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Quote by Matthew D. Devitt

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Matthew D. Devitt

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“Remembering that the impulse to control is an indication that we are having a neuroception of danger, perhaps we can be compassionate rather than critical of ourselves when we do step in to overtly manage the process. Perhaps we can begin to ask inside about the nature of the threat that brings on the need to assert control and fix. As always, dropping the questions into our right hemisphere and not expecting a particular answer in this moment opens the way for a deeper understanding to emerge bit by bit.”

ControlSelf AcceptanceImperfectionPerson CenteredPsychological SafetyBody WisdomSelf Compassion For TherapistsInner ListeningImperfection In TherapyNeuroception
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“That was really the question. Would I be okay without a child? Each night I sat with [my infant nephew] Connor and forced myself to go down the path of imaginary motherhood, suspicious of myself that this would be something that I would be willing to reject. Every night I expected to have a change of heart and come up with a different, more recognizable answer. But it never happened. Instead, sitting in the dark and quiet, something quite unexpected occurred. My life, precisely as it was--the product of good and bad decisions--began to come into focus for me. Sitting there, I could see it for the first time as something I'd chosen. Something I'd built intentionally, and not simply a makeshift thing I'd constructed as a for-the-time-being existence until something came along that would make me a whole person in the eyes of the world. Once I began to see it as such, it dawned on me that I had no wish to escape from it. On the contrary: I wanted it. I was choosing my life. I was willing to risk it.”

FeminismBabySelf AcceptanceBabiesChoosing Your Path In LifeNo ChildrenNo Kids
Book:No One Tells You This
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“It makes sense for us to want a symptom, an 'it' to go away. If we begin to sense that we are made up of many selves ... then we might instead say, 'the anxious part of me is really suffering. I wonder how we might help her'. There is often a palpable softening as we gaze on a person inside who has value apart from the distressing symptom. We also may sense more clearly that this experience isn't all of us, but belongs to a part who has had encounters that give this anxiety context and meaning. The change of pronoun, granting personhood, may move us into a more right-centric way of perceiving, which also opens us to a more both/and perspective of broad acceptance, arouses our warm curiosity, expands receptivity to the present moment. It can really be a very profound change.”

HealingSelf AcceptanceSelf CompassionPerson CenteredPartsSafe Presence
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“We can perhaps hold both the desire to separate from these bodily memories and the willingness to be with them in the broad embrace of welcome and compassion. I do believe this kind of acceptance is a lifetime's work that inevitably leads to 'failure' at times. Our biology wants to protect us from what may harm us, and the arising of implicit memory can feel quite threatening. If we can soften towards our own tendency to want to move away and offer to begin again with gestures of inclusion, this is likely what is possible and optimal for us humans. Humility and grace are perhaps the gifts of this tension, gifts that we can then extend to our people in the form of honoring their struggle.”

HopeHealingHumilitySelf AcceptanceImplicit MemoryCoregulationSymptom
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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