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Ashley Ocean

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Ashley is Currently Reading

Ashley Ocean is currently reading

Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach

by Melissa J. Gillis

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Jul 05, 2025 02:10PM

Ashley Ocean is currently reading

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

by Kai-Fu Lee (Goodreads Author)

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Apr 22, 2025 08:06AM

Ashley Ocean is currently reading

Whole-Body Sex: Somatic Sex Therapy and the Lost Language of the Erotic Body

by Melissa Walker

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Apr 01, 2025 09:03AM

See all 5 books that Ashley is reading…

“As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself. Hiding your core feelings takes an enormous amount of energy, it saps your motivation to pursue worthwhile goals, and it leaves you feeling bored and shut down. Meanwhile, stress hormones keep flooding your body, leading to headaches, muscle aches, problems with your bowels or sexual functions—and irrational behaviors that may embarrass you and hurt the people around you. Only after you identify the source of these responses can you start using your feelings as signals of problems that require your urgent attention.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

21 likes

“So use that anger, yes. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.”-Maya Angelou”
― Maya Angelou

2 likes

“As I once heard Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan say: “The task of describing most private experiences can be likened to reaching down to a deep well to pick up small fragile crystal figures while you are wearing thick leather mittens.”11”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

1 likes

“Isolating oneself into a narrowly defined victim group promotes a view of others as irrelevant at best and dangerous at worst, which eventually only leads to further alienation. Gangs, extremist political parties, and religious cults may provide solace, but they rarely foster the mental flexibility needed to be fully open to what life has to offer and as such cannot liberate their members from their traumas. Well-functioning people are able to accept individual differences and acknowledge the humanity of others.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

tags: cult, isolation, terrorism, trauma, victimization

21 likes

“We can get past the slipperiness of words by engaging the self-observing, body-based self system, which speaks through sensations, tone of voice, and body tensions. Being able to perceive visceral sensations is the very foundation of emotional awareness.12 If a patient tells me that he was eight when his father deserted the family, I am likely to stop and ask him to check in with himself: What happens inside when he tells me about that boy who never saw his father again? Where is it registered in his body? When you activate your gut feelings and listen to your heartbreak—when you follow the interoceptive pathways to your innermost recesses—things begin to change.”
― Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

1 likes

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