palliate

While we all want to move beyond trauma, the part of our brain that is devoted to ensuring our survival (deep below our rational brain) is not very good at denial.

continued secretion of stress hormones is expressed as agitation and panic and, in the long term, wreaks havoc with their health.

Ideally our stress hormone system should provide a lightning-fast response to threat, but then quickly return us to equilibrium. In PTSD patients, however, the stress hormone system fails at this balancing act. Fight/flight/freeze signals continue after the danger is over, and, as in the case of the dogs, do not return to normal. Instead, the

“The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves,”

“The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves.”

For now I want to emphasize that emotion is not opposed to reason; our emotions assign value to experiences and thus are the foundation of reason.

You can be fully in charge of your life only if you can acknowledge the reality of your body, in all its visceral dimensions.

We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body.