Notice, Feel, Be Here

"No matter how much insight and understanding we develop, the rational brain is basically impotent to talk the emotional brain out of its own reality...It is so much easier for them [people who have gone through the unspeakable] to talk about what has been done to them - to tell the story of victimization and revenge - than to notice, feel, and put into words the reality of their internal experience...Our scans had revealed how their dread persisted and could be triggered by multiple aspects of daily experience. They had not integrated their experience into the ongoing stream of their life. They continued to be 'there' and did not know how to be 'here' - fully alive in the present."

From The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk