Sublime

The only way to consciously access our healing resources is through sensation and the felt sense.

Healing, he told us, depends on experiential knowledge: 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 need to realize is that when people get triggered into either mobilization defenses or shutting down, they are going to develop elaborate narratives to make sense of what their body is doing.

bring the level of activation in our nervous system down to the point where we leave behind our defensive (mobilisation) behaviours and operate in our social engagement physiology.

I am pleased that clinicians and clients are using Polyvagal Theory to validate personal narratives of how the body responds to trauma in a heroic manner. They are learning that their body responded in an adaptive way that enabled them to survive.

a victim might display fawning or appeasement behaviors toward a perpetrator. Understanding this changes the way we conceptualize, talk about, and treat trauma.

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.

Somatic Experiencing developed by Peter Levine, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy developed by Pat Ogden, and the work of Bessel van der Kolk.

Trauma retunes our nervous system to pick up signs of danger where there may be none.