Sublime

It is amazing how many psychological problems involve difficulties with sleep, appetite, touch, digestion, and arousal. Any effective treatment for trauma has to address these basic housekeeping functions of the body.

Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manage perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think.

In order to regain control over your self, you need to revisit the trauma: Sooner or later you need to confront what has happened to you, but only after you feel safe and will not be retraumatized by it. The first order of business is to find ways to cope with feeling overwhelmed by the sensations and emotions associated with the past.

to vanquishing trauma comes not through confronting it directly, but by working with its reflection, mirrored in our instinctual responses.

If trauma is encoded in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching sensations, then our first priority is to help people move out of fight-or-flight states, reorganize their perception of danger, and manage relationships. Where traumatized children are concerned, the last things we should be cutting from school schedules are the activities that can do precise

But it is exactly on that edge between impulse and acceptable behavior where most of our troubles begin. The more intense the visceral, sensory input from the emotional brain, the less capacity the rational brain has to put a damper on it.

it has been recognized that trauma survivors are prone to “continue the action, or rather the (futile) attempt at action, which began when the thing happened.”

Like a splinter that causes an infection, it is the body’s response to the foreign object that becomes the problem more than the object itself.

The critical insight is that all these parts have a function: to protect the self from feeling the full terror of annihilation.