Areas › After harm
After harm
This area is for understanding what is happening in you after something harmful, and for settling. It is not a treatment programme.
Nothing here asks you to go back into a traumatic memory. Processing a trauma is work to do with a therapist who can hold it with you, not alone with a website. If you start to feel far away, unreal, or flooded while reading, stop and come back another time.
What works for this
Grounding, and staying inside your window
This area does one thing and does not do the others. It helps you get steady and get to somebody who can help. Nothing here asks you to go back over what happened, because processing is work for a trained person in a room with you.
One move, today
Five things you can see, four you can feel, three you can hear, two you can smell, one slow breath all the way out. Said out loud if you can.
What matches
2 practicesWhen you notice you are flooded, do one calming thing before any decision or hard conversation.
Do not negotiate from panic. Cool the body first, then think. The decision will still be there.
Learn your signs of too high (racing, panicky) and too low (numb, shut down). Aim for the steady middle.
There is a zone where you can feel and still think. Knowing when you are leaving it is half the skill.