One of the tricky problems with complex trauma is that our healthy separation between inside reality and outside reality is under-developed. We struggle with both sudden overwhelm from outside events and a tendency to take our inner experience as a literal reflection of outside reality. Separating ourselves from outside events You might know […]
Self-regulation
Grounding Meditations (advanced)
I have recently switched out the mindfulness app on my phone. I used to use Smiling Mind, which is a mental health focussed app meant for people who want to reduce stress and stress-related symptoms. It offers very clear instructions with the purpose of stabilization and grounding and it is ideal for beginners and […]
Increasing capacity
Capacity is a crucial concept in trauma treatment. It describes the zone in which we are regulated and able to regulate ourselves after we get stressed. In a way that makes it more important for daily life than the Window of Tolerance, which puts a greater emphasis on noticing our dysregulation. It is normal […]
Managing Emotional Flashbacks
The tricky thing about flashbacks that are purely emotional is recognizing them for what they are. We are stuck in an emotional experience from the past. Yet the nature of the trigger would often justify that kind of emotion, just not the level of intensity and the duration. Over time we can learn to […]
The Problem with the Faux Window of Tolerance
We all know the model of the Window of Tolerance. There is an area of relaxed regulation, the polyvagal theory would call it the safe&social system or ventral vagal activation and we traditionally mark it in green. We can handle a bit of activation (yellow) without getting into a difficult situation. When stress gets […]
But words will never hurt me
Language is fascinating. It is enough to hear one word to bring up a complex experience within us. When I say ‘beach’ it creates inner pictures of the beach. There might be a yearning or a sense of joy or other emotions. Maybe you remember being at the beach. Your body might relax a tiny […]
Separating facts, feelings and fiction
This exercise is a specific form of a reality check that can help us when we are not stuck in a full flashback but something got triggered and we get confused about reality. Maybe our emotions are too intense and hijack our mind or we entertain fantasies about how the situation will continue, make up […]
The Art of Looking Around
One of the most important tools we can learn in trauma recovery and self-regulation is how to look around. It sounds too simple to be true, but I promise, it can make a huge difference. Here is how to look around Sit down so you are facing the room or your environment. Maybe keep […]
EFT for self-regulation
EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique and belongs into the category of Energy Psychology, the roots are in Traditional Chinese Medicine though. Different acupressure points on the body are tapped with the fingers while speaking sentences that combine the distressing experience and a self-affirmation. Tapping energetic pathways running through the body (meridians) to influence […]
Learning relaxation with biofeedback
Trauma is not a ‘mental’ disorder, the whole body suffers from chronic stress. It sits deeply within our nervous system. Our traumatized body will struggle with relaxation and sometimes we have been tense for so many years that we actually don’t know how to relax and what that even feels like. Biofeedback technology can help […]
Befriending our nervous system
Most people who experience dysregulation and stress think of it as something bad; they are ashamed or want to make it go away. Befriending our sensations seems contra-intuitive.(If you are new to the language of stress responses you might want to start with the polyvagal ladder) When we reject our stressful experiences we reject […]
The Freeze Response and how to get out of it again
The freeze response is one of our natural, involuntary stress responses. It happens when the parasympathetic activation starts to overpower the sympathetic arousal. The sympathetic signs of high muscle tone are still visible as an underlying energy, but we moved down the polyvagal ladder into immobility. Imagine that the foot that carries your weight stepped […]
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