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Quote by Bonnie Badenoch

“The path of waiting and listening forgoes certainty and exposes us to a sense of tentative unknowing, which is often uncomfortable at best. This may only be tolerable when we have developed some degree of trust in the inherent healing capacity built into the human system and the power of interpersonal receptivity to animate the process. For most of us, this trust arrives because we have experienced it ourselves and can now embody it for others. As this deep learning proceeds in us, we may be able to rest more easily into the waiting because the unknowing is increasingly being held within our expanding window of tolerance. As we are able to work in this way, I believe our people get a felt sense of our profound and enduring respect for their inherent wisdom, something that is likely a unique and healing experience given their history of traumatic relationships. I don't believe I have found any offering that is more empowering than respect.”

Quote by Bonnie Badenoch

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

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Bonnie Badenoch

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“Paradoxically, the kind of leading we want to offer is the opposite of taking control. Instead, it begins with accepting responsibility for getting support for our inner world and healing process to such an extent that the need for control recedes in favor of trust in the inherent healing capacity that is awakened when the necessary interpersonal sustenance arrives.”

CoregulationEmbodied SafetySupport For TherapistsHealing For TherapistsLeading In TherapyLetting Go Of Control
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“As we speak from a particular perspective, our words not only reveal something about our hemispheric vantage point, but they also go on to reinforce this way of seeing, wrapping us within a distinct perceptual slant. Then, because of our resonance with each other, we are simultaneously issuing an invitation for others to join us in this mode of attending. As we shift towards left dominance, we move internally out of relationship and into isolation, no matter how many people may be present, and we are inviting others into disconnection from themselves and others as well.”

LanguageMental HealthConnectionJoiningAvoidant AttachmentEmbodied SafetyHealing LanguageImplicit LensLeft Hemisphere Dominance
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“All of us develop the protections our implicit memories need to keep what are perceived to be worse dangers from us. ... Our initial work is ... about respectfully acknowledging that our people's system is acting wisely in this moment, no matter what it looks like on the outside. Holding this firmly in our own body, heart and mind is of inestimable benefit to those who come to us.”

HealingSelf HarmReactionImplicit MemoryBody WisdomEmbodied SafetyAddition
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“... when an experience is too strong for our current internal and external regulatory resource to manage ... [chemical changes activate to] tuck these pathways into our ... body. In this way, our ongoing lives are protected from the constant incursion of the raw pain and fear and the injured parts of ourselves are partly shielded from new injury. We might say they have been enwombed, awaiting the arrival of support. At the same time, the memories also remain malleable enough that they can be touched and awakened, which is essential for healing. However, we also remain vulnerable to them being brought into activity when support isn't available... a frowning face (man or woman), certain breathing patterns, and even sensory fragments (the color of a person's shirt or hair, the smell of alcohol on someone's breath) all have some probability of awakening the terror. The widely dispersed individual streams that make up these memories are all gathered into the neural net that formed at the time of the initial experience, and when our outer or inner world tugs on any strand, there is some probability that more of the neural net will open, bringing the rush of embodied feelings. Most often, the explicit memory does not arrive at the same time, so there is no context for the flood of sensations and emotions, which feels as if they are related to what is happening right now .... What can look like an out-of-proportion response to what is happening in the moment is exactly in proportion to what is unfolding internally. If we sense this so deeply that this knowing is viscerally available when our patients are having strong emotional experiences, we will be able to offer them acknowledgement of the validity of their experience rather than having to control or change it.”

HopeUnderstandingHealingTraumaImplicit MemoryEmbodied SafetyOut Of Proportion Reaction
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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“The tensions that accompany the impulse to control subside, and the energies of our mental/emotional life are more directed and devoted to listening rather than speaking... We may be able to more easily attend to our people's communications that often remain below conscious awareness: subtle changes in breath, coloring, eye tension, prosody of voice, small movements towards or away, changes in the quality of eye contact. Receptivity means that we don't grasp what we notice for assessment. Instead, we are simply present to those implicit communications in the spirit of holding a tender space in which they can reveal themselves to whatever extent our 'patient's' system feels safe to be vulnerable in the moment.”

AwarenessListeningSafe SpaceEmbodied SafetyPolyvagal TherapyNonjudgementRelaxed Listening
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
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