Our brains develop as a reflection of the world we grow up with. You love others the way you’ve been loved.

every environment has a tone. If you were to walk into any home as a stranger, not speaking the language, you could absolutely feel whether this is a place where people are loved. Just as you can sense when something’s off. You may not know what it is, but something feels off.

Connectedness counters the pull of addictive behaviors. It is the key.

Positive interactions with people are rewarding and regulating. Without connection to people who care for you, spend time with you, and support you, it is almost impossible to step away from any form of unhealthy reward and regulation.

The brain is a meaning-making machine, always trying to make sense of the world. If our view of the world is that people are good, then we will anticipate good things from people. We project that expectation in our interactions with others and thereby actually elicit good from them. Our internal view of the world becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy;

There are parts of our brain that are very, very sensitive to nonverbal relational cues. And in our society, this is an underappreciated aspect of the way human beings work. We tend to be a very verbal society—written and spoken words are important—but the majority of communication is actually nonverbal.

A child exposed to unpredictable or extreme stress will become what we call dysregulated.

There was no intention to ignore this girl, but we all require some reciprocal social feedback to stay engaged. The little girl’s working model of the world—I don’t matter—projected into the classroom and became a self-fulfilling prophecy. We elicit from the world what we project into the world; but what you project is based upon what happened to y

As we make our way through the world, countless sounds, smells, and images can tap into memories we created earlier in life. These memories may be full-blown recollections of a specific event, or they may be fragments—a feeling, a sense of déjà vu, an impression.