Quotes from Bruce D. Perry

Many of us found it harder to "fill up" during the COVID-19 pandemic; people reported more anxiety and depression, and many people used some of the less healthy forms of reward to fill that void.

What happened to you?" is so important in understanding what's going on with you now.

Patterned, repetitive, rhythmic activity makes the overactive and overly reactive core regulatory networks (see Figure 2) get back "in balance." Music falls into this category—both playing and listening. All sports involve doses of it. Dance, too.

Adrenaline increases the sugar in your blood. Her stress response, overactivated by the recent trauma, increased her adrenaline—hence much more sugar in her blood. The dose of insulin that had worked in the past was no longer adequate. Furthermore, when she was exposed to any evocative cue, such as the sirens, her sensitized system had an overreaction, releasing very high levels of adrenaline and, in turn, leading to a huge release of sugar.

our brain uses a couple of key strategies to help us make sense of the world. First, it makes associations between patterns of sensory input that co-occur, creating "memories" from our experiences. Second, it uses these stored memories to categorize and interpret new experience. And if new input is similar enough to previous experience, it will categorize the new experience as similar or equal to the past experience.

Children, just like us adults, react badly to the unknown, to the strange and unfamiliar, especially when they themselves are trying to adjust to a new situation like the start of a school year.

The pillars of traditional healing were 1) connection to clan and the natural world; 2) regulating rhythm through dance, drumming, and song; 3) a set of beliefs, values, and stories that brought meaning to even senseless, random trauma; and 4) on occasion, natural hallucinogens or other plant-derived substances used to facilitate healing with the guidance of a healer or elder.

To create an effective "memory" and increase strength, experience has to be patterned and repetitive.

We ignore familiar patterns in ordinary contexts, so much so that we forget large portions of our days, which are spent doing routine things like brushing our teeth or getting dressed.

This is one of the central problems in our society; we have too many parents caring for children with inadequate supports.

In Sandy's case, milk, once associated with nurturing and nutrition, now became the stuff that spilled from her throat, that her mother "refused" as she lay dead. Silverware was now no longer something used to eat your food, but rather something that killed and maimed and horrified. And doorbells—well, that was what had started the whole thing: the ringing of the doorbell had announced the arrival of the killer.

When we get back into balance, we feel better. Relief of distress—getting back into balance—activates the reward networks in the brain. We feel pleasure when we get back into balance—from cold to warm, thirsty to quenched, hungry to satiated.

therapy without "connectedness" is not very effective.

I'm reminded of the M?ori elders and their belief that trauma, anxiety, depression, and substance abuse are "all the same thing"—and all related to our connectedness, our sense of belonging.

Our ancestors recognized the importance of connectedness and the toxicity of exclusion. The history of the "civilized" world, on the other hand, is filled with policies and practices that favored disconnection and marginalization—that destroyed family, community, and culture.

when you are an attentive, attuned, and responsive caregiver to these little ones, you're literally weaving together this powerful three-part association—you're building a healthy root system for the Tree of Regulation. Furthermore, as we talked about earlier, these bonding experiences create the infant's worldview about humans. A consistent, nurturing caregiver builds an internal view that people are safe, predictable, and caring. Oprah:

She had sleep and attention problems (brainstem), difficulties with fine motor control and coordination (diencephalon and cortex), clear social and relational delays and deficits (limbic and cortex), and speech and language problems

the parent is consistent, predictable, and nurturing, the stress-response systems become resilient. If the stress-response systems are activated in prolonged ways or chaotic ways, as in cases of abuse or neglect, they become sensitized and dysfunctional.

We have talked a lot about how the actions of caregivers influence the child, but it's important to remember that those caregivers were also children influenced by their caregivers. The effects of trauma stretch far and wide across generations and across communities, and it's important to always come back to our central question with compassion: What happened to you?

a system is overloaded—worked beyond capacity—the result can be profound deterioration, disorganization, and dysfunction whether you are overworking your back muscles at the gym or your brain's stress networks when confronted with traumatic stress.

I'd seen common elements of healing practices—most prominently, the use of rhythm and an emphasis on harmony with nature.

key to recovery, then, is to get the patient to understand that her perceptions aren't necessarily reality, that the world might not be as dark as it seems.

Rhythm is regulating.

Brain development is use-dependent: you use it or you lose it. If we don't give children time to learn how to be with others, to connect, to deal with conflict, and to negotiate complex social hierarchies, those areas of their brains will be underdeveloped.