Working with overwhelming trauma
Trauma Professional writes:
I started trying to implement the tools you teach.
I've found that in regard to the pendulation stage, taking people into bits of unpleasant memories/sensations is challenging, because even the slightest recollection of the trauma seems to automatically bring back the entire memory to the surface, which often is overwhelming.
Even if the person is able to connect to a pleasant memory/sensation, the impact of the unpleasant memory overrides.
Can you please provide guidance on this?
--- Trauma Professional
Reply:
Dear Trauma Professional,
What a great question -- and such a difficult and delicate one, too!
For this, there are three elements of import:
- how strong is the therapist and/or client's sense of grounded anchoring,
- how strong is the "energetic rope" connecting client-and-therapist,
and - how strong is the pull of the trauma vortex/eddy -- the sensation of overwhelm /...
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Try as we might, we cannot think our way out of trauma.
When we get emotionally hijacked, reason gets thrown by the wayside.
Trauma speaks its own language that reason does not know.
We cannot "logic" our way out of a flashback. We are in it.
This is a short report (8 pages) that describes why strictly cognitive approaches fail – and what we must do to change.
