Don’t make Releasing Trauma your Main Focus
The Nervous System Heals at its own Pace
Many people have the expectation that their liberation from suffering is rooted in this grand finale of a cathartic release of trauma energy. The reality is, the healing process for most of us involves feeling many layers of regulatory and activated states until our nervous system arrives in a more consistent, felt sense of safety. If you are dealing with acute trauma from an isolated event, then yes, your healing may look more like a cathartic release, however, most clients I see are dealing with a form of CPTSD, which involves many big and little events over a large timeframe.
When we get attached to digging for trauma - especially through big experiences like breathwork, psychedelics, meditation retreats, etc. - we run the risk of biting off more than we can chew, which can result in an extended period of time stuck outside of our Window of Tolerance, or even worse, in psychosis.
Of course, everyone is different. Some people find great healing in the big experiences, but many times we don’t have the capacity to fully feel the survival impulse and its associated energy when we try processing it all at once. This is why it can be helpful to titrate all healing tools (do a little bit at a time). Not only do we bring titration to Somatic Experiencing, but it can also be applied to breathwork, EMDR, brainspotting, psychedelics, meditation, etc., to allow our nervous system to process what it has capacity for without re-traumatizing ourselves from the experience.
Somatic Experiencing shows us that the key is to nurture safety into the system while we feel the activation energy that we have capacity for. How do we do that? By resourcing as much as possible, in addition to pendulating from what is nurturing to what feels activating, in titrated steps. And then resourcing some more. Having a toolbox of go-to regulating exercises and activities is super helpful as well.
The nervous system will decide on its own when it is time to process energy from the past. We nurture ourselves with safety so that we can develop the capacity to feel what needs to move, while we gain the resiliency to regulate afterwards. That is the art of getting out of our own way, trusting the process, and allowing the nervous system to heal at its own pace.
The big takeaway is this: If we just focus on releasing years worth of trauma energy without nurturing the nervous system to develop a neural network rooted in a ventral vagal state of safety and social engagement, what foundation does it have to fall back on after the release? It’s just going to fall back into the patterns it knows, and potentially with even greater instability.