“We are deeply sensitive to one another's presence”
Source: The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
“In one study investigating employee experiences with speaking up, 85% of respondents reported at least one occasion when they felt unable to raise a concern with their bosses, even though they believed the issue was important.”
“... 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.”
Source: The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
“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.”
Source: The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
“if our attention is what we're going to do next to accomplish a specific goal (often decrease a symptom) rather than openness to what the other person is bringing to the moment, we have stepped into our left hemispheres and out of relationship- and our patient will feel that as a kind of subtle abandonment. This interchange will likely happen below the level of conscious awareness and yet lead our person to step back a bit internally, awaiting the arrival of true presence, without agenda or judgement, so that safety can arise in the space in between. At that moment, the healing power inherent in this co-organizing/co-regulating relationship arrives. We have been returning to this crucial distinction in these pages, as much as possible with ongoing compassion for the challenge we experience as we open to the right remaining consistently in the lead.”
Source: The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
“While good leaders care about business impact, great leaders focus more on psychological impact”
“An implicit foundation of assumed security has slowly grown beneath our feet so that we believe we will go forward together through whatever stumbles may come.”
“When patients tell me of the mild anxiety that comes with them to each session, I no longer think of it as a problem, but instead as an indication of their aliveness at the brink of the unknown.”
Source: The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
“implicit memory can change”
Source: The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
“Struggles between our people and us over the pace of therapy can disregulate the process into a frenzy or stall it. Returning to following and responding may ease this.”
Source: The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships