Learning to live through states of high arousal (no matter what their source) allows us to maintain equilibrium and sanity.

This capacity is especially important when we are frightened or injured.

Since time immemorial, people have attempted to cope with powerful and terrifying feelings by doing things that contradict perceptions of fear and helplessness: religious rituals, theater, dance, music, meditation and

Orthopedic patients in a recent study, for example, showed a 52% occurrence of being diagnosed with full-on PTSD following surgery.

Trauma is not a disease, he points out, but rather a human experience rooted in survival instincts.

the capacity for self-regulation is what allows us to handle our own states of arousal and our difficult emotions, thus providing the basis for the balance between authentic autonomy and healthy social engagement. In addition, this capacity allows us the intrinsic ability to evoke a sense of being safely “at home” within ourselves, at home where go

Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.

I will explain how our nervous system has evolved a hierarchical structure, how these hierarchies interact, and how the more advanced systems shut down in the face of overwhelming threat, leaving brain, body and psyche to their more archaic functions.

the same psychophysiological systems that govern the traumatic state also mediate core feelings of goodness and belonging.