Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Dr. Mara Karpel

Quote by Dr. Mara Karpel

Work

The Passionate Life : Creating Vitality & Joy at Any Age

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Dr. Mara Karpel

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Dr. Mara Karpel. more

You May Also Like

“Researchers have shown that the flooding of stress hormones resulting from a traumatic separation from your parents at a young age kills off so many dendrites and neurons in the brain that it results in permanent psychological and physical changes. One psychiatrist I went to told me that my brain looked like a tree without branches. So I just think about all the children who have been separated from their parents, and there's a lot of us, past and present, and some under more traumatic circumstances than others--like those who are in internment camps right now--and I just imagine us as an army of mutants. We’ve all been touched by this monster, and our brains are forever changed, and we all have trees without branches in there, and what will happen to us? Who will we become? Who will take care of us?”

ChildrenBrainStressTraumaImmigrantsHormonesUndocumented ImmigrantsUndocumentedBrain Trauma
Book:The Undocumented Americans
Create image

“Stress is a survival mechanism that serves an obvious evolutionary function. When we are anxious, our autonomic nervous system releases a cascade of chemicals (stress hormones), which give our body instructions on how to prepare to face danger. Our heart beats faster to pump more blood to the muscles, and our breathing becomes heavier to provide us with more oxygen. Muscles tense up to protect us from injury and to facilitate fighting or running. Sweating helps cool the body down. Our attention increases, and our reflexes become sharper, keeping us alert. Stress acts as motivation, helping us to focus on our goals and rise to meet our challenges, whether those involve studying for an exam, flying a fighter jet or scoring that match-winning goal. In short, stress serves a purpose. The problem, however, is that beyond certain threshold stress ceases to be useful.”

LifeReligionEvolutionAnxietyStressRitualEvolutionary PsychologyCopingHomo Sapiens
Book:Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living
Create image

“Evolutionary analyses suggest that stress is not what it used to be. For most of human history our ancestors lived in physical and social environment that were very different from what most of us experience today. Life in those environments imposed a set of selection pressures that shaped our species’ genome and behavior, leading to the evolution of anatomically modern humans. Although it is not entirely clear where exactly one should draw the line between them and more archaic forms, paleoanthropologists agree that by at least 50,000 years ago our ancestors were fully human.”

LifeReligionEvolutionAnxietyStressRitualEvolutionary PsychologyCopingHomo Sapiens
Book:Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living
Create image

“A human being in a highly technicized productive unit is simply not allowed to be spontaneous. It just interferes with the plan laid down in advance by the engineers and technicians who decide how he should word, and in this way he, the human being, is profoundly diminished, because he is not permitted to be spontaneous.”

CreativityStressTensionExploitationWorkplaceWorkaholicMonitoring
Book:Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience
Create image