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Quote by Laura Sebastian

“You said they were a…religious…?” “Oligarchy,” he finishes. “Ruled by five high priests, who are in turn elected by smaller delegations of regular priests, one for each sub-country. Though the common belief is that each high priest is chosen by God himself.” “God?” Artemisia asks. “They’re monotheistic, yes,” he says. She rolls her eyes. “Just say there’s only one. You aren’t in court, your fancy words don’t impress anyone.”

Quote by Laura Sebastian

Book:Lady Smoke
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Lady Smoke

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Laura Sebastian

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“Spiros and the other guards move in front of us, clearing a path to the gangway—a thick wooden plank leading from our ship to theirs. The sight of it makes my stomach clench and I imagine all the ways I could topple off it. Spiros crosses first, the plank rattling beneath his feet with each step he takes, though he hardly seems to notice it. He’s done this before, of course. So has Søren—I’m the only one new at this. “If it helps,” Søren murmurs to me, “I’ve never seen anyone fall off a gangway unless someone pushed them.” “Thank you,” I reply dryly, before taking my first step onto the rickety plank.”

LolTheodosiaSørenNot HelpfulPlank
Book:Lady Smoke
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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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“... 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.”

Trauma HealingPerson CenteredPsychological SafetyPolyvagal TheoryPolyvagal TherapyVentralTherapist Self Carere
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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