Zainab Abdulbari

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. Z”
― Isaac Asimov, What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

“you can’t give what you don’t get. If no one ever spoke to you, you can’t speak; if you have never been loved, you can’t be loving.”
― Bruce D. Perry, What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

“Human society has surrendered for seventy centuries to corrupt laws and is no longer able to perceive the true meaning of the sublime, primary, and eternal codes of behaviour. Human vision has become accustomed to looking at the light of feeble candles and can no longer stare at the light of the sun. Each generation has inherited the psychological diseases and maladies of the others, and so these have become universal. They have become attributes inseparable from humanity, so that people no longer look upon them as diseases but consider them natural and noble qualities revealed by God to Adam. And when a person appears among them who lacks these traits, they see that individual as flawed and deprived of spiritual perfections. ... They reckon the upright as criminals and those with self respect as rebels.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings

“It’s interesting-most people think about therapy as something that involves going in and undoing what’s happened. But whatever your past experiences created in your brain, the associations exist and you can’t just delete them. You can’t get rid of the past.
Therapy is more about building new associations, making new, healthier default pathways. It is almost as if therapy is taking your two-lane dirt road and building a four-lane freeway alongside it. The old road stays, but you don’t use it much anymore. Therapy is building a better alternative, a new default. And that takes repetition, and time, honestly, it works best if someone understands how the brain changes. This is why understanding how trauma impacts our health is essential for everyone.”
― Bruce D. Perry, What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing