- The Physiological Sigh: Inhale deeply through your nose. Then, inhale a second, shorter sip of air on top of it. Exhale slowly through your mouth. This double inhale pops open the alveoli in your lungs and offloads carbon dioxide. It is the fastest way to tell your brain we are safe.
- The Shake: Animals in the wild shake off adrenaline after a threat. Stand up and literally shake your hands, shake your legs, wiggle your spine. It looks silly, but it discharges the trapped freeze energy.
- Peripheral Vision: When we are in trauma mode, we get tunnel vision; we stare at the mess. So, soften your gaze. Look to the far left and the far right of the room. Engaging your peripheral vision activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest-and-digest mode.
Once you have done these movements, you might feel a tiny spark of energy returning. That is your window of opportunity. Now, we apply the psychological strategy: the doom basket method, Solution Phase Two, low-demand strategy. The biggest mistake trauma survivors make is all-or-nothing thinking. This is another gift from the narcissist: If I can’t clean the whole kitchen perfectly, I shouldn’t do it at all.
This binary thinking is what keeps you frozen. You look at the room, and your brain tries to process 1,000 steps at once: picking up socks, putting them in a hamper, then carrying the hamper to separate colors, then washing, then drying, and folding. That is too much cognitive load for a brain in survival mode; it crashes the system.
We are going to use KC Davis’s struggle care philosophy. We are going to lower the bar so low that you can roll over it.
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