Can I get a pause button please?

Trauma usually involves events that happen too fast for us to realize what’s going on. This restricts our ability to intervene effectively, like being in a car accident, for example. 

When we’re ready to heal, it’s important to add the elements of time and space.

How do we do that?

We slow everything down.

Once we do that, we can imagine what it was that we needed to protect ourselves. It’s hard to answer what we needed until we’ve slowed down.

It’s like imagining what it would be like to freeze the frame of the incident to the moment just before the impact and changing our reaction.

 Would we run? defend ourselves?set a new boundary?

We can imagine ourselves physically taking the action to defend ourselves from the trauma. For example, lifting our arms to protect our head if we were in an accident or running away from a dangerous situation. 

And then actually going through the motions, slowly, so we can feel ourselves doing it and embed them in our consciousness as a new experience 

The cool thing is that our system doesn’t care that we’re at a future point and that we’re using our imagination, it thinks this is really happening. 

This is how trauma renegotiation happens, which is the body re-evaluating the effects of the impact of the trauma.  

This is a cool thing that the body knows how to do if given the right conditions. This is so powerful, and very hopeful. 

It means we’re not stuck with our trauma. Amazing, right?