Trauma resolution does not mean the erasure of the past.

There are a couple of ways that this shows up in my practice.

One is that when people are really in it in a session, and I suggest that they consider how else they might have responded to a situation or reenact it now, they balk.  It’s normal to get stuck in the idea that what happened, happened, and no amount of “wishful thinking” can change it. 

People really fight it!  As I did, initially.

But renegotiating a traumatic event or pattern so that it can be resolved in your nervous system is a whole other ball of wax.

We do this for our nervous system, not our minds or the offending party (if there is one).  We allow our body to feel what it would have been like to run like hell away from that bear.  Or to push our ex-mother-in-law right back out the door. 

Not because that’s what we would do now, if we could do it over.  Not because we are no longer bound by societal convention.  But because our body comes out of a conventional dinner with the in-laws feeling utterly stuck and impotent.  Even years later, bringing back power can allow the body to close the loop, use up that trapped survival energy, and let go of it. 

It lets our body release that particular trigger.

Again, not for our brain, but for our body.

The second time this lack of erasure occurs in a session is when a long-resolved event, pattern, or symptom surfaces again.

This doesn’t always mean it wasn’t resolved properly.

It could mean that we now have the capacity to work at a deeper level than we did the last time we took on this challenge.

Perhaps we can see it as a win.  It means we’ve done so much work that we are ready to do more.

Any way you look at it, trauma resolution takes time, energy, and support (professional or not). 

But each time we work at it, we actively rewire our brains. 

Not to rewrite the past, but instead, to bring long-needed peace to us, now.