Bruce D. Perry

Jean includes something in her book that I starred in the margin.

A woman named Jen Winkleman remembers attending a conference with Dr. Bruce Perry, one of the leading voices in research and treatment for children who've experienced trauma.

And she recalls him saying, and I quote, separation from the birth mother is the single most traumatic event a human being can survive.

the single most traumatic event a human being can survive.

So much of recovery from any scary event, whether it's considered traumatic or not, is all about buffering through time.

what, um, Dr. Bruce Perry, who is a psychologist who studies childhood trauma and who I trained with for a little bit, um, calls like the buffer of therapeutic relationships.

And he specifically says it doesn't have to be a therapist and probably most likely isn't, but it's just people in your community that love you care for you unconditionally and make you feel safe.

And that can be a teacher that can be a bus driver, um, We would obviously really want that to be your parents, ideally, aunts and uncles, grandparents, the neighbor, your best friend's parents.

Yeah, I find that really fascinating.

And I did a course through a child psychologist in America, Dr. Bruce Perry, who's quite well-renowned in childhood trauma.

And he's paired a lot of the philosophy from that with sport to talk about, you know, the way to regulate emotion is often through rhythmic repetitive movements.

relational activity and sport very naturally brings out anything from like swimming where you're like doing these repeated rhythmic things to like obviously team sport where you're doing those things in relation to others and so when um yeah phoenix started i was really big on ensuring that our coaches were aware of not so much all the neuroscience but like hey we know some of these kids and we've all got trauma some of it's big t some of it's little t trauma and if they're escalating or looking a bit lost or looking like you know they're a bit fearful or they're coming in late which is you know never a child's fault we want to do straight into rhythmic repetitive relational activity where we you know might just pass a ball back and forth I'll often sub a child out if I feel like they're yeah kind of escalating and I'll say hey just hold this ball and spin it in your hands for a bit and they know I'm safe so that instruction you know regulates but I think when it comes to the stress tolerance what sport is brilliant at and it's very hard to get in other spaces now because we are so good at avoiding discomfort and we have the privilege of being able to do that quite well through all of the way we design our lifestyles sport you can't really avoid it like you're in a contest and something might not go your way and so we constantly build our our tolerance for stress through sport if that's managed well by the coach um and you know you don't yell and scream like we know that you know yelling and screaming in kids faces is not a good way to get results so that's going to spike their stress response yeah result in you know fight flight freeze flock type problems responses but you know inevitably those last two

sure.

And it's just, well, listening to Dr. Perry is amazing.

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