Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

The purpose of trauma is to say to you, you're a biological creature.

You're in the present moment.

You're a real human being.

You have a life.

My life, part of my life is my trauma.

And I will bounce from trauma to trauma to trauma to trauma.

And if I look at the trauma and say, this is a horrible thing, well, maybe it was a horrible thing.

And maybe that was 30 years ago, and that was a horrible thing.

And the more you think about it and you root into it, and the more often we run a circuit, the more that circuit stronger that gets and begins to run on automatic.

And so now I'm always worrying about, oh, my God, am I going to have more trauma?

And I put all my energy into that trauma.

Well, what am I doing?

It's just the same as if I'm just a workaholic and doing nothing but character one.

And so the power of whole brain living is to know that I have four parts of me and that trauma is important information.

And let's say I was attacked or I was raped or I had a horrible experience with a person.

And now in the future, whenever I see a person that looks remotely like that, I knee jerk away from that because I perceive myself from my trauma that that's not safe.

So I push it away.

That is an appropriate response.

But then I say, oh, but this is actually a different person.

And I can open up my right hemisphere and with curiosity look at this new person and say, well, you might look like somebody who hurt me many years ago, but you're not that person.