Quotes from Bruce D. Perry

Although I do not mean to imply that all of these children will be severely "damaged" by these experiences, the most moderate estimates suggest that at any given time, more than eight million American children suffer from serious, diagnosable, trauma-related psychiatric problems. Millions more experience less serious but still distressing consequences.

the more threatened or stressed we are, the less access we have to the smart part of our brain, the cortex

Across generations, wariness of new individuals, groups, and ideas was built into the circuits of the human brain's alarm response because those who had this wariness were more likely to survive to reproduce. It was just safer to assume danger- and expect the worst- than to count on the kindness of strangers.

Drugs and alcohol are not my problem," he wrote. "Reality is my problem, drugs and alcohol are my solution.

Social networking sites can link us to distant relatives and friends with whom we might otherwise lose touch. These contacts and the emotions they engage are real. And when online social networks or games add to face-to-face relationships—rather than substitute for them—they can improve our relatedness and compassion.

Balance is the core of health. We feel and function best when our body's systems are in balance, and when we're in balance with friends, family, community, and nature.

if you look at Indigenous and traditional healing practices, they do a remarkable job of creating a total mind-body experience that influences multiple brain systems. Remember, trauma "memories" span multiple brain areas. So these traditional practices will have cognitive, relational-based, and sensory elements. You retell the story; create images of the battle, hunt, death; hold each other; massage; dance; sing.

All life is rhythmic. The rhythms of the natural world are embedded in our biological systems. This begins in the womb, when the mother's beating heart creates rhythmic sound, pressure, and vibrations that are sensed by the developing fetus and provide constant rhythmic input to the organizing brain.

In fact, the research on the most effective treatments to help child trauma victims might be accurately summed up this way: what works best is anything that increases the quality and number of relationships in the child's life.

When the attentive and responsive adult comes to the crying infant, two very important things happen. The baby feels the pleasure of being regulated after being distressed—and also experiences the sight, smell, touch, sound, and movement of human interaction.

The fact that the brain develops sequentially—and also so rapidly in the first years of life—explains why extremely young children are at such great risk of suffering lasting effects of trauma: their brains are still developing. The same miraculous plasticity that allows young brains to quickly learn love and language, unfortunately, also makes them highly susceptible to negative experiences as well.

Social connection builds resilience, and resilience helps create post-traumatic wisdom, and that wisdom leads to hope. Hope for you and hope for others witnessing and participating in your healing, hope for your community.

Humans are social animals, highly susceptible to emotional contagion. Training, logic, and intelligence are often no match for the power of groupthink.

there is nothing I do that doesn't start with my asking myself, What is my intention in doing this?

Connectedness counters the pull of addictive behaviors. It is the key.

Because in order to understand trauma we need to understand memory. In order to appreciate how children heal we need to understand how they learn to love, how they cope with challenge, how stress affects them. And by recognizing the destructive impact that violence and threat can have on the capacity to love and work, we can come to better understand ourselves and to nurture the people in our lives, especially the children.

This is incredibly unlike our modern world. We expect a single working mother to be the one to throw the baseball with her eight-year-old, rock the newborn, read to the three-year-old, and, by the way, cook a nutritious meal, help with homework, do the laundry, get everyone to bed, then wake up and get them all ready for childcare and school so she can go work all day, only to rush home to do it all again. All alone.

One of the few things I knew for sure by then about traumatized children was that they need predictability, routine, a sense of control and stable relationships with supportive people.

Oprah: She needs people to step up—people who support her, give her some breaks, step in and do some of those things with her children. We're not meant to be isolated and alone. We're actually meant to work together. So when a single mom is living on a limited income, trying to manage four children, trying to be mother and father, and she feels overwhelmed or feels like it's impossible to do it all—it's because it is impossible.

You're not meant to raise children isolated and alone.

I believe we don't have enough quiet conversational moments listening to a friend with no other distractions. That kind of interaction leads to a completely different quality of human connection. A different depth.

The risks for heart disease, stroke, depression, diabetes, asthma, and even many cancers are all affected by trauma-related changes in the stress response system. Empathy and connection affect physical—not just mental—wellness and health.

Children become resilient as a result of the patterns of stress and of nurturing that they experience early on in life

Why do money and possessions so rarely bring the happiness we expect? Because they often distance us from one another, rather than bringing us closer, emphasizing status gaps, not narrowing them. And, finally, what causes much of life's most agonizing pain? This, too, is related to relationships—those we lose, fail to maintain, or that become one-sided or abusive.