Ally’s Reviews > Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving > Status Update

Unrelenting criticism, especially when it is ground in with parental rage and scorn, is so injurious that it changes the structure of the child's brain.

[OMG! Picking up a Cheerio and eating it changes the brain! Every experience of conscious life changes the brain!

I am greatly appreciating the storytelling & sense-making in this book, but jesus all of the science & generalization is so bad]

As I am writing this, my son’s friend synchronistically tells him, “This LEGO creature I made spreads brain attack and eats away at the person.” I marvel at the synchronicity and think, “What a fitting image for the trauma-inducing parent.”

[This dude is such a doof, it’s kind of adorable.]

[in trauma] He becomes stuck in an adrenalized state. His sympathetic nervous system is locked on, and he cannot toggle into the relaxation function of the parasympathetic nervous system.

[A friend calls it "Mars rover-ing" when thrashing because there are too many tasks to prioritize - I'm fascinated by the attraction to mechanistic, digital models for fuzzy, analog, organic processes. Trauma as a busted switch.]

Later, when I learned about auras...

[goddamn it where are my people that both deeply value and study emotional experience and also care about what's actually really real]