Tapping on trauma

Have a listen to the recent podcast from Sounds True with Bessel van der Kolk talking about trauma.

Try the following tapping script and as always, customise it for your unique situation and feelings, tapping diagram:

Even though I don’t want to (it doesn't feel safe to go inside etc.) go inside and feel these feelings, I completely accept how I feel

Even though I just can’t tolerate these physical sensations right now, I completely accept how I feel

Even though some parts of me (my feelings, my sensations) have frozen in time, I acknowledge those parts

Top of head: These feelings are in my present
Eyebrow: Not my past
Side of eye: They have frozen in time
Under eye: Because at the time I couldn’t deal with them
Under nose: And that’s ok
Under chin: It was just too much
Collarbone: Sometimes it’s still too much
Under arm: That’s why I need to go slow

Top of head: Even though I want them over and done with sometimes
Eyebrow: I want to go as fast as I can
Side of eye: So I can get rid of them
Under eye: Because they feel excruciating
Under nose: And that’s ok
Under chin: I need to feel them bit by bit
Collar bone: Because there’s an accumulation of them
Under arm: I just couldn’t feel at the time

Top of head: So I’m learning how to be with my difficult feelings and sensations
Eyebrow: And not run from them
Side of eye: And not fight them
Under eye: And not freeze them
Under nose: They need to be experienced
Under chin: Slowly, surely and safely
Collar bone: Preferably with someone safe
Under arm: I might not take this journey alone

Top of head: I might not want to
Eyebrow: It’s ok to reach out for help
Side of eye: It’s safe to reach out
Under eye: To the right person
Under nose: Who feels right to me
Under chin: It’s scary to reach out
Collar bone: I’ve done it before
Under arm: And it hasn’t worked out

Top of head: It’s hard to trust
Eyebrow: That I’ll be held
Side of eye: In all my pain
Under eye: When all I want to do is run from it
Under nose: Maybe others will feel the same
Under chin: And maybe they won’t
Collar bone: Maybe they’ll understand
Under arm: How I feel ... it's worth the risk to reach out again

The most effective container

In my view and experience having a relational home offers the most effective container for any dysregulation. As Bonnie Badenoch put it, we draw on our inner community in order to self regulate (soothe ourself). On the outside, it looks like we’re self regulating, but we are in fact always co-regulating, whether another person is there with us physically or not. If we’ve been relatively securely attached to our care givers and others, this gives us a fantastic solid start in life which we later draw on again and again and again. The ACE study, among many others, demonstrates the price we pay when we haven’t had this solid beginning.

So, the hard science is in, we are relational creatures who are interdependent, therefore we need each other, going it alone all the time is not good for us, but it’s like many of us haven’t got the memo. People are continually shamed for not changing, not ‘growing up’, or ‘moving on’. But without the safety and warmth that a relational home can provide, we’ll stay in whatever protective defenses we’ve developed because it just won’t be safe enough to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and make any changes that we need to make.

Being able to contain our emotions, and grow a bigger container, so we increase our window of tolerance is crucial. We’re not going to release anger for ever more, because like all emotions, we need anger in certain circumstances, but we can release the anger that has become stuck when we are triggered about certain experiences we’ve had. Wishing that we didn’t have certain emotions is futile, learning how to live with them and use them for our benefit is absolutely essential for our mental and physical health.

As practitioners we can practise all the interventions and exercises we want, but if we don’t provide a relational home to ‘hold’ any dysregulation, either in ourselves or the client, they’re next to useless. At worst we’ll project and blame the client, calling them resistant and all sorts of things, instead of taking a good hard long look at what we need to change.