Robyn

“We mammals have specialized nerve fibers under the skin called cutaneous C afferents. These nerves love to be caressed at slow speeds, according to science (in case we didn’t already know). When we are touched in this way, our breathing slows, our blood pressure drops, and our muscles relax. Psychologists have measured the way having friends or loved ones holding your hand can help mitigate pain in patients undergoing medical procedures. But recently they have begun to look at touch and the easing of social pain.”
― Florence Williams, Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey

“Although the rest-and-digest response is much more appropriate to flourishing in today’s world, it is engaged in a constant struggle for control over the body and mind.”
― James R. Doty, Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything

“Imagination is absolutely critical to the quality of our lives. Our imagination enables us to leave our routine everyday existence by fantasizing about travel, food, sex, falling in love, or having the last word—all the things that make life interesting. Imagination gives us the opportunity to envision new possibilities—it is an essential launchpad for making our hopes come true. It fires our creativity, relieves our boredom, alleviates our pain, enhances our pleasure, and enriches our most intimate relationships. When people are compulsively and constantly pulled back into the past, to the last time they felt intense involvement and deep emotions, they suffer from a failure of imagination, a loss of the mental flexibility. Without imagination there is no hope, no chance to envision a better future, no place to go, no goal to reach.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“Mental illnesses are often seen as chronic and intractable forces that take over our lives, but I wonder how much the stories we tell about them, especially in the beginning, can shape their course. People can feel freed by these stories, but they can also get stuck in them.”
― Rachel Aviv, Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us