No matter what happened to you in your life, no matter what horrendous event you experienced, it cannot be undone. However, what can be dealt with are the imprints of trauma on body, mind, and soul: the crushing sensations in your chest that you may label as anxiety or depression; the fear of losing control; always being on alert for danger or rejection; the self-loathing; the nightmares and flashbacks; the fog that keeps one from staying on task and from engaging fully in what you are doing; being unable to fully open your heart to another human being. Trauma robs you of feeling that you are in charge of yourself, of what I will call self-leadership. The challenge of recovery is to reestablish ownership of your body and your mind—of yourself. This means feeling free to know what you know and to feel what you feel without becoming overwhelmed, enrages, ashamed, or collapsed.  For most people, recovery involves finding a way to become calm and focused, learning to maintain that calm in response to images, thoughts, sounds, or physical sensations that remind you of the past, finding a way to be fully alive in the present and engaged with people around you, not having to keep secrets from yourself, including secrets about the ways that you have managed to survive. These goals are not steps to be achieved, one by one, in some fixed sequence. They overlap, and some may be more difficult than others, depending on individual circumstances. The emotions and physical sensation that were imprinted during the trauma are experiences not as memories but as disruptive physical reactions in the present.  

In order to regain control over yourself again, you are required to revisit the trauma: Sooner or later you are required to confront what has happened to you, but only after you feel safe and will not be retraumatized by it. The first order of business is to find ways to cope with feeling overwhelmed by the sensations and emotions associated with the past.  The engines of posttraumatic reactions are located in the emotional brain, which expresses itself in thoughts, the emotional brain manifests itself in physical reactions: gut-wrenching sensations, heart pounding, breathing becoming fast and shallow, feelings of heartbreak, speaking with an uptight and reedy voice, and the characteristic body movements that signify collapse, rigidity, rage, or defensiveness.  Why can we not just be reasonable? And can understanding help? The rational, executive brain is good at helping us understand where feelings come from (as in: I get uncomfortable around certain people because I had an uneasy feeling. I have trouble expressing love towards my son because of something that happened to my best guy friend). However, the rational brain cannot abolish emotions, sensations, or thoughts (such as living with a low-level sense feeling that you could be a better person, even though you rationally know that you are not to blame for your friend copying your homework assignment and getting a deficient grade on the assignment). Understanding why you feel a certain way does not change how you feel.

However, it can keep you from surrendering to intense reactions (for example, ignoring your boss because he reminds you of a teacher who was mean to you, breaking up with your mate at your first disagreement, or jumping into the arms of a stranger). However, the more frazzled we are, the more our rational brain takes a back stead to our emotions. This inquiry led to a realization that the habitual pattern of vigilance to protect the body from hears was not true safety. Realizing this allowed long-standing patterns of concentration to begin relaxing. Without an embodied understanding, the body and mind keep these patterns in place, believing them to be needed for protection. In order to truly release these contractions, it is important for the true safety to be realized in the body on the level of sensation. Trauma is a fact of life. Everyone experiences it in some way, whether directly or indirectly though the trauma experienced by loves ones. No one can judge another, that cannot be that very other in imagination, when he takes the judgment seat. When the heart flies out before the understanding, it saves the judgment a World of pains.