Quotes from Bruce D. Perry

Think of the diversity within a small multifamily, multigenerational clan. Children growing up had numerous adults and older children who could model, teach, nurture, discipline, and care for them. Each person in the clan had a unique set of strengths—the right person at the right time. No single person was expected to provide all of the emotional, social, physical, or cognitive needs of the developing child.

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in somebody else's shoes—both in an emotional sense, to feel a bit of what they may feel, but also in a cognitive sense, to see the situation from their perspective. If you approach an interaction from an empathic stance, you're much less likely to have a negative perspective on whatever is going on. And hopefully that will allow you to get to know the person better—even if it's someone you already know.

I now have the tools and understanding to step back, observe what I'm feeling, and choose how to move through the fear.

The stronger stress response system in the present is the one that has had moderate, patterned stress in the past.

it's especially regulating if you can walk in nature. The sensory elements of the natural world bathe us with their own regulating rhythms.

This requires the capacity to forgive, to be patient. Mature human interactions involve efforts to understand people who are different from you. But if we don't have family meals, don't go out with friends for long, in-person conversations, and communicate only via text or Twitter, then we can't create that positive, healthy back-and-forth pattern of human connection.

This is where the sequence of engagement comes in. Without some degree of regulation, it is difficult to connect with another person, and without connection, there is minimal reasoning. Regulate, relate, then reason.

The most destabilizing thing for anyone is to have their core beliefs challenged.

We want to provide therapeutic, healing interactions. Moderate, controllable, and predictable interactions.

Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different. But we cannot move forward if we're still holding on to the pain of that past. All of us who have been broken and scarred by trauma have the chance to turn those experiences into what Dr. Perry and I have been talking about: post-traumatic wisdom. Forgive yourself, forgive them. Step out of your history and into the path of your future.

We heal best in community. Creating a network—a village, whatever you want to call it—gives you opportunities to revisit trauma in moderate, controllable doses.

Isolation and loneliness are an epidemic.

A cold, disengaged, partially attentive caregiver can have immediate, and potentially lifelong, toxic effects on the developing child. This child may grow up feeling inadequate, unlovable. Even with many gifts and skills, they will feel they are "not enough" as an adult, and that can lead to a host of maladaptive behaviors including unhealthy forms of attention seeking, self-sabotaging, or even self-destructive behavior.

we find that the best predictor of your current mental health is your current "relational health," or connectedness. This connectedness is fueled by two things: the basic capabilities you've developed to form and maintain relationships, and the relational "opportunities" you have in your family, neighborhood, school, and so forth.

In a multifamily, multigenerational environment, the continuous social interactions provide a rich source of regulation, reward, and learning.

the brain is malleable all through life...we can intentionally change if we know what needs to be addressed. The key is to recognize the patterns.

world that's not enough. A strong connection to community is as important today as it was thousands of years ago. The tragedy of the modern world is that community like this is harder and harder to find.

Children and adults with developmental trauma frequently experience chronic abdominal pain, headaches, chest pain, fainting, and seizure-like episodes—all very common symptoms related to a sensitized stress response.

Humankind, more than any other species, can take the accumulated, distilled experiences of previous generations and pass these inventions, beliefs, and skills to the next generation. This is sociocultural evolution.

We are now raising our children and youth in environments that are both relationally impoverished and sensory overloading from the proliferation of screen-based technologies

It's that we have changed our fundamental question from 'What's wrong with you?' to 'What happened to you?

Dr. Perry: 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.

Ten thousand years ago, humankind had the genetic potential to read a book, yet not one single human on the planet could read; the genetic potential to play the piano existed, yet not one person could play; the genetic potential to dunk a basketball, type a sentence, ride a bicycle—all that potential existed, but it all remained unexpressed.

Anything sequential happens in a sequence, a set of steps—