“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)
“Study after study shows that having a good support network constitutes the single most powerful protection against becoming traumatized. Safety and terror are incompatible. When we are terrified, nothing calms us down like the reassuring voice or the firm embrace of someone we trust. Frightened adults respond to the same comforts as terrified children: gentle holding and rocking and the assurance that somebody bigger and stronger is taking care of things, so you can safely go to sleep. In order to recover, mind, body, and brain need to be convinced that it is safe to let go. That happens only when you feel safe at a visceral level and allow yourself to connect that sense of safety with memories of past helplessness.”
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 212) | ★ Featured on this book list.
“Learning to observe and tolerate your physical reactions is a prerequisite for safely revisiting the past. If you cannot tolerate what you are feeling right now, opening up the past will only compound the misery and retraumatize you further.”
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 211)
“Most of our conscious brain is dedicated to focusing on the outside world: getting along with others and making plans for the future. However, that does not help us manage ourselves. Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going on inside ourselves.”
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 208)
“A problem can be dropped so easily if you understand that it is you holding the problem, not the problem holding you.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 32)
“In order to regain control over your self, you need to revisit the trauma: Sooner or later you need to confront what has happened to you, but only after you feel safe and will not be retraumatized by it. The first order of business is to find ways to cope with feeling overwhelmed by the sensations and emotions associated with the past.”
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 206) | ★ Featured on this book list.
“Trauma robs you of the feeling that you are in charge of yourself. The challenge of recovery is to reestablish ownership of your body and your mind—of your self. This means feeling free to know what you know and to feel what you feel without becoming overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed, or collapsed. For most people this involves (1) finding a way to become calm and focused, (2) learning to maintain that calm in response to images, thoughts, sounds, or physical sensations that remind you of the past, (3) finding a way to be fully alive in the present and engaged with the people around you, (4) not having to keep secrets from yourself, including secrets about the ways that you have managed to survive.”
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 205) | ★ Featured on this book list.
“[Stoicism] is not a philosophy for the weak or the cowardly. Stoicism is about facing the truth, about thinking about the unthinkable. Not just as it’s happening, but long before. Keep all the possibilities before you, including—especially—the bad ones. Keep your eyes open. Beware.Think it. Because you might be able to prevent it. And if you can’t, at least you’ll be able to handle the reality of its existence and then respond to it accordingly.”
Ryan Holiday
“It sucks that you were lied to, stolen from, abused, cheated, your trust taken advantage of. There’s no way you can get that back. But what you can do is make sure that the most important thing of all remains in your possession: Your love of other people. Your tolerance for them. Your willingness to help and do good for them. Don’t let that be stolen too. It’s priceless.”
Ryan Holiday
“Nobody can ‘treat’ a war, or abuse, rape, molestation, or any other horrendous event, for that matter; what has happened cannot be undone. But what can be dealt with are the imprints of the trauma on body, mind, and soul: the crushing sensations in your chest that you may label as anxiety or depression; the fear of losing control; always being on alert for danger or rejection; the self-loathing; the nightmares and flashbacks; the fog that keeps you from staying on task and from engaging fully in what you are doing; being unable to fully open your heart to another human being.”
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 205) | ★ Featured on this book list.
“I don’t go to therapy to find out if I’m a freak
Dar Williams, What Do You Hear in These Sounds
I go and I find the one and only answer every week
And when I talk about therapy, I know what people think
That it only makes you selfish and in love with your shrink
But, oh how I loved everybody else
When I finally got to talk so much about myself”
“Meditation simply means becoming empty of all the contents of the mind: memory, imagination, thoughts, desires, expectations, projections, moods. Once has to go on emptying oneself of all these contents. The greatest day in life is when you cannot find anything in you to throw out; all has already been thrown out, and there is only pure emptiness. In that emptiness you will find yourself; in that emptiness you find your pure consciousness.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 30)
“Social support is a biological necessity, not an option, and this reality should be the backbone of all prevention and treatment. Recognizing the profound effects of trauma and deprivation on child development need not lead to blaming parents. We can assume that parents do the best they can, but all parents need help to nurture their kids.”
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 169) | ★ Featured on this book list.
“Everything about us—our brains, our minds, and our bodies—is geared toward collaboration in social systems. This is our most powerful survival strategy, the key to our success as a species, and it is precisely this that breaks down in most forms of mental suffering. The neural connections in brain and body are vitally important for understanding human suffering, but it is important not to ignore the foundations of our humanity: relationships and interactions that shape our minds and brains when we are young and that give substance and meaning to our entire lives.”
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 168) | ★ Featured on this book list.
“Never lose trust in trust, whatever the cost, and you will never be a loser, because trust in itself is the ultimate end. It should not be a means to anything else, because it has its own intrinsic value. If you can trust, you remain open. People become closed as a defense, so that nobody can deceive them or take advantage or them. Let them take advantage of you! If you insist on continuing to trust, then a beautiful flowering happens, because then there is no fear. The fear is that people will deceive—but once you accept that, there is no fear, so there is no barrier to your opening. The fear is more dangerous than any harm anybody can do to you.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 29)
“I gradually came to realize that the only thing that makes it possible to do the work of healing trauma is awe at the dedication to survival that enabled my patients to endure their abuse and then to endure the dark nights of the soul that inevitably occur on the road to recovery.”
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 137) | ★ Featured on this book list.
“The real question we should ask ourselves is not ‘How big can we get?’ but instead ‘What kind of life do we want to live?’ The magic happens when we shift our focus from size to significance. We might discover that ‘enough’ is a lot less than we thought. Because we’re conditioned to believe that ‘more’ is synonymous with ‘better’. But often, it’s just synonymous with more stress, more time away from family, and more sacrifices.”
Justin Welsh