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Bonnie Badenoch Quotes

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Famous Bonnie Badenoch Quotes

“In these pages, we keep returning to one foundational principle: providing the possibility of emotional/relational safety for our people, be they patients, children, partners, friends or strangers. We are able to make this offer when they are experiencing their own neuroception of safety, not continuously, but as the baseline to which we return after our system has adaptively moved into sympathetic arousal or dorsal withdrawal in response to inner and outer conditions. When we neuroceive safety, we humans automatically begin to open into vulnerability, and the movement of our "inherent treatment plan" (Sills, 2010) has a greater probability of coming forward. When we have a neuroception of threat, we adaptively tighten down at many levels, from physical tension to activation of the protective skills we have learned over a lifetime (Levine, 2010). In that state, our innate healing path will often wisely stay hidden until more favorable conditions arrive.”

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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.”

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Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“I have other stories just as mysterious, just as beautiful, just as sacred, but it seems good to stop here and wonder if it is possible for us to begin to let go of our expectations about the shape in which healing may arrive, to trust the treatment plan lying dormant and waiting within our people, to cultivate a gradually gathering stillness so that, in the safety of the space between, healing pathways have the possibility of revealing themselves.”

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Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“We stayed with the one who felt dead inside, acknowledging his protective value, even though we had no cognitive awareness of who and what he was sheltering ... 'What is this depression, this one who is so still, wanting to tell us?”

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Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“This reassurance that we only want to witness and acknowledge what is happening may be the essential stance that deepens safety. When we have no intention of being an active agent of change, the feeling of possible coercion seems to leave the relationship.”

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Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“Pause for reflection Let's take a moment to see if we remember a time when a process that had begun simply stopped, faded away, or became unavailable in some other way. It could be in our own therapy work or with our patients. What as our experience of this? We might check in with muscles, belly, heart, and breath as a beginning place. Then we can move to the feelings and thoughts that arose from these sensations. Do we feel at ease with these kinds of experiences, or does it feel as if something is wrong? We may find that other examples come to our awareness as well, bringing similar or different cascades of sensation, feeling and thought. As best we can, we may offer all of them welcome with warmth and kindness.”

CompassionSelf AcceptanceWarmthTrauma HealingTherapy TipsSomaticTherapy Skills
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“It is rather paradoxical for our task-focused self when it isn't the quality of the practice, but our honest and humble acceptance of the emerging moment, that prepares us for nonjudgemental, agendaless presence with another. Being kind to ourselves can be helpful as we seek to practice this way of being, because it places us at cross-purposes with our culture, where performance and improvement are so valued and the limits and variability of our humanness are cause for criticism and correction. Many aspects of our training as well as our everyday experience in this society urge us to take control to achieve a particular result, and this can become so implicitly ingrained that it feels wrong to sink toward our innate humanity. Again, just listening with kindness to the competing voices inside is good preparation for extending this attentiveness and kindness to all aspects of the person about to come in our door.”

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Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“... we might be drawn into a more left-centric way of hearing ... and experience the promotion of safety as a somewhat mechanical process in which A inevitably leads to B-- [ie: the belief that 'my being in a ventral state will automatically draw you into one, and if it doesn't then there is something wrong with one of us'.] Viewing it that way encourages us to turn social engagement into a technique, even a manipulation of the other person's nervous system toward what we view as a more desirable state. Ironically, when the left hemisphere is dominant rather than supportive of right-centric attending, we have already moved out of social engagement and thus are in no position to offer safe space to another. When we make an effort to return to it, we have forgotten that neuroception is continually arising automatically and not under the control of our will. The very pressure to activate ventral makes the space between us unsafe.”

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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.”

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Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“This shift from intellectual to embodied compassion is at the heart of deep forgiveness, or what we call compassionate release that gives us the gift of not needing to fend off the ones who hurt us anymore. It is a letting go at a different depth.”

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Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“Sand tray can be an embodied conversation between our inner world and outer awareness, held and witnessed by another. Because of the tactile experiences of the sand and minatures and the symbolic nature of the figures, we have the opportunity to make contact with implicit memories that have no words. We follow our body's guidance in arranging the sand and allowing the minatures to choose us. It is a right-centric process that allows us to let go of meaning-making in favor of following our felt sense and behavioral impulse. Meaning may arrive later, but we at least begin, as best we can, without expectation to give our inner world the most freedom we can.”

Mental HealthTrauma HealingSomatic HealingRight HemisphereEmbodied HealingExpressive ArtsIntuitive HealingNonverbal TherapySand Tray TherapySandtray Therapy
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“We may find ourselves in a role similar to that of a gardener as we cultivate a space in which healing can naturally unfold. In terms of neurobiology, this stance encourages us to lean into the reassuring awareness that our systems already contain seeds awaiting our attention. For some examples, we humans are always seeking the warmest possible attachments we can imagine (Cozolino, Siegel), our brains are continuously yearning for the arrival of a co-organizing other (Badenoch, Cozolino, Schore), emotional regulation flows naturally from being in the presence of someone we trust (Beckes & Coan) and even our nervous systems have a preference for the social engagement circuitry that sustains connection (Porges). With this kind of support from the biology inherent in both practitioner and patient, our bodies may begin to open into a welcoming state as others come towards us, with a sense of partnership being established rather than someone doing something to us. However this also means letting go of the potential certainty that comes from feeling we are in charge.”

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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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“It can help us keep our balance to distinguish between the living people who were hurtful and the internalized ones who are now part of our neurobiology. Those who harmed us may never change, but once they become part of us, they seem to partake in our impulse towards healing.”

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Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“When we experience a break in connection followed by repeated attempts at repair until the bond is restored, we build implicit pathways of resilience. We come to know in a visceral way that when things break down interpersonally, someone will return to help us come back into relationship. That wired-in optimism and expectation makes it much more likely that we will form relationships that have this quality. Most of the people who come to us haven't had this experience consistently in their lives, so when they encounter it with us, it is often surprising to the point of tears. As we accept and then rejoice in our humanness, we offer this vital gift of rupture and repair to those around us.”

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Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“We were holding this together, and our joined windows of tolerance seemed able to contain the physical and emotional intensity. Witnessing and empathizing at the same time, it seemed we were able to bring some ventral presence to this world.”

InquiryTrauma HealingTrauma RecoveryWitnessingSafe PresencePolyvagal TherapySand TrayVentral StateWindows Of Tolerance
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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