Person Centered Therapy Quotes

“I have other stories just as mysterious, just as beautiful, just as sacred, but it seems good to stop here and wonder if it is possible for us to begin to let go of our expectations about the shape in which healing may arrive, to trust the treatment plan lying dormant and waiting within our people, to cultivate a gradually gathering stillness so that, in the safety of the space between, healing pathways have the possibility of revealing themselves.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Over the years I have come to realize we just can't know how or when resolution will come ...

As a dedicated follower, I have been privleged to witness and support the wisdom that emerges ...

I expect to be surprised by what the next people will teach me as they pursue their unique path towards resolution and open to inhabiting their inherent health.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“The challenge - which is also at the centre - is that what illuminates the process of letting go of certainty, control, planning, clear-cut goals, and so much more may feel settling even as it separates us from those we want to help.

This letting go requires cultivation in the trust of the innate processes that support the movement towards healing, something that grows with time and experience, especially when compassion for this depth of challenge to our need for security is present.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“For all of us, there are also likely times when therapy simply doesn't seem to move forward as we imagined it would.

At this crossroads, we often question ourselves or blame our patients.

Between what our culture requires and what we have experienced in childhood, we might go either direction.

We have a particular challenge to feeling competent right now. Our left-centric society has done its best to codify the healing process, leaving us with a set of procedures and expected outcomes that don't welcome the individuality of our people of the fluidity of each person's unpredictable and unique process of recovery. This is doubly difficult, because when we follow the course culture provides, safety is already undermined to a greater or lesser extent.

I believe it wounds us when we feel we aren't helping a person because we set out with such good hearts to relieve suffering.

A well-practiced practitioner might try to guard our hearts by blaming our people's resistance.

When a wounded part of us is afraid we are inadequate, this often generates a critical protective voice to try to urge us toward a better performance.

In both instances, our ability to be present for our people gets lost in the need to protect.

How can we hold these experiences kindly, recognizing that they are part of the human experience?

Right now, we might be able to open the arms of inclusion to these parts of us.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“At moments of deep uncertainty, I find that I sometimes jump the tracks into taking control, and in those moments, if I can move back toward following, the process often finds its own feet again. All of this has gradually led me to believe that letting go of expectations about the outcome of therapy as much as possible gives the process the most room to show itself.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“The majority of research-related articles I read move automatically towards suggestions for doing something to the brain - finding new medications, applying techniques to train the brain, and other ways of treating the brain like an object that is separate from ourselves. In addition to this objectification, there is perhaps the greater danger that when we are viewing ourselves or another that way, we have already stepped away from being truly present, so the person being so scrutinized will not feel safe or have a felt sense of being heard, seen, or held. This includes our relationship with ourselves.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships