Quotes from Bruce D. Perry

Children, especially, are very contagious to the emotions of the people around them. Think of you and your grandmother in the story you just shared. You felt fear. Her fear was passed to you—you "caught" her fear and carried it into your generation.

children don't feel respected by the decisions of their parents, their beliefs about how they are valued are crushed.

tendemos a preferir la "certeza de la miseria a la miseria de la incertidumbre".

the earlier it starts, the more difficult it is to treat and the greater the damage is likely to be.

Love, given and felt, is dependent upon the ability to be present, attentive, attuned, and responsive to another human being. This glue of humanity has been essential to the survival of our species—and to the health and happiness of the individual. And this ability is based upon what happened to you, primarily as a young child.

ofrecerles una estructura, no rigidez; cariño emocional en lugar de afecto forzado.

As we've said before, the cortex is the most uniquely human part of our body, and, no surprise, it gives rise to the most uniquely human capabilities: speech, language, abstract thinking, reflecting on the past, planning for the future.

We shouldn't be walking away from a conversation in a rage; we should regulate ourselves. Repair the ruptures. Reconnect and grow. When you walk away, everybody loses. We all need to get better at listening, regulating, reflecting. This requires the capacity to forgive, to be patient. Mature human interactions involve efforts to understand people who are different from you.

The brain is a meaning-making machine, always trying to make sense of the world.

major part of our worldview are mediated by our cortex.

understanding how the brain reacts to stress or early trauma helps clarify how what has happened to us in the past shapes who we are, how we behave, and why we do the things we do. Through this lens we can build a renewed sense of personal self-worth and ultimately recalibrate our responses to circumstances, situations, and relationships. It is, in other words, the key to reshaping our very lives.

Generational transmission of bias can be disrupted. We can stop passing hateful, destructive, and false beliefs to the next generation, but to do so we must be exceedingly intentional about all of the ways we influence our babies, toddlers, and young children. We have to think about the images they see in the magazines we read, the people we welcome into our homes, the ways we treat others who look different from us.

los propios padres con frecuencia desconfían enseguida de cualquier tratamiento que no culpe al niño, y solo al niño, de todas las dificultades.

read. We learn to read. By stimulating specific neural networks in patterned, repetitive ways, we change the brain. This is an experience-based transmission of a skill from one generation to the next; teaching a child changes their brain.

Oprah: You have said that our world is relationally impoverished. We live in environments where we see fewer people, and even when we do see people and engage in conversation, we're not really listening to each other or being fully present. And this disconnection is making us more vulnerable.

This dissociative response is used when there is inescapable, unavoidable distress and pain. Your mind and body protect you. Because you cannot physically flee, and fighting is futile, you psychologically flee to your inner world.

And with this changed brain, the child can grow up and teach what she has learned

to someone in the next generation. There is transgenerational transmission—something is passed on to the next generation.

As these children grow, they lack the ability to set a standard for what they deserve. And if that lack is not addressed, what often follows is a complicated, frustrating pattern of self-sabotage, violence, promiscuity, or addiction.

When I'm around someone who drains me, I put up a barrier—a nonphysical wall that keeps that person's negative energy away.

when children don't feel respected by the decisions of their parents, their beliefs about how they are valued are crushed.

If you are loved, you learn to love.

For most people, the unknown is one of the major causes of feeling anxious or overwhelmed.

Implicit bias suggests that the bias is present but not "plainly expressed"—sometimes even unintentionally expressed. Racism, on the other hand, is an actual overt set of beliefs about the superiority of one race over others. In