Quotes About Adaptation

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

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.

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.

Our first experiences create the filters through which all new experiences must pass.

When you're new to a community, having moved away from what's familiar, your brain is going to be continually trying to manage all the novelty. And that's very hard to do without any real relational anchors in the new environment. The relationships will grow, but it takes time. This is why people are most vulnerable in the first six months after major transitions—after leaving the safe, stable, and known behind to start building a new set of connections.

Even if it's a really nice, kind, respectful person entering the child's life, it takes a long time for the child to make sense of the shift and get back to a calm, regulated state.

Dr. Perry: I think that's true. Even though we live in an amazing country filled with good people, I believe that collectively we're less resilient. Our ability as a people to tolerate stressors is diminishing because our connectedness is diminishing.

It's important to clarify that most people who are abused don't go on to abuse others in the same way. On the other hand, it is becoming clear that it's the very rare person who has been abused who doesn't have some form of adaptation that impacts how they deal with people. It doesn't have to be a "pathology," but it can influence the ways in which you form and maintain relationships.

Our brains develop as a reflection of the world we grow up with.

anything new will activate our stress-response systems. Our default response to novelty is "Uh-oh. What is this?" And until the new thing is proven safe and positive, it will be categorized as a potential threat.

Primed to expect that our lives will follow a predictable path, we're thrown when they don't. We have linear expectations but nonlinear realities... We're all comparing ourselves to an ideal that no longer exists and beating ourselves up for not achieving it.

An autobiographical occasion is any moment when we are encouraged or obliged to reimagine who we are. It's a narrative event, when our existing life story is altered or redirected in some way, forcing us to revisit our preexisting identity and modify it for our life going forward. And nearly everyone goes through such moments.

Darwinian focus on the fitness of the individual de-emphasizes the significance of communal cooperation in evolution.

igual que en las células aisladas, el carácter de nuestra existencia se ve determinado no por nuestros genes, sino por nuestra respuesta a las señales ambientales que impulsan la vida.

People who live in the past sacrifice their lives in vain. The past offers one set of data, but not necessarily the one that matters most.

Water Quote:You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can crash, drip, flow...be water my friend

From form to formless and from finite to infinite

Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water.

Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own

The idea is that flowing water never goes stale, so just keep on flowing.

Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there.

Obey the principles without being bound by them.

Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.

Having totality means being capable of following "what is," because "what is" is constantly moving and constantly changing. If one is anchored to a particular view, one will not be able to follow the swift movement of "what is.