## Metadata - Author: [[Sarah Peyton]] - Full Title: Your Resonant Self - Category: #books ## Highlights - Resonance is the experience of sensing that another being fully understands us and sees us with emotional warmth and generosity. It is the sense that we know that they could try on our skin and that our feelings and longings would make sense to them. ([Location 187](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074WBVG42&location=187)) - We cannot be resonant with a person unless we are being relational—resonance is a two-person experience. ([Location 193](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074WBVG42&location=193)) - Changing the tone of the automatic way people speak to themselves is essential to making the world a better place. ([Location 648](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074WBVG42&location=648)) - Sometimes, even though mindfulness meditation is supposed to integrate the brain, the network used for meditation and the DMN can remain distinct. This is important to know, because it explains how a person can have a decades-long mindfulness practice and still have a savage DMN that comes into play once that person gets up off the cushion,35 and why it is important to focus on both of these aspects of brain support to heal a toxic DMN. ([Location 685](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074WBVG42&location=685)) - Researcher Moshe Szyf says that our mother is in every cell of our PFC. 10 This means that people who have grown up with a traumatized mother have the responsibility of transforming their internalized original mother into one who is warm, understanding, and resonant, in order to support long-term health and well-being. ([Location 812](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074WBVG42&location=812)) - A note about gender of “mother”: Research shows that whatever gender our parents have, the primary parent functions as the “mother”—this person could be a man—and fosters our relationship with ourselves. The secondary parent functions as the “father”—this person could be a woman—and fosters our expectations of relationship with the world. ([Location 818](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074WBVG42&location=818)) - Researcher Matthew Lieberman has found that brains find their way back to emotional balance in three main ways: 11 1.  Identifying what we are feeling (naming emotions) 2.  Thinking about the situation in a different way (reframing) 3.  Thinking about something else instead of what is bothering us (distraction) Another researcher, James Coan, has added one more piece to the puzzle of how brains return to calm: 1.  The real or imagined presence of a person whom we feel cares about us (accompaniment). ([Location 829](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074WBVG42&location=829)) - Ask yourself if you are willing to be loved by humans, and if you are willing to accept warmth, love, and reassurance from people who are essentially flawed, occasionally unreliable, and sometimes in the grip of their own trauma. ([Location 922](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074WBVG42&location=922)) - But as soon as we open our mouths, we might leave behind resonant connection, because the part of the brain that “does” language is not the same part of the brain that “does” relationship. ([Location 1073](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074WBVG42&location=1073)) - We live in a population that largely manages itself with externals, in a world where we try to take care of our problems with prisons, pills, and penalties instead of leveraging our own human capacity for relationship to make positive, sustainable change. As we shift to internal regulation, we not only benefit ourselves by gaining all of the capacity of the PFC but also take a stand for a different world. ([Location 1193](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074WBVG42&location=1193)) - if a person has lived through trauma or has never experienced resonance, then it is possible for the default mode network (DMN), dedicated to a continual review of social interactions, to turn savage. It uses as its ammunition our errors of misunderstanding, mistakes, imperfections, shortcomings, social faux pas, or moments where we feel we have not been considerate of the needs of others. ([Location 1285](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074WBVG42&location=1285)) - Each hemisphere specializes, while simultaneously being entirely supported by the other hemisphere. As Alan Fogel says, “A simple metaphor for this is that a person who is right handed, for example, still needs to use the left hand to hold the paper on which she is writing or the jar she is uncapping. She might use her right arm for throwing but her left arm swings for balance.” ([Location 1364](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074WBVG42&location=1364)) - We have feelings because things really matter to us—big things, like love, understanding, acknowledgment, appreciation, faith, peace, trust, and care. These are right-hemisphere concepts. The left hemisphere, our engine of doing, takes action based on what matters most to us, what we care most passionately about, the values that we set our roots into and pull our strength from. ([Location 1429](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074WBVG42&location=1429)) - It can be a surprise to discover that there are messages and longings behind feelings, as people often don’t know that they are there. (Rosenberg uses the word needs to describe these deep messages, but sometimes people prefer words like values, principles, big ideas, qualities, or what we hold dear. It doesn’t matter what they are called—on a brain level they all work. The only important thing is that naming them helps people attune and resonate with other human beings.) ([Location 1437](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074WBVG42&location=1437)) - The inner critic can scream the loudest when faced with the challenge of self-expression, because it so wants invulnerability. People are at their most vulnerable when they are extending themselves into the world without knowing whether their life energy will be caught. ([Location 1493](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074WBVG42&location=1493)) - This meditation invites us to look at the relationship between the critical self and the part that is vulnerable to criticism, and it invites an understanding that people are larger than both of these parts. As people learn to identify the voice of critical self-judgment, they can start to understand its limitations, rather than trusting its evaluations, and they start to be able to look for the real voice of truth—the part of the self that is strong, resourced, and warm. ([Location 1583](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074WBVG42&location=1583))