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
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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