Tips For Therapists Quotes

“Sometimes people begin, discover how much pain and fear they are holding, and adaptively decide to take whatever gains they have made and stop. Occasionally we reach the limits of our competence or capacity and must help one of people find someone or a nest of people who can hold their wounds when we can't. We could likely add other situations in which we have parted with someone early in the relationship or at a time that seemed premature. All of this is part of human limitation in both of us.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“If ... we hear ourselves speaking words that convey attunement to the process unfolding in this moment--a felt sense of receiving, cultivating, believing, supporting and trusting--we are more apt to be attending from the right with support from the left.

This way of experiencing may also be coupled with attention to felt sense, comfort with being rather than pressure to do, and a respect for the undulating rise and fall of healing that unfolds naturally in the space between.

When we are in this mode, we have a tendency to speak more tentatively and to check in with our relational partner about how he or she is receiving what we are offering.

This past part is particularly important because it reflects our growing felt-sense awareness that the system of the person we are helping knows more about what needs to happen next than we do.

In addition to the humility and respect this engenders, we may also notice that instead of wanting to get rid of some state, we are more apt to acknowledge its meaningfulness and be present to it just as it is.

Listening in this way, the so-called negative state may reveal itself as telling an important truth and become an opening toward healing.

We may also be aware of the limitation and incompleteness of words, leading us to honor silence as well.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Struggles between our people and us over the pace of therapy can disregulate the process into a frenzy or stall it. Returning to following and responding may ease this.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“How might language separate us or draw us together? If our words center around grasping, creating, using, knowing, efficiency, step-by-step procedures, problem-solving, interventions, tools, and a sense of good-better-best (an ever-upward trend), we are likely attending mostly from a left hemisphere that is operating more or less autonomously, without support from the right's perspective. There is often a sense of judgement and certainty, along with an intent to guide, shape or control another that arises from and is reflected in this way of speaking. Because the left hemisphere has a tendency toward either/or, good/bad distinctions, there is often the sense of preference or wanting to get rid of something in favor of something else (ie: getting rid of sadness in favor of happiness or peace).”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“The seminal work of Stephen Porges ... suggests that presence becomes possible when there is a felt sense of safety ...

When we are in the role of practitioner, if our autonomic nervous system is receiving what it needs to have a neuroception of safety (our system's felt sense, below the level of conscious awareness, that we are safe) then our social engagement system (the ventral vagal parasympathetic) will be alive in the room as our patients arrive.

In this state, we become a potentially safe landing strip for them. When we are able to offer this safe haven, the possibility of the other person moving toward a similar felt sense of safety awakens the healing space between us through resonance.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Embodiment of any of these principles is likely a lifetime's work, and it is also true that the small steps we take in that direction often yield substantial increases in connection.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Interpersonal Neurobiology of Play: Brain-Building Interventions for Emotional Well-Being