Quotes from Bruce D. Perry

Just focusing on my breath, my steady heartbeat, the stillness of a tree, or the intricacy of a leaf can center me in the wholeness of all things.

There are parts of our brain that are very, very sensitive to nonverbal relational cues. And in our society, this is an underappreciated aspect of the way human beings work. We tend to be a very verbal society—written and spoken words are important—but the majority of communication is actually nonverbal.

Because it's not the "friends" or "followers" who stay by your side when you're sick or when you get divorced or just feel lonely. They're not sitting at the table with their neighbors—or even, in many cases, with their families.

every environment has a tone.

healthy changes in the case of the rats with control over the stress, and deterioration and dysregulation in the others.

Dr. Perry: It's like when you weren't aware of why you were afraid to be alone at night. You weren't aware of the associations you'd made earlier in your life. Our behaviors begin to shape themselves around the emotional landmines left by previous trauma.

Finding balance can be an exhausting challenge for anyone with trauma-altered stress-response systems. The search to avoid the pain of distress can lead to extreme, ultimately destructive, methods of regulation.

In order to communicate rationally and successfully with anyone, you have to make sure they're regulated, make sure they feel a relationship with you, and only then try to reason with them.

The brain is a meaning-making machine, always trying to make sense of the world. If our view of the world is that people are good, then we will anticipate good things from people.

This aggressive, impulsive lashing out is completely baffling to the teacher. He doesn't understand what is really going on. When he describes the scene to others, he'll say something like, "For no reason at all, he just came at me." This is one of the most common descriptions of the behavioral outbursts related to evocative cues: Out of the blue. Unpredictable. The behaviors seem unprovoked. Oprah:

emotional memories: A song can elicit a feeling, an association with an experience that took place years ago. The smell of roasted turkey or freshly baked bread may elicit a warm sense of belonging, or a melancholy sense of a lost past.

patterned, repetitive experience in a safe environment can have an enormous impact on the brain

The brain is a meaning-making machine, always trying to make sense of the world. If our view of the world is that people are good, then we will anticipate good things from

When you've been groomed to be compliant, confrontation in any form is uncomfortable because you were never taught that you have the right to say no; in fact, you were taught that you can't say no.

Patterned, repetitive stimuli lead to tolerance, while chaotic, infrequent signals produce sensitization.

people. We project that expectation in our interactions with others and thereby actually elicit good from them. Our internal view of the world becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; we project what we expect, and that helps elicit what we expect.

The sense of self informs every relationship or decision we make as we move through life. And when children don't feel respected by the decisions of their parents, their beliefs about how they are valued are crushed.

Yes. Unfortunately, our schools are typically not trauma-aware and tend to prohibit many of the regulatory activities we've mentioned: walking, rocking, fiddling with things while listening to a lesson, listening to music with your earbuds while doing homework. "Somatosensory regulation," such as the rhythmic activities we have discussed, actually opens up the cortex and makes the reasoning parts of the brain more accessible for learning.

these children need patterned, repetitive experiences appropriate to their developmental needs, needs that reflect the age at which they'd missed important stimuli or had been traumatized, not their current chronological age.

demonstrated resilience and high academic achievement despite a range of adversities including poverty, traumatic loss, and community or intra-family violence.

para la evaluación clínica resulta fundamental saber que, cuanta más ansiedad siente una persona, más difícil le resulta recordar y describir sus sentimientos, pensamientos e historia con exactitud.

Trauma leaves you shipwrecked. You are left to rebuild your inner world. Part of the rebuilding, the healing process, is revisiting the shattered hull of your old worldview; you sift through the wreckage looking for what remains, seeking your broken pieces. Dreams, intrusive images of the trauma, and reenactment play are your mind struggling to make sense of your new reality.

relationships are absolutely key. For the infant, the relationship with primary caregivers is the foundation of their capacity for all future relationships.

The sense of self informs every relationship or decision we make as we move through life. And when