Top highlights from What Happened To You?
What Ive learned from talking to so many victims of traumatic events, abuse, or neglect is that after absorbing these painful experiences, the child begins to ache. A deep longing to feel needed, validated, and valued begins to take hold. As these children grow, they lack the ability to set a standard for what they deserve. And if that lack is not addressed, what often follows is a complicated, frustrating pattern of self-sabotage, violence, promiscuity, or addiction.
Show this quote
We elicit from the world what we project into the world; but what you project is based upon what happened to you as a child.
Show this quote
Because what I know for sure is that everything that has happened to you was also happening for you. And all that time, in all of those moments, you were building strength. Strength times strength times strength equals power. What happened to you can be your power. Oprah
Show this quote
Its interesting-most people think about therapy as something that involves going in and undoing whats happened. But whatever your past experiences created in your brain, the associations exist and you cant just delete them. You cant 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 dont 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.
Show this quote
Our major finding is that your history of relational healthyour connectedness to family, community, and cultureis more predictive of your mental health than your history of adversity (see Figure 8). This is similar to the findings of other researchers looking at the power of positive relationships on health. Connectedness has the power to counterbalance adversity.
Show this quote
So Im not crazy? No. Your brain is doing exactly what you would expect it to do considering what you lived through.
Oprah Winfrey,
What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
Show this quote
Most people who are in the process of excavating the reasons they do what they do are met at some point with resistance. Youre blaming the past. Your past is not an excuse. This is true. Your past is not an excuse. But it is an explanationoffering insight into the questions so many of us ask ourselves: Why do I behave the way I behave? Why do I feel the way I do? For me, there is no doubt that our strengths, vulnerabilities, and unique responses are an expression of what happened to us. Very often, what happened takes years to reveal itself. It takes courage to confront our actions, peel back the layers of trauma in our lives, and expose the raw truth of our past. But this is where healing begins.
Oprah Winfrey,
What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
Show this quote
The experiences in the first years of life are disproportionately powerful in shaping how your brain organizes.
Oprah Winfrey,
What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
Show this quote
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Show this quote
Think about how youve handled difficulty in your own life. With things that are very hard to deal with, you dont want to talk about the pain or loss or fear for forty-five minutes nonstop. You want to talk with a really good friend for maybe two or three minutes about some aspect of it. When it gets too painful, you step back, you want to be distracted. And maybe you want to talk more later on. It is the therapeutic dosing that leads to real healing. Moments. Fully present, powerful, and brief.
Show this quote
The pillars of traditional healing were 1) connection to clan and the natural world; 2) regulating rhythm through dance, drumming, and song; 3) a set of beliefs, values, and stories that brought meaning to even senseless, random trauma; and 4) on occasion, natural hallucinogens or other plant-derived substances used to facilitate healing with the guidance of a healer or elder. It is not surprising that todays best practices in trauma treatment are basically versions of these four things
Oprah Winfrey,
What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
Show this quote
you cant give what you dont get. If no one ever spoke to you, you cant speak; if you have never been loved, you cant be loving.
Show this quote
Now, as Ive suggested before, what is adaptive for children living in chaotic, violent, trauma-permeated environments becomes maladaptive in other environments-especially school. The hypervigilance of the Alert state is mistaken for ADHD; the resistance and defiance of Alarm and Fear get labeled as oppositional defiant disorder; flight behavior gets them suspended from school; fight behavior gets them charged with assault. The pervasive misunderstanding of trauma-related behavior has a profound effect on our educational, mental health, and juvenile justice systems.
Show this quote
Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different, but we cannot move forward if we're still holding onto the pain of that past and wishing it was something else. All of us who have been broken and scarred by trauma have the chance to turn those experiences into what Dr Perry and I have been talking about: Post Traumatic Wisdom. Forgive yourself. Forgive them. Step out of your history and into the path of your future. My friend, the poet Mark Nepo says that the pain was necessary in order to know the truth. But we don't have to keep the pain alive in order to keep the truth alive. I made peace with my mother when I stopped comparing her to the mother I wished I had, when I stopped clinging to what should or could have been and turned to what was and what could be. Because what I know for sure, is that everything that has happened to you, was also happening for you, and all that time, in all of those moments, you were building strength. Strength times strength times strength equals power. What happened to you can be your power.
Oprah Winfrey,
What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
Show this quote
Marginalized peoplesexcluded, minimized, shamedare traumatized peoples, because as weve discussed, humans are fundamentally relational creatures. To be excluded or dehumanized in an organization, community, or society you are part of results in prolonged, uncontrollable stress that is sensitizing (see Figure 3). Marginalization is a fundamental trauma. This is why I believe that a truly trauma-informed system is an anti-racist system. The destructive effects of racial marginalizing are pervasive and severe.
Oprah Winfrey,
What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
Show this quote
the most powerful form of reward is relational. Positive interactions with people are rewarding and regulating. Without connection to people who care for you, spend time with you, and support you, it is almost impossible to step away from any form of unhealthy reward and regulation.
Show this quote
Trauma leaves your shipwrecked. You are left to rebuild your inner world. Part of the rebuilding, the healing process, is revisiting the shattered hull of your old worldview; you sift through the wreckage looking for what remains, seeking your broken piecesas you revisit the ship-wreck, piece by piece, you find a fragment and move it to your new, safer place in the now-altered landscape. You build a new worldview. That takes time. And many visits to the wreckage. And this process involves both unconscious and conscious repetitive reenactment behaviors, or writing, drawing, sculpting, or playing. Again and again, you revisit the site of the earthquake, look through the wreckage, take something, and move it to a safe haven. Thats part of the healing process.
Show this quote
We need to understand that victims of trauma are more prone to all forms of addiction because their baseline of stress is different.
Oprah Winfrey,
What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
Show this quote
So often we use the word snapped when we dont know where a burst of anger is coming from or why someone is having a violent reaction. Well, now we know: Something has happened in the moment that triggers one of the brains trauma memories. And because the lower, non-rational parts of the brain are its first responders, they immediately set off stress responses that then shut off the reasonable part of the brain. And so that burst of violence is actually the result of some highly organized processes in the brain. And in this case, the first thing the school is going to say is, Whats wrong with him?
Show this quote
Dr. Perry: Thats a wonderful example of the glue of love. It is in the small moments, when we feel the other person fully present, fully engaged, connected, and accepting, that we make the most powerful, enduring bonds.
Show this quote
And since your brainstem cant tell time, or know that many years have passed, it activates the stress response and you have a full-blown threat response. You feel and act as if you are under attack. Your brainstem cant say, Hey, dont get so stirred up, Korea was thirty years ago. That sound was simply a motorcycle backfiring.
Oprah Winfrey,
What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
Show this quote
...the speed with which we're inventing our world is outpacing our avility to understand the impact of our inventions.
Show this quote
The elders were very patient with my curiosity, and gently amused at my Western medical-model formulations of disease when I asked how they handled depression, sleep problems, drug abuse, and trauma. They kept trying to help me understand that these problems were all basically the same thing. The problems were all interconnected. In Western psychiatry we like to separate them, but that misses the true essence of the problem. We are chasing symptoms, not healing people.
Show this quote
The language we speak, the beliefs we hold-both good and bad-are passed from generation to generation through experience. And so many aspects of the human experience are invented-as opposed to simply springing up from our genes. Ten thousand years ago, humankind had the genetic potential to read a book, yet not one single human on the planet could read; the genetic potential to play the piano existed, yet not one person could play; the genetic potential to dunk a basketball, type a sentence, ride a bicycle-all that potential existed, but it all remained unexpressed. Humankind, more than any other species, can take the accumulated, distilled experiences of previous generations and pass these inventions, beliefs, and skills to the next generation. This is sociocultural evolution. We learn from our elders, and we invent, and we pass what weve learned and invented to the next generations. And the organ that allows this is the human brain-specifically, the cortex. As weve said before, the cortex is the most uniquely human part of our body, and, no surprise, it gives rise to the most uniquely human capabilities: speech, language, abstract thinking, reflecting on the past, planning for the future. Our hopes, dreams, and a major part of our worldview are mediated by our cortex.
Show this quote
What Ive learned from talking to so many victims of traumatic events, abuse, or neglect is that after absorbing these painful experiences, the child begins to ache. A deep longing to feel needed, validated, and valued begins to take hold. As these children grow, they lack the ability to set a standard for what they deserve. And if that lack is not addressed, what often follows is a complicated, frustrating pattern of self-sabotage, violence, promiscuity, or addiction.
Oprah Winfrey,
What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
Show this quote
stress is not something to be afraid of or avoided. It is the controllability, pattern, and intensity of stress that can cause problems.
Show this quote
In the wake of trauma, the hardest thing to understand is that nothing and no one can take away the pain. And yet thats exactly what we desperately want to do-because we are social creatures, subject to emotional contagion, and when were around people who are hurting, we hurt too. We dont want to hurt. It is hard to sit in the midst of ruined lives and not feel the misery. It helps us regulate to try to undo or negate-to look away from others pain. So we make our arbitrary assumptions about peoples innate resilience. We make our sweeping declarations that allow us to marginalize traumatized children. We take our focus off the tragedy, move on with our lives, telling ourselves that they will be okay. But as we continue to see in our discussions, the impact of trauma doesnt simply fade away. We can help each other heal, but often assumptions about resilience and grit blind us to the healing that leads us down the painful path to wisdom.
Show this quote
We tend to use the word stress in negative ways, but stress is merely a demand on one or more of our bodys many physiological systems. Hunger, thirst, cold, working out, a promotion at work: All are stressors, and stress is an essential and positive part of normal development; its a key element in learning, mastering new skills, and building resilience. The key factor in determining whether stress is positive or destructive is the pattern of stress,
Show this quote
we all require some reciprocal social feedback to stay engaged.
Show this quote
When we meet someone, we form a first impression (He seems like a really nice guy), frequently with no apparent information on which to base it. This is because attributes of the person evoke in us something weve previously categorized as familiar and positive. The opposite can happen (This guy is a complete jerk) if some attribute taps into a previous negative experience. Our brain catalogs vast amounts of input from our family, community, and culture, along with what is presented to us in the media. As it makes sense of what its stored, it begins to form a worldview. If we later meet someone with characteristics unlike what weve cataloged, our default response is to be wary, defensive. In turn, if our brains are filled with associations based upon media-driven biases about ideal body type, or racial or cultural stereotypes, for example, we will exhibit implicit biases (and maybe overt bias).
Oprah Winfrey,
What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
Show this quote
Our brain is organized to act and feel before we think. This is also how our brain developssequentially, from the bottom up. The developing infant acts and feels, and these actions and feelings help organize how they will begin to think.
Oprah Winfrey,
What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
Show this quote
Your connectedness to other people is so key to buffering any current stressorand to healing from past trauma. Being with people who are present, supportive, and nurturing. Belonging.
Show this quote
And for me, the really fascinating part is the power of brief but positive caregiving interactions. Some of the children we studied had attentive and responsive care for only the first two months of life-and then their world imploded. Years of chaos, threat, instability, and trauma followed those positive two first months-yet they did much better than children who experienced initial trauma and neglect followed by years of attentive, supportive care. It is the timing that is so important. The value of early intervention programs, even those that have only brief doses of positive interaction, cant be underestimated.
Show this quote
But speaking of decisions and choices, I want to turn to a question that baffles so many of us. Why is it that people who are victims of trauma are so often drawn to abusive relationships?Let me broaden the question, because it is so important in understanding not just abuse but all behavior. The key point is that all of us tend to gravitate to the familiar, even when the familiar is unhealthy or destructive. We are drawn to what we were raised with.As Ive said before, when we are young and our brain is beginning to make sense of our experiences, it creates our working model of the world. The brain organizes around the tone and tension of our first experiences. So if, early on, you have safe, nurturing care, you think that people are essentially good.But if a child experienced chaos, threat, or trauma, your brain organizes according to a view that the world is not safe and people cannot be trusted. Think about James. He didnt feel safe when he was close to people. Intimacy made him feel threatened. Here is the confusing part: James felt most comfortable when the world was in line with his worldview. Being rejected or treated poorly validated this view. The most destabilizing thing for anyone is to have their core beliefs challenged.Good or bad, we are attracted to things that are familiar.
Show this quote
All of us tend to gravitate to the familiar, even when the familiar is unhealthy or destructive. We are drawn to what we were raised with.
Show this quote
belonging and being loved are core to the human experience. We are a social species; we are meant to be in communityemotionally, socially, and physically interconnected with others.
Show this quote
the capacity to be connected in meaningful and healthy ways is shaped by our earliest relationships. Love, and loving caregiving, is the foundation of our development
Show this quote
What happened to you as an infant has a profound impact on this capacity to love and be loved.
Show this quote
You cant give what you dont have.
Show this quote
the more threatened or stressed we are, the less access we have to the smart part of our brain, the cortex
Show this quote
Drugs and alcohol are not my problem, he wrote. Reality is my problem, drugs and alcohol are my solution.
Show this quote
if you look at Indigenous and traditional healing practices, they do a remarkable job of creating a total mind-body experience that influences multiple brain systems. Remember, trauma memories span multiple brain areas. So these traditional practices will have cognitive, relational-based, and sensory elements. You retell the story; create images of the battle, hunt, death; hold each other; massage; dance; sing.
Show this quote
All life is rhythmic. The rhythms of the natural world are embedded in our biological systems. This begins in the womb, when the mothers beating heart creates rhythmic sound, pressure, and vibrations that are sensed by the developing fetus and provide constant rhythmic input to the organizing brain.
Show this quote
When the attentive and responsive adult comes to the crying infant, two very important things happen. The baby feels the pleasure of being regulated after being distressedand also experiences the sight, smell, touch, sound, and movement of human interaction.
Show this quote
what happens when a baby doesnt get those positive, nurturing responses? Say, if a mom is on her own with no help, or depressed, or in a violent relationship? She may really want to be a loving, responsive parent, but is that possible under those circumstances? Dr. Perry: This is one of the central problems in our society; we have too many parents caring for children with inadequate supports. The result is what you would expect. An overwhelmed, exhausted, dysregulated parent will have a hard time regulating a child consistently and predictably. This can impact the child in two really important ways. First, it affects the development of the childs stress-response systems (see Figure 3). If the hungry, cold, scared infant is inconsistently responded toand regulatedby the overwhelmed caregiver, this creates an inconsistent, prolonged, and unpredictable activation of the childs stress-response systems. The result is a sensitization of these important systems.
Show this quote
Social connection builds resilience, and resilience helps create post-traumatic wisdom, and that wisdom leads to hope. Hope for you and hope for others witnessing and participating in your healing, hope for your community.
Show this quote
Even in the absence of major traumatic events, unpredictable stress and the lack of control that goes with it are enough to make our stress-response systems sensitized - overactive and overly reactive- creating the internal storm.
Show this quote
Connectedness regulates and rewards us.
Show this quote
there is nothing I do that doesnt start with my asking myself, What is my intention in doing this?
Show this quote
Connectedness counters the pull of addictive behaviors. It is the key.
Show this quote
For me, there are actually two lenses through which to view what happened to you. There is the science-based explanation of the effect early trauma has on the brain. And then there are the myriad daily actions each of us take throughout our lives that are the result of, and that reflect back on, such trauma. These are the actions that, on the surface, look like bad decisions, bad habits, self-sabotage, self-destruction-the actions that cause others to judge.
Oprah Winfrey,
What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
Show this quote
This is incredibly unlike our modern world. We expect a single working mother to be the one to throw the baseball with her eight-year-old, rock the newborn, read to the three-year-old, and, by the way, cook a nutritious meal, help with homework, do the laundry, get everyone to bed, then wake up and get them all ready for childcare and school so she can go work all day, only to rush home to do it all again. All alone.
Show this quote
Oprah: She needs people to step uppeople who support her, give her some breaks, step in and do some of those things with her children. Were not meant to be isolated and alone. Were actually meant to work together. So when a single mom is living on a limited income, trying to manage four children, trying to be mother and father, and she feels overwhelmed or feels like its impossible to do it allits because it is impossible.
Show this quote
Youre not meant to raise children isolated and alone.
Show this quote
I believe we dont have enough quiet conversational moments listening to a friend with no other distractions. That kind of interaction leads to a completely different quality of human connection. A different depth.
Show this quote
If you get into a relationship with somebody whos not treating you poorly, you may find yourself feeling increasingly uncomfortable. And then, unconsciously, your mind might seek a predictable response. You may try to provoke a bit of a response. Maybe Ill do X and itll piss him off. If this elicits the behavior youre most familiar with-he gets angry and treats you poorly-it can actually be validating. The worldview has been confirmed. Even though the result is chaos and conflict, its comforting to know that its familiar.
Show this quote
Many of us found it harder to fill up during the COVID-19 pandemic; people reported more anxiety and depression, and many people used some of the less healthy forms of reward to fill that void.
Show this quote
Adrenaline increases the sugar in your blood. Her stress response, overactivated by the recent trauma, increased her adrenalinehence much more sugar in her blood. The dose of insulin that had worked in the past was no longer adequate. Furthermore, when she was exposed to any evocative cue, such as the sirens, her sensitized system had an overreaction, releasing very high levels of adrenaline and, in turn, leading to a huge release of sugar.
Show this quote
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 dont use it much anymore.
Show this quote
The capacity to control your dissociative capabilities is very powerful. It allows people to be good at reflective cognition. It allows people to have intense focus on a specific task. Hypnosis, flow, being in the zone-all of these are examples of the trance state that dissociation allows. People who learn to control when and how they go into a trance state have a giftbe careful about labeling dissociation as a pathologyIt can be an incredible strength.
Show this quote
