The greatest hope for traumatized, abused, and neglected children is to receive a good education in schools where they are seen and known, where they learn to regulate themselves, and where they can develop a sense of agency. At their best, schools can function as islands of safety in a chaotic worl…
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Quotes tagged ‘Effects of Chronic Violence’
Mainstream trauma treatment has paid scant attention to helping terrified people to safely experience their sensations and emotions.
The emotional brain initiates preprogrammed escape plans, like the fight-or-flight responses. These muscular and physiological reactions are automatic, set in motion without any thought or planning on our part, leaving our conscious, rational capacities to catch up later, often well after the threat…
Trauma constantly confronts us with our fragility and with man’s inhumanity to man but also with our extraordinary resilience.
Traumatized people are afraid of conflict. They fear losing control and ending up on the losing side once again.
Chronic childhood abuse causes very different mental and biological adaptations than discrete traumatic events in adulthood.
The most primitive part, the part that is already online when we are born, is the ancient animal brain, often called the reptilian brain.
Our rational, cognitive brain is actually the youngest part of the brain and occupies only about 30 percent of the area inside our skull.
After trauma the world is experienced with a different nervous system. The survivor’s energy now becomes focused on suppressing inner chaos, at the expense of spontaneous involvement in their life.
If you’re an adult and life’s been good to you, and then something bad happens, that sort of injures a little piece of the whole structure. But toxic stress in childhood from abandonment or chronic violence has pervasive effects on the capacity to pay attention, to learn, to see where other people a…