Accompaniment Quotes

“by aligning with her autonomic nervous system (ANS) activation instead of trying to move her toward a ventral state, ventral could arrive on its own.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Traumas embed when our system is overwhelmed by pain and fear without having sufficient internal resources or companionship to help integrate the experience ...

Our people may see others being present, but as either unavailable for support or actively injurious, or the experience may have been so terrifying that even had someone tried to help, our people might not have been able to receive it ...

what remains now is a sense of isolation with the remaining anguish and terror. Over the years, I have found that as soon as a sense of accompaniment enters the memory, there is a new foundation for doing the work. Just as our people have internalized those who injured them, that same capacity can bring us inside to support processing the emotions and to resolve this primary wound of being alone.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“At home, a bowl of long-grain white rice will get a stream of melted butter and a crumbling of sea salt and then, as I turn the grains slowly in the warm, golden fat, perhaps a grating of Parmesan, then a little black pepper and lemon juice. A bowl of sticky rice feels more at home with sansho pepper or toasted sesame seeds, crumbs of dried nori and some crisp pickled radish. Another day I will heat the meat juices left over from the Sunday roast and stir them into the rice, streaking them with ribbons of glistening mahogany.”
― Nigel Slater, A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts

“If I’d been better schooled back then in the art of accompaniment, I would have understood how important it is to honor another person’s ability to make choices. I hope I would have understood, as good accompanists do, that everybody is in their own spot, on their own pilgrimage, and your job is to meet them where they are, help them chart their own course. I wish I had followed some advice that is rapidly becoming an adage: Let others voluntarily evolve. I wish I had understood then that trust is built when individual differences are appreciated, when mistakes are tolerated, and when one person says, more with facial expressions than anything else, “I’ll be there when you want me. I’ll be there when the time is right.”

Accompaniment often involves a surrender of power that is beautiful to behold. A teacher could offer the answers, but he wants to walk with his students as they figure out how to solve a problem. A manager could give orders, but sometimes leadership means assisting employees as they become masters of their own task. A writer could blast out her opinions, but writers are at their best not when they tell people what to think but when they provide a context within which others can think. Pope Paul VI said it wonderfully: “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it’s because they are witnesses.”

Finally, a person who is good at accompaniment understands the art of presence. Presence is about showing up. Showing up at weddings and funerals, and especially showing up when somebody is grieving or has been laid off or has suffered some setback or humiliation. When someone is going through a hard time, you don’t need to say some wise thing; you just have to be there, with heightened awareness of what they are experiencing at that moment.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen