Quotes from Bruce D. Perry

can warm or consume, water can quench or drown, wind can caress or cut. And so it is with human relationships: we can both create and destroy, nurture and terrorize, traumatize and heal each other.

The hypervigilance of a boy living with domestic violence scanning his home for any sign of threat is very adaptive; in a classroom, this can prevent the child from paying attention to the teacher and result in the child being labeled with attention deficit disorder (ADHD), which is maladaptive.

In older children and adults massage has also been found to lower blood pressure, fight depression, and cut stress by reducing the amount of stress hormones released by the brain.

Indeed, if moderate, predictable and patterned, it is stress that makes a system stronger and more functionally capable.

There is a direct relationship between a person's degree of social isolation and their risk for physical and mental health problems.

What you are pointing out is how adaptive it is to dissociate in many situations. If a soldier in combat simply went down the arousal continuum-and got to the flee and then fight stages-he would jump up and get shot. In order to maintain access to parts of his cortex-to think and behave in the ways he was trained to keep him alive in combat-he needs to dissociate to a certain degree.

Parenting is difficult. Without the neurobiological capacity to feel the joys of parenting, irritations and annoyances loom especially large.

While this doesn't mean that smart children need less affection, it does suggest that if they are deprived, brighter kids may be better equipped to cope.

Human social life is built on this ability to "reflect" each other and respond to those reflections, with both positive and negative results.

It is not unusual for children to be deceptive or withholding or to purposefully lie in order to avoid things they don't want to share, especially when they have been instructed to do so by their families. However, it is far more difficult for them to hide their true thoughts and feelings in their artwork.

As one family therapist famously put it, we tend to prefer the "certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty.

The protective effects of social connection were present even for individuals who were at higher risk for depression as a result of genetic vulnerability or early life trauma.

One word the translators were able to figure out was that "Mum" meant "adult or caregiver," just as similar sounds mean mother in almost every known human language, since the "mm" sound is the first one babies learn to make while suckling.

Neural systems have evolved to be especially sensitive to novelty, since new experiences usually signal either danger or opportunity. One of the most important characteristics of both memory, neural tissue, and of development, then, is that they all change with patterned, repetitive activity. So, the systems in your brain that get repeatedly activated will change, and the systems in your brain that don't get activated won't change.

what works best is anything that increases the quality and number of relationships in the child's life.

In order to function socially, people need to develop what is known as a "theory of mind.

black? She was beginning to think that she might be able

What we call "cuteness" is actually an evolutionary adaptation that helps ensure that parents will care for their children, that babies will get their needs met, and that parents will take on this seemingly thankless task with pleasure.

The most traumatic aspects of all disasters involve the shattering of human connections.

when I begin to feel overwhelmed, I pull back. I have learned to say no. When I'm around someone who drains me, I put up a barrier—a nonphysical wall that keeps that person's negative energy away.

an intention precedes every thought and every action, and that the outcome of your experiences is determined by your intention going in. It sounds complicated, but really there is nothing I do that doesn't start with my asking myself, what is my intention in doing this?

Colonization, slavery, the U.S. reservation system, Canada's Residential Schools, Australia's Stolen Generation—these were so destructive across so many generations because they intentionally destroyed the family and cultural bonds that keep a people connected.

Dissociation as a coping mechanism will happen more commonly when the individual feels that a threatening situation is inescapable. If you're a child and your family has a lot of conflict, you don't have many options. You can't say, "Hey, I'm moving out." Very young children can't fight or flee. They have to stay.

The spiritual teacher Gary Zukav has said, "When you find an addiction, do not be ashamed. Be joyful. You have found something that you have come to this Earth to heal. When you confront and heal an addiction, you are doing the deepest spiritual work that you can do on this Earth.