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Famous Bonnie Badenoch Quotes

“Even though we have been so influenced by the left hemisphere's ascendency, we also have an inherent capacity to be rooted in the relational right because we are, after all, first, last, and always beings whose embodied brains hunger for connection with others, literally shaping one another's ongoing experience in every moment.”

HealingTrustTherapyMental Health RecoveryRight HemisphereHealing Left DominanceHope In A Left Dominant World
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“If we trust that our inner world knows what is needed next, one outcome isn't preferable to another. It is so easy for us to want healing to pursue a more linear path: Something arises and it would be best if we could stay with that. There can be a sense of disappointment in therapist, patient, or both if the sensation doesn't return. This might be perceived as a lack in our patient's ability to maintain contact, a reflection of our inadequacy of a therapist, or simply discomfort that the therapy feels stuck.”

TrustListeningTherapyImperfectionTrauma HealingPerson CenteredAttunement
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“I have found that much that happens in supervision/consultation focuses on what needs to happen next. There can be a sense of the person under consideration becoming a static object to be analyzed, and then advice may be offered about how that person could/should be shaped in a certain (presumably healthier) way.”

PsychologyRespectTherapyAttunementHarmful Therapy
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“as always, relationship is everything, and the capacities of the left are essential for the expression of the right's vision. If we can find ways to support leading with the perspective of the right hemisphere, the left's capacities can then offer essential assistance from its storehouse of prior learning.”

RelationshipCommunicationTherapyIntegrationLeft And Right HemisphereIain Mcglichrist
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“If we can approach these implicit arisings as a gift rather than an attack, as an opening towards healing, we may be able to help our people get into relationship with their implicit world in a more compassionate and collaborative way. Perhaps we can begin with considering these memories, no matter how challenging, to be messengers of life-giving truth.”

CompassionAwakeningTherapySelf AcceptanceTriggersImplicit MemoryBody Wisdom
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“It might be possible that 'triggered' may not be the most helpful word ... For me, there is a felt sense of violence in this word, while 'touched and awakened' more accurately describes what happens to these sequestered neural nets. This gentler wording helps us cultivate a sense of meeting the experience every time we are so 'touched' with an appreciation for what it might be offering.”

PainEmpathyTraumaTherapyPtsdAwakenedTriggerHealing LanguageSelf Empathy
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“If people have harmed us, that part is usually a protector whose need to cause injury comes from desperate attempts to not feel destroyed by the pain and fear they are carrying. Generally they are not conscious of this process, but it likely mirrors what has been passed down through the generations in the family.”

Mental HealthTherapyChild ProtectionIntergenerational TraumaHealing From TraumaFamily Violence PreventionInner Parts
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“let's ask our systems how they might let us know when we are taking that step into left-hemisphere dominance ... Often, the respectful gesture of simply pausing to pose this curiosity is enough. Our systems will respond as and when they can.”

PsychologyTherapyLeft HemisphereRight HemisphereTips For PsychologistsRelational Neurobiology
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“Forms used in many clinics ask patients to rate their status on a regular basis, hoping to see an ever-upward trend, and sometimes judging the efficacy of the therapist without regard for the complexity of the challenges they are holding together in the space between. All of this is well-intentioned with the primary goal being rapid reduction of suffering. However it is built on the assumptions of the left hemisphere.”

TherapyLeft HemisphereDangers Of MeasurementEvidence Based PsychologyMeasuring Mental Health
Author:Bonnie Badenoch
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“Since we began with a felt sense of safety this day, several neural streams are initially supporting the renewal of our connection. In our midbrain, the energies of the SEEKING system are animating the CARE system, which can both foster the good feelings between us and support offers of repair should we have a rupture (Panksepp & Biven, 2012). Once in connection, our ventral vagal parasympathetic system is affecting the prosody of our voices, our facial mobility, and the attentiveness of our listening, maintaining social engagement (Porges, 2011). Since ventral lateralizes to the right hemisphere, we more easily stay rooted in the right-centric way of attending that keeps us in connection with this moment and with each other (McGilchrist, 2009). In this intimacy, our brains are coupling in many regions, so there is an experience of social emotional engagement and embodied communication as we become a single system in two bodies (Hasson, 2010). Because we are trustworthy partners in this healing process, social baseline theory tells us that our amygdalae are calming just because we are together (Beckes & Coan, 2011). All of this is happening without doing anything, even without saying anything, in microseconds below conscious awareness because of the safe space we have cultivated over time. We can more clearly understand why Porges says, "Safety IS the treatment".”

ListeningTherapyPsychological SafetyAttunementCoregulationCo RegulationSafe Presence
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“More important than the words or silence is my inner stance of making room for what is stirring within him, becoming alertly still enough inside that his inner world senses safety, the precursor to him opening into vulnerability.”

ListeningSafetyTherapyPresenceTrauma HealingPsychological Safety
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“Through mirror neurons and resonance circuitry, we are taking in each other's bodily state, feelings and intention in each emerging moment (Iacoboni, 2009). This gives us an approximate empathic sense of what is happening in the other person, but it is important to be aware that the information is also being filtered through our implicit lens. This filtering colors our perceptions and pretty much guarantees there will be ruptures that invite repairs, as our offers of empathy will sometimes not reflect what the other person is experiencing.”

ListeningTherapyResonanceTrauma HealingAttunementBody WisdomSomatic ExperiencingMirror NeuronsRupture And RepairEmpathy Tips
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“How do we be with the paradoxes our people bring? We can align with one side of the conundrum and dismiss the other in an effort to relieve the unsettling experience that the logically unresolvable contradiction brings to us and our people. However, if we do this, we are stepping away from our person's experience because he or she is living inside the paradox and can't move away. Staying present asks us to hold the full paradox within our own minds and bodies, to enter the suffering that entails. If we are able to do this and remain in a ventral state, it seems that something happens and we may be able to enter a state in which the paradox begins to reveal its value a little differently than ever before ... As we settled into this broader acceptance together, I believe we made room for the possibility of the arrival of a resolving third thing in its own time.”

TherapyParadoxRadical AcceptancePolyvagal TherapyVentralWindow Of ToleranceInnate Mental Health
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“Only if we are able to widen the lens to take in the bigger picture that includes both the outer challenges and the inner distress do we begin to sense that the protectors are in proportion to what is in need of shelter. It is our system's sense that moving the safeguard aside and allowing the implicit to emerge would be more harmful than whatever the protector is doing in this moment.”

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Author:Bonnie Badenoch
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