“Let’s process this.”
“I haven’t really had time to process it.”
“You need to process what happened.”
The word “processing” gets thrown around a lot, but what does it actually mean?
Processing means digesting and integrating information from experiences we’ve had–often focusing on painful, complicated, or traumatic experiences that were too much for our systems to cope with and integrate at the time. To break it down further, processing can mean:
Verbal
To subject to examination and analysis
To distribute or arrange systematically
To compress into a short summary
Somatic
To integrate sensory information received so that an action or response is generated
To soften, decompose, or break down by heat and moisture or chemical action
To convert into absorbable form
Essentially, we can process information verbally by talking ABOUT our experiences, and we can process somatically WITHIN our bodies, centering and attending to the direct sensory information that the experience recorded in our nervous system. There are a variety of interventions that can help you accomplish this.
Both verbal and somatic processing coalesce into how we assimilate experiences into memories, and both are incredibly powerful and important on the road to trauma recovery. Verbal processing might include telling your story to a trusted loved one or therapist, sharing in a support group, or writing about what happened (either publicly or privately). Somatic processing is harder to pin down but can be facilitated with bodywork, intentional movement, dance, sex, or specific therapeutic interventions directly targeting sensory information.
An integrative “both/and” approach is often the most potent path to letting you process. However, our culture (including the mental health system) tends to overemphasize the verbal approach over the somatic, and this imbalance can be at the root of many stalls in healing.
Our society puts a lot of stock in our intellectual understanding and external validation, with less emphasis on internal validation and receiving information directly from our bodies. As a whole, we are largely dissociated from our bodies (and, relatedly, the land where we live–more on this later). Combine that dissociation with a lot of overwhelming experiences we all go through, individually and collectively, and we are left with our society’s mental health crisis we see today. In this way, mental health symptoms are our culture’s lost embodiment crying out for attention–far from the personal flaws or failings as we often misperceive them to be.
What is trauma processing therapy?
Therapists have different approaches to help clients process trauma. One particularly effective and efficient technique I use quite often in my practice is Accelerated Resolution Therapy (A.R.T.). Accelerated Resolution Therapy uses eye movements, somatic sensation processing, and memory reconsolidation to digest the sensory information from trauma without forcing the client to describe in words what they experienced.
My overall practice integrates both verbal and somatic processing, but my use of A.R.T. specifically with clients more closely resembles the somatic path, per the descriptions above. With A.R.T., I guide you to orient directly to the sensory information that makes up your traumatic memory (rather than avoiding into a verbal and social realm), notice how it moves and shifts, soften it, and thus transform the information into an absorbable (and more flexible) form.
A.R.T. allows you to refile the information in a way that is no longer actively harmful to you. In fact, you get to refile the memory with new pleasant sensations that organically arise when you discover your unique resolution.
What does processing trauma feel like?
Processing trauma can look and feel different for everyone, but some common themes emerge. Typically, there is some reluctance or resistance in facing a traumatic memory. This is a natural reaction to a trauma, which by definition overwhelms our ability to cope with the resources we had at the time of the event. The key is that in reality, that moment is over, and in this moment we can discover new resources.
Approaching a traumatic memory may bring up a variety of feelings, including fear, confusion, shame, guilt, numbness, anger, or sadness. You might feel like you are back in the scene again. Noticing whatever emotions and sensations come up is a key part of trauma processing. Though alarm bells may be going off, there is absolutely nothing dangerous happening. You are safe–in fact, holding space for these emotion bodies, you are doing the loving, essential work of recognizing and allowing your body’s sensations to exist and to soften. Paradoxically, it is allowing the sensations to be present with you momentarily that ultimately allows them to shift and release permanently.
When using a processing technique that’s right for you, you will quickly be able to sense greater distance between yourself and sensory information from the scene you’re processing. This allows you to digest and see a new perspective. It will increasingly feel less like you are reliving the experience and more like you are seeing it from afar. This distance makes space for the creative aspect of healing, wherein your mind discovers a new scene that gives you a deep sense of resolution. The resolution and the tools you used throughout the session become integrated as the resources you carry with you out of the session and into your life.
Working with a skilled A.R.T. therapist, this discovery can be an incredibly empowering and surprisingly playful, enjoyable experience. Not only do you release the pain, but you actually discover the capacity to allow pleasant sensations to emerge naturally in its place. Clients usually report feelings of immense relief, empowerment, confidence, and hope after processing their trauma. They may especially notice a novel sense of lightness or tender care throughout their body.
What are the steps of trauma processing?
The first step of trauma processing is deciding that you are ready to do it. It is a truly personal decision when (and indeed, if) you are ready to let go of the trauma as you know it. There is always some comfort in the familiar, and sometimes these are events that we’ve carried with us for years, even decades—events that we use to define our life and even our sense of self. It is always an individual’s right to keep with the status quo if it is working for them. Often, by the time a person reaches out to a therapist, they’ve decided that the way things are is no longer working for them or is no longer tolerable, and they want change in their life.
Once you are ready to proceed, you’ll determine what you are going to process. This is again a decision only you can make, but a thoughtful therapist can help if you need support in deciding, even if they don’t know any of the details about your trauma or what happened.
Setting an intention for how you want to feel after the session is the initial step of an A.R.T. session. Then, the therapist uses their hand to guide your eyes to move from side to side while you’re invited to remember the traumatic scene you’ve chosen to process. You are not talking about what happened—just seeing the images in your mind’s eye. The therapist will pause intermittently to facilitate breathwork, sensation scans, and bodywork shifts for the client. Though the therapist gently guides the client, as the client you are always in control of the pace and when you are ready to move on to the next step.
A.R.T systematically welcomes the client to revisit the sensory information that represents their traumatic scene, attending to their body’s signals along the way, and then changing the images and sensations attached to the memory. Upon changing your images, clients experience a tremendous shift in their perspective and emotions towards the event. In A.R.T. we invite clients to “keep the knowledge, lose the pain.”
Why is processing trauma helpful?
Processing trauma is a liberating experience that, when done comprehensively, can reset the nervous system to a renewed state of flexibility, security, and wellbeing. The inner resources you discover during an A.R.T. session replace the pain and patterns that were previously attached to the traumatic memory prior to processing. These resources support you as you head into your life with a new perspective on what happened to you and with a new relationship to your inner experiences. Beyond a decrease in mental health symptoms, many people report improvements in self esteem, intimate relationships, and general ease of functioning once they have processed and resolved a trauma.
Healing does not mean life is perfection or that we are never uncomfortable or in pain again. Rather, healing means we are better able to hold both the pleasant and unpleasant experiences of life—both of which are inevitable—with greater sense of wholeness, confidence, and equanimity. The more we process our backlog of trauma, the better we can ride the waves of life as they come. And the lighter, freer, and more creative we are to take on the challenges of our lifetime. Possibilities abound.
How do you tend to process things? Is there an area of your life (past, present, or future) you could use support in attending to? I am happy to offer a safe space for both verbal and somatic trauma processing at Conscious Practice. I’m here for free consultations if you are ready to process, heal, and integrate in a deeper way or just have questions about this process.