From The New York Times: “The pandemic spreads an existential feeling of unsafety, which registers in the neurons around your heart, lungs and viscera. It alters your nervous system, changing the way you see and perceive threat.
It’s very hard to grasp what’s going on so deep inside. ‘All trauma is preverbal,’ Dr. Bessel van der Kolk writes in his book The Body Keeps the Score. ‘Rational brain is basically impotent to talk the emotional brain out of its own reality.’
The best way to combat this visceral sense of fear and disassociation is by having what Bonnie Badenoch, the author of The Heart of Trauma, calls ‘disconfirming experiences.’ These are experiences of deep reciprocal attunement with others that make you feel viscerally safe.”
