Charli > Recent Status Updates

“What do our fears or fantasies of the future reflect, if not our past?”

“You don’t need horrors to trigger deep, conscious and unconscious anxieties in the parents… These negative factors can be present in any family, even when the material circumstances are ideal, and even when the parents love their children and have nothing but the best intentions.”

- pg. 93 💙

Takeaways:

- Orbitofrontal Cortex (OFC) associated w/ visuo-spatial relationships, relationship btwn. self and others, & judging emotional significance of situations.
- Chemical imbalances are as much effect as cause. Emotional experiences shape chemical balances and chemical balances shape behaviors/experiences.

‘A woman is especially vulnerable when acting as though she were free—that is, when she is not observing conventional restrictions on dress, physical mobility, and social initiative.’

“…the survivor seeks not absolution but fairness… compassion.”

‘In ordinary bereavement, numerous social rituals support the mourner. Yet, no custom recognizes the mourning that follows traumatic life events.’

“… stress resistant individuals appear to be those with high sociability, a thoughtful and active coping style, and a strong perception of their ability to control their destiny.” - pg. 58

🤲🏻 preserving calm, judgement, connection with others, moral values, and sense of meaning

Re: intimacy

“The traumatized person… frequently alternates between isolation and anxious clinging to others.” - pg. 56

Re: Gaze, Attunement 💞

“‘Embryologically and anatomically the eye is an extension of the brain; it is almost as if a portion of the brain were in plain sight.’ The eyes communicate eloquently… unconscious emotional states.” - pg. 70

“… signals that the mother is aligned with, responsive to and participating in their mental states… This sharing of emotional spaces is called attunement.” - pg. 72

(Published in 1859!! Not to mention the time spent writing & editing beforehand.)

“The term duty to oneself, when it means anything more than prudence, means self-respect or self-development…” - pg. 77

“Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric.” - pg. 64

1980 - “post-traumatic stress disorder” officially included in APA’s manual of mental disorders
1975 - NIMH research on rape
1972 - first rape crisis center opened

“Women did not have a name for the tyranny of private life. It was difficult to recognize that a well-established democracy in the public sphere could coexist with conditions of primitive autocracy or advanced dictatorship in the home.” - pg. 28

Bertha Pappenheim, the woman you were 🧡

“There are people of spirit and there are people of passion, both less common than one might think. Rarer still are the people of spirit and passion. But rarest of all is a passionate spirit.” - Martha Buber, commemorating Pappenheim

rolling the word “vetiver” over and over in my head because… really, it’s a great word.

Right prefrontal cortex— impulse control, social-emotional intelligence, motivation

“One way to understand [ADHD] neurologically is a lack of inhibition, a chronic interactivity of the prefrontal cortex… The brain, flooded with multiple bits of sensory data, thoughts, feelings and impulses, cannot focus… Hence the efficacy of stimulant medications: they arouse the inhibitory function.” - pg. 41

Re: parenting & ADHD

“I regret what I did not do: give my children the gift of a mindful, secure and reliable parental presence. I wish I had known how to allow myself to relax […] and to fully enjoy the wonderful little persons they were.”

“Judgement or blaming is not the point. Understanding is.”

— both from pg. 32 🥲🧡

“What begins as a problem of society and human development has become almost exclusively defined as a medical ailment… Healing ADD calls for […] a process of becoming whole—which, it so happens, is the original sense of the word healing.” - pg. 7 ❤️‍🩹

“Time will explain.” 🌊

“She knew that when she played she was giving pleasure only to herself; but this was no new sensation. Excepting one short period of her life, she had never, since the age of fourteen, never since the loss of her dear mother, known the happiness of being listened to, or encouraged by any just appreciation or real taste.”

I will always be chasing the thrill of finding a series even remotely like Warriorcats 😔

Gideon the Ninth has been the closest so far. Rooting for this one tho ☝🏼

“Use it to prove how the stars
were always what we knew

they were: the exit wounds
of every
misfired word.”

— pg. 58 🌌

“Star. Or rather, the drains of heaven—waiting. Little holes. Little centuries opening just long enough for us to slip through.” - pg. 14

“What nature provides, in a neuromodulator like oxytocin, is the ability for two brains in love to go through a period of heightened plasticity, allowing them to mold to each other and shape each other’s intentions and perceptions.” - pg. 121

🔥 Dopamine - excitement, arousal, high gear
🧡 Oxytocin - calm, warmth, tenderness

It sounds goofy as hell but why is it lowkey effective 😔🤙🏼

“Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.” - pg. 57 🌱

was J.S. Mill a time traveler? 🤨

Highlights:

- “Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post as soon as there is no enemy in the field.” - pg. 41

- All of pg. 30 *cough* 🦅🇺🇸

- “…they believe these doctrines just up to the point to which it is usual to act upon them.” - pg. 40

- “…received passively…doing nothing for the mind or heart except…to keep them vacant.” - pg. 39

BDNF, nucleus basalis

“…his conflict about learning—his wish to avoid it—was based mostly on years of frustration and on a very legitimate fear of failure based on his brain’s limits. Once he was liberated from his difficulties by [prescribed exercises strengthening formerly blocked brain functions], his innate love of learning emerged full force.” - pg. 41 🧠🌱 (neuropsychology, I 🧡 u)