214) | ★ Featured on this book list.

                      “After an acute trauma, like an assault, accident, or natural disaster, survivors require the presence of familiar people, faces, and voices; physical contact; food; shelter and a safe place; and time to sleep. It is critical to communicate with loved ones close and far and to reunite as soon as possible with family and friends in a place that feels safe. Our attachment bonds are our greatest protection against threat.”

                      Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 212) | ★ Featured on this book list.

                        “Stop fighting with existence. Stop all conflict and the idea of conquering—surrender. And when you surrender, what can you do? If the mind goes astray, you go; if it doesn’t go, that too is okay. Sometimes you will be centered, and sometimes you will not. But deep down you will always remain centered because there is no worry. Otherwise everything can become a worry. Then going astray becomes just like a sin one is not to commit—and the problem is created again.”

                        Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 35)