What Happened To You  
Oprah and Dr. Bruce Perry  

Summary

How to understand childhood trauma and how it still affects your behaviour as an adult using Oprah's backstory and compelling scientific research from a leading childhood development expert. Fundamentally changed my belief on how adults behave and how it all comes down to what their experience was as a young child.

Rating: 5/5

Notes

Instead of asking ‘whats wrong with me?’, ask ‘what happened to me?’

Our brain is organized to act and feel before we think

The experiences in your first years of life are disproportionately powerful in shaping how your brain organizes

Young children far more than you realize

We tend to be a very verbal society but the majority of communication is non verbal

Your body is always speaking to you

We have too many parents caring for children with inadequate supports

We elicit from the world what we project into the world but what you project is based on what happened to you as a child

Relief of distress through drugs and alcohol gives pleasure short term

All of us want to know that what we do, what we say and who we are matters

The majority of brain growth and organization takes place in the first few years of life

Childhood experiences literally impact the biology of the brain

You can spend hours with someone but if you are not present and attentive, the hours are less powerful than brief moments of joy

As you resist your past, know that no matter what happened, you simply being here and being alive makes you worthy and know that there is hope

‘Wellness is possible. It happens one moment, one step at a time’

Because the internal experience of an event varies person to person, so does the long term impact

Putting a small amount of space b/w the immediate feeling of your destructive reaction gives you the ability to stay present and regain control

Your physical well being and emotional well being are deeply connected

To communicate successfully with anyone, you have to make sure they’re comfortable and regulated, make sure they feel a relationship to you then re-engage with them

The key aspect of ‘what happened to you?’ is ‘what didn’t happen to you?’; neglect is as toxic as truance

The key to having many healthy relationships in your life is having only a few stable and nurturing relationships in your first year

Our current education system is good at producing workers but it can be miserable for creators, artists and future leaders

For many people there is a terror of being alive

Intention precedes every thought and action and the outcome of your experiences is determined by your intention going in

‘We feel better with the certainty of misery than the misery of uncertainty’

If someone is angry, don’t tell them to calm down. Instead restate what they’re saying - it’s called reflective listening

You’re not meant to raise children isolated and alone

In western medicine, we are chasing symptoms, not healing people

‘The saddest aspect of life right now is science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom’ - Isaac Asimov

All pain is the same - we just choose different ways to express it

Regulate, relate, then reason

Non matter what has happened, you get a chance to rewrite the script

Self-care is essential, not selfish

Until you heal the wounds of the past, you will continue to bleed

Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different, but we cannot move forward if we’re still holding onto the pain of the past

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