Injured people involuntary find a way to physically protect themselves against the unbidden messages of danger and dissolution that continue to emanate from their bodies. They brace themselves against unacceptable physical sensations. People who are scared all the time develop bodies that somehow protect against this anxiety. There is a multiplicit

sense of mastery.

heart rate variability (HRV).

change depends on the capacity to experience emotions directly and deeply. If our access to core experience is blocked or distorted, we are unable to deal with our most vital psychological processes.

However, reliving trauma-related sensations does not occur only in response to input from our surroundings; it also is triggered by sensations deep within our own bodies: the sensory experiences that are evoked by feeling angry, sexually aroused, or having your period; by feeling tender toward somebody; or by the sensations that accompany feeling r

people who are traumatized need to have physical and sensory experiences to unlock their bodies, activate effective fight/flight responses, tolerate their sensations, befriend their inner experiences, and cultivate new action patterns.

I started to see it happening. I didn’t feel pain, and I didn’t feel too scared, but I noticed exactly what was happening, and some part of me accepted it as in “Yes, that happened.” Am I making any sense to you? In a strange way, this felt like movement forward, not backward.

People who have never been safely and securely held lack the visceral experience of a calmly abiding center: a deep sense of being absolutely all right and absolutely safe.

Many people experience relief being able to discuss how seeing certain images, hearing particular sounds, or smelling a specific odor causes them to feel as if the trauma were happening right now.