Sublime

Janet was the first to point out the difference between “narrative memory”—the stories people tell about trauma—and traumatic memory itself.

The task of the therapist is to help patients separate this confusing blend into separate entities, so that they are able to say: “This part of me is like a little child, and that part…

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Without a functioning Broca’s area, you cannot put your thoughts and feelings into words. Our scans showed that Broca’s area went offline whenever a flashback was triggered.

Good therapy consists of learning to call up the felt sense without becoming overwhelmed by what’s lurking inside.

The training of competent trauma therapists involves learning about the impact of trauma, abuse, and neglect and mastering a variety of techniques that can help to (1) stabilize and calm patients down, (2) help to lay traumatic memories and reenactments to rest, and (3) reconnect patients with their fellow men and women.

Main called this pattern “disorganized attachment.” Disorganized attachment is “fright without solution.”

Top down or bottom up. Structures in the emotional brain decide what we perceive as dangerous or safe. There are two ways of changing the threat detection system: from the top down, via modulating messages from the medial prefrontal cortex (not just prefrontal cortex), or from the bottom up, via the reptilian brain, through breathing, movement, and

Harvard Medical School was and is at the forefront of the neuroscience revolution,

There is no question that language is essential: Our sense of Self depends on being able to organize our memories into a coherent whole.27 This requires well-functioning connections between the conscious brain and the self system of the body—connections that often are damaged by trauma. The full story can be told only after those structures are rep