Nonjudgement Quotes

“The tensions that accompany the impulse to control subside, and the energies of our mental/emotional life are more directed and devoted to listening rather than speaking...

We may be able to more easily attend to our people's communications that often remain below conscious awareness: subtle changes in breath, coloring, eye tension, prosody of voice, small movements towards or away, changes in the quality of eye contact.

Receptivity means that we don't grasp what we notice for assessment.

Instead, we are simply present to those implicit communications in the spirit of holding a tender space in which they can reveal themselves to whatever extent our 'patient's' system feels safe to be vulnerable in the moment.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“When we talk about cultivating a nonjudgemental, agendaless space between, we might easily believe this means we are passively present. Quite the contrary. We are dynamically awake in the midst of the inner stillness and receptivity, attending to and following what is emerging in our people.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Warm curiosity about what is happening is a different kind of experience than judgement. It can help us open to the bigger picture beyond this moment of what feels like failure. We may consider our person's history and our own. We might bring in our left-hemisphere emissary to see how we could understand where we are in the process. In this quieter internal place, sometimes an intuitive sense of trust will come even when we can't figure it out.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships