WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU? by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey

Understanding the reasons behind any human behaviour is really fascinating to me and this was a hard book to put down on the very topic.

“Why do I behave the way I behave? Why do I feel the way I do? For me, there is no doubt that our strengths, vulnerabilities, and unique responses are an expression of what happened to us.”

Deep and lengthly conversations between Oprah and Dr Perry show us how early life childhood experiences impacts brain development, personality and ultimately behaviour.

“The basic finding is that the experiences of the first two months of life have a disproportionately important impact on your long-term health and development. This has to do with the remarkably rapid growth of the brain early in life, and the organisation of those all-important core regulatory networks.”

Each chapter is full of insights, for instance, I learned that trauma has 3 key aspects: the event, the experience and the effects.

Interestingly, Dr Perry went further to explain how true healing cannot take place in the absence of family, community or connection. At the end of the day, these seem to be more predictive to your mental health than your history of adversity.

I liked how Dr Perry points out that children are not resilient, they are malleable. Children end up diminishing elements of their true emotional, behavioural and cognitive behaviours in order to adapt to whatever adversity they are faced with. And with that, a part of child is lost forever.

While therapy is about understanding past experiences, it takes being intentional to heal and build new associations in your brain to counterbalance old pathways. We can start by being present with the people in our lives and create or deepen that human connection that is so healing. It’s a beautiful takeaway the fact that all the stories in this book show us just how wired for love we are.

Changing perspectives from “what is wrong with you” to “what happened to you” is the only way forward.

“I believe every environment has a tone. If you were to walk into any home as a stranger, not speaking the language, you could absolutely feel whether this is a place where people are loved. Just as you can sense when something’s off. You may not know what it is, but something feels off.” – Oprah Winfrey