The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Yes, you need to detect whether somebody is getting upset with you, but if your amygdala goes into overdrive, you may become chronically scared that people hate you, or you may feel like they are out to get you.

that their actions can change how they feel and how others respond. Securely attached kids learn the difference between situations they can control and situations where they need help.

Associating intense sensations with safety, comfort, and mastery is the foundation of self-regulation, self-soothing, and self-nurture, a theme to which I return throughout this book.

Mastering the skill of self-regulation depends to a large degree on how harmonious our early interactions with our caregivers are.

I love the expression of the great French psychiatrist Pierre Janet: “Every life is a piece of art, put together with all means available.”

We could only conclude that for abused children, the whole world is filled with triggers.

It was little wonder that almost all of them had been diagnosed with ADHD, and most were on Ritalin—though the drug certainly didn’t seem to dampen their arousal in this situation.

The most natural way for human beings to calm themselves when they are upset is by clinging to another person. This means that patients who have been physically or sexually violated face a dilemma: They desperately crave touch while simultaneously being terrified of body contact.

All too often, however, drugs such as Abilify, Zyprexa, and Seroquel, are prescribed instead of teaching people the skills to deal with such distressing physical reactions. Of course, medications only blunt sensations and do nothing to resolve them or transform them from toxic agents into allies.

In my practice I begin the process by helping my patients to first notice and then describe the feelings in their bodies—not emotions such as anger or anxiety or fear but the physical sensations beneath the emotions: pressure, heat, muscular tension, tingling, caving in, feeling hollow, and so on.