Chris Short

“The first time I heard Robert Anda present the results of the ACE study, he could not hold back his tears. In his career at the CDC he had previously worked in several major risk areas, including tobacco research and cardiovascular health. But when the ACE study data started to appear on his computer screen, he realized that they had stumbled upon the gravest and most costly public health issue in the United States: child abuse.”
― Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the pioneers in mind-body medicine, founded the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in 1979, and his method has been thoroughly studied for more than three decades.”
― Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“Traumatized human beings recover in the context of relationships: with families, loved ones, AA meetings, veterans’ organizations, religious communities, or professional therapists. The role of those relationships is to provide physical and emotional safety, including safety from feeling shamed, admonished, or judged, and to bolster the courage to tolerate, face, and process the reality of what has happened.”
― Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“While human contact and attunement are the wellspring of physiological self-regulation, the promise of closeness often evokes fear of getting hurt, betrayed, and abandoned.”
― Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma