The parent-child connection is the most powerful mental health intervention known to mankind.
Bessel Van Der KolkRead
People have a range of capacities to deal with overwhelming experience. Some people, some kids particularly, are able to disappear into a fantasy world, to dissociate, to pretend like it isnt happening, and are able to go on with their lives. And sometimes it comes back to haunt them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
People cope with overwhelming experiences differently, often retreating into fantasy or dissociation.
In this quote, Bessel Van Der Kolk highlights the varying ways individuals, especially children, respond to traumatic or overwhelming experiences. Some may cope by escaping into fantasy or dissociation, providing temporary relief, but this avoidance can have long-term effects that resurface later in life, potentially leading to psychological issues. The statement emphasizes the significance of understanding these coping mechanisms and their implications.
Themes
CopingTraumaDissociationFantasyPsychology
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a mental health seminar to discuss coping mechanisms in children.
More from Bessel Van Der Kolk
All quotes βTraumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.
Bessel Van Der KolkRead
Similar quotes
Shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation, while introversion is a preference for environments that are not overstimulating. Shyness is inherently painful; introversion is not.
Susan CainRead
Behavioral scientists distinguish between fast thinking and slow thinking. Fast thinking is represented in the mind's System 1: it is automatic, intuitive, and often emotional. Slow thinking, reflected in System 2, is deliberative and reflective; it likes statistics. It's hard to think of a purer System 1 candidate than Trump.
Cass SunsteinRead
I have never known a patient to portray his parents more negatively than he actually experienced them in childhood but always more positively--because idealization of his parents was essential for his survival.
Alice MillerRead
Interpretations, criticisms, diagnoses, and judgments of others are actually alienated expressions of our unmet needs.
Marshall B. RosenbergRead
It was as if personality itself had a 'face'. This non-physical face of personality seemed to be the real key to personality change. It remained scarred, distorted, 'ugly' or inferior the person himself acted out this role in his behaviour regardless of the changes in physical appearance. If this 'face of personality' could be reconstructed, if old emotional scars could be removed, then the person himself changed, even without facial plastic surgery.
Maxwell MaltzRead
I think one of the major results of the psychology of decision making is that people's attitudes and feelings about losses and gains are really not symmetric. So we really feel more pain when we lose $10,000 than we feel pleasure when we get $10,000.
Daniel KahnemanRead