Healing Trauma Safely with Pendulation, Resourcing, and Titration

In this episode, we dive into the concept of pendulation, a foundational process in trauma healing, particularly within Somatic Experiencing. We explore how pendulation involves oscillating between states of distress (activation) and calm (regulation), allowing the nervous system to release stored tension without getting stuck.

We also discuss two essential techniques that support pendulation:

• Resourcing: Developing internal or external anchors that evoke safety and calm, serving as a foundation for navigating trauma.
• Titration: Processing trauma in small, manageable doses to prevent overwhelm and build resilience.

Pendulation, the movement between activation and deactivation, teaches the nervous system to flow between stress and calm, helping to reduce hypersensitivity to triggers. It’s a practice that rewires the brain and body for greater resilience.

Key Takeaways:

1. Retelling trauma without these techniques can be retraumatizing.
2. Reflect on your existing resources that bring comfort and safety.
3. Pendulation allows for processing emotions without getting stuck.

For more personalized support, explore our 1:1 coaching program or look for somatic or trauma-trained practitioners familiar with these techniques.

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Transcript

0:00  
Welcome to regulate and rewire an anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong, and I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences and tangible research based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind and reclaim your life. Thanks for being here. Now, let's dive in. 

Welcome back. Today, I am going to talk about a really important process or technique to understand on your healing journey, especially if you are working through healing trauma. And this is a term I used last week, which is called pendulation. And in last week's episode, I explained that pendulation refers to this moving back and forth between states of distress and activation, and then states of calm and regulation. And this back and forth. Pendulation helps our nervous system relieve tension without getting stuck in the intensity of trauma. And in order to talk about pendulation Today, I first want to familiarize you with two other techniques, the technique of resourcing and the technique of titration. And all three of these techniques originate from and are foundational to a particular modality called somatic experiencing. And if these techniques today really resonate with you, these are things that you can expect to be supported with and led through from a somatic experiencing practitioner or other somatic and trauma trained practitioners. 

So let's start with resourcing. Let's talk about what it is and why it's important. Resourcing is a somatic approach used to help you feel safe, grounded and stable before engaging in trauma processing. Resourcing can also be used in the moment reactively, when there are moments of high activation or more shutdown, and we just need to resource and feel safe, grounded and stable, but in the context of a more structured trauma healing, we resource first. We help our clients find that sense of safety, groundedness and stability before we ever engage in any kind of trauma processing. And the idea behind resourcing is to develop and access this internal or external set of resources. And resources, if you could see me, are in air quotes, because they are limitless in variety. They are anything that help you evoke a feeling of safety, of calm, of capability, of strength, and they can truly be anything that helps you feel more secure or centered when you face stress or activation. 

So some examples of resourcing might be petting your dog, looking out a window, stepping outside. It could be engaging in a visual orienting or somatic containment practice. It could be recalling a positive memory of a comforting person or place, maybe resourcing for you looks like focusing on physical sensations, such as the feeling of your feet on the ground or taking a deep breath. It could be holding a warm cup of tea, listening to calming music, or identifying a personal strength and an invitation. Maybe to you right now is to hit pause or later on, think about what resources you already have. What is different resourcing practices or techniques that you already use, that you already find regulating, stabilizing or calming. So resourcing is something that you can explore on your own. Like I said, you can think about it right now, come back later, make a list for yourself, or if you're working with a practitioner, they will or should, help you identify and build upon these resources. 

And the goal is to anchor yourself to a sense of security and remind yourself that you have the capacity for calm and groundedness, even when anxiety or trauma tries to convince you otherwise. And in trauma, work resourcing is essential because it establishes that foundation of safety before you address more challenging or distressing material. You might think of it like you're preparing to sail, and you wouldn't head out into that storm without a really strong anchor. Similarly, resourcing can act as your anchor while you navigate the storms of trauma healing. Resourcing is this crucial foundation because it allows you to safely explore more challenging emotions and sensations without getting overwhelmed. 

Which brings us to the second technique, which is titration. And this is about processing trauma, or just hard parts of your healing, step by step, breaking distress into small, manageable doses, rather than confronting everything at once. And it's this gradual approach that. Prevents our system from becoming overwhelmed. It prevents re traumatization, and this helps you to experience just enough discomfort to move you towards healing. We do not heal. We do not reintegrate or reprocess traumatic experiences comfortably. There is going to be a measure of discomfort, but titration ensures that this comes in small, manageable doses. And so in practice, this means you pause when emotions become really intense, and you return to your resource, and then you revisit that material in even smaller increments. And over time, what this method does is it builds resilience and expands your capacity to heal safely. You become more comfortable with discomfort. You build a capacity, just like you build capacity with weight lifting one rep at a time, slowly but surely, you get stronger muscles. But if you were to go up to a weight that was way too heavy and try to force it, you're going to have injury. There's going to be re traumatization of your physical body, and we can re traumatize our psychological self as well. And titration respects our body's natural rhythm. It ensures that healing remains effective and sustainable, and it can be really frustrating. Sometimes we think if I can just get it all out in one go, then I can heal faster. But remember, trauma is the result of something happening too big, too fast, too soon, and the healing, the antidote to that is often this really well resourced, slow, titrated movement through reprocessing. 

So I want to give an example of what working with a practitioner without using titration, versus using titration, and what this might look like using the example of a car accident. And I want to give you that context. In case this is a sensitive subject for you know that I won't be giving any detailed descriptions of the event itself, but instead sharing more generally the context of exploring it with titration and without titration. Let's start with the example without titrating. So imagine somebody who has experienced a traumatic car accident. In a therapy session, they are asked to dive straight into recalling every detail of the event, the sights, the sounds, the emotions, as they retell this traumatic experience, their brain and their body also relive the trauma and all of it at once, the sounds, the sights, the emotions, the thoughts, and their body starts to respond with intense anxiety. Heart starts racing, there's shallow breathing, maybe feelings of panic. This experience becomes overwhelming, and it may even push them to the point of shutdown. Their nervous system cannot cope with the flood of emotions and sensations, making it harder for them to heal in the long run. Now take the same experience in a session with a practitioner who practices titration. So imagine the same person who's experienced a traumatic car accident, except this time in this approach, they start by focusing on a small, less intense part of the memory, like, can you remember only the moment before the crash? They pause, and then they return to a calm state using their resourcing. Maybe it's focusing on their breath or a soothing memory, and then over time, they gradually add more details, perhaps the sounds of the brakes or the sensations of holding the steering wheel, each step is manageable, allowing their nervous system to process that traumatic experience bit by bit without feeling overwhelmed, allowing their nervous system to process different aspects of that experience while being paired with a sense of safety, and this is oftentimes how we can take these really hard events from our past that feel like they still paralyze us in the present, and decrease the hold that they have on us in the present. Is because we're able to, in a really safe container, revisit, reprocess some of these things, paralleled with safety, with a sense of choice and context and manageability, and by taking it slow and addressing that traumatic experience in smaller doses, the person can build resilience and process the event, and it reduces the risk of retraumatization. 

I also want to make a point really clear here that you do not always have to retell your traumatic experience to heal trauma. One of the beautiful things about somatic healing and body based memory is that we can actually stay in the present moment and look at the ways that our past lived experience is still showing up. The ways that it's still frozen in our system, and even when staying in the present moment with these overwhelming sensations or emotions or memories that come up, we still will use resourcing. We still will use a titrated approach as we move towards those overwhelming experiences. And I want to make that clear, because a lot of times we have talked with clients who are like, I don't know if I can remember the details of my trauma or I don't want to get into the story of that thing that happened to me. And the thing that we always reassure them is that you oftentimes don't have to, we can stay in the present moment and look at the imprint or the present day impact of those experiences. And work there, while other people do find that going back and retelling in this safe resource, titrated and in a moment, we'll talk about pendulation. This pendulated way is really effective for their healing journey as well. 

And these concepts of resourcing, titration and pendulation can be used not just with the retelling or the reprocessing of trauma, but in any situation in which you're processing or you're thinking about something that feels challenging for you to do it in this small and well resourced way. 

Now this leads us to pendulation, which essentially refers to this oscillation between titration and resourcing, titration and resourcing a little bit of distress, then back to calm and regulation and safety and somatic therapists will guide individuals through a titrated, manageable amount of a traumatic experience or challenging emotion, and then help them to ground with something that makes them feel safe. And this is designed to dampen the effects of that experience or those overwhelming emotions in two main ways, first, by pairing it with things that make people feel most secure, like we talked about and secondly, by teaching and training your mind and body that there are ways out of distress. You don't have to stay stuck in that place that feels overwhelming.

So I want to give a really quick summary of these three terms, because I know they start to blur together, especially when talking about them together. Resourcing is a technique that helps you feel calm and safe by focusing on things that bring you comfort. It could be a soothing memory, a sensation, a practice, and these act as an anchor to return to when emotions get overwhelming, and so maybe take some time to pause and ask, what are current tools, resources that work for me when I'm starting to feel upset or overwhelmed. What are the things that I usually turn to for comfort that feel helpful in a productive way? 

Then we have titration. Titration is about controlling how much of the trauma is addressed at once, breaking it into small pieces to prevent the overwhelm. 

And then pendulation Is this movement between activation, feeling the trauma or emotion a small, titrated, manageable amount, and then deactivation, returning to safety. So it is this movement between activation, deactivation, activation regulation, teaching the nervous system that it can move between states of stress and calm without getting stuck, and this natural oscillation back and forth, back and forth, also helps the body release some of that unneeded, stored survival energy. 

Now we often have clients share with us that they don't want to feel things like anger or fear or grief because it'll take over. They're afraid to experience these heavy emotions because they won't be able to come back from it. Or we have many clients who come in asking for a tool to help them so that they don't have to feel anger or anxiety, and while there are absolutely practices like a tense and release or a wall push or shaking it out that can help you move through and release some of the intensity of those emotions, and those tools have a time in place and can be really, really supportive resources. But the ultimate goal of all of this work is that the best practice for anger isn't always turning to a tool to minimize the anger, but actually the intentional practice of being with it, of learning to allow anger without judgment, to be able to experience it within a container of safety, to allow anger to be present and valid without sometimes the harmful behaviors that come as a result of mismanaged anger, and that is what these practices allow you to do over time. It allows you to increase your ability to experience things within this container of safety. 

And so when you experience trauma, your nervous system becomes hypersensitive to the things relating or feeling familiar to that original experience. Experience, and this is the process that, over time, decreases that hypersensitivity, so that you aren't as easily triggered, and so that the past experience doesn't control so much of your present day life. This slow resource, titrated and pendulated experience rewires your brain and your nervous system. 

So resourcing is the anchor or the safe harbor. Titration is the storm presented in these bite sized pieces, and pendulation is the ability to sail between the storm and safe harbor so that we do not become overwhelmed and overcome with this work. And it is by intentionally practicing pendulation or being supported through this practice in healing sessions with a trauma informed practitioner, we train our mind and body to manage discomfort without being overwhelmed, while also knowing there's always that safe place to return to. 

And today's conversation around these three terms was twofold. Number one, I want to familiarize you with the language that is used in this somatic, holistic nervous system, trauma healing space, so that when these words are used, you have the context for what they mean. And the second reason I wanted to share each of these is for you to reflect on the current or past types of support that you received. Do you feel like the practitioner did? Or is moving you through these sometimes overwhelming reflections on experiences or emotions in a resourced, titrated way, using pendulation to keep you from being overwhelmed. Because one of the things that we hear really, really often from clients who end up coming to work with us in practice is that part of their therapy experience was that they were asked within the first few sessions with a new therapist to retell and relive the hardest moments of their life, they often left sessions feeling more overwhelmed and dysregulated than when they showed up. And healing sessions of any kind are not going to be comfortable or easy. We've already touched and we've already talked about that, but they should not feel overwhelming. 

So taking some time to settle in and just reflect. Do I feel like these are techniques that I would benefit from in the healing work that I'm doing? And if you're not getting that where you are, what does it look like for you to look elsewhere? If that's an option for you, and if it's not, then are there ways that you can practice this on your own, or introduce this to the practitioner that you are working with and say, Hey, I would like to do more of this coming in and out, because I've often felt overwhelmed in how we are navigating my healing Journey. It is scary, and it is okay, and it is so important for you to be able to advocate for yourself and the type of work that feels like what you need to your coach, your therapist, your providers, your doctors, anybody, and to remember that we are there to serve you and any good worth a darn provider is going to be grateful for that self advocacy will hold space and invite you into that self advocacy if there are things that you can share with them that will make that process better for you.

and now you have this language or these terms to ask, Is this something that they do in their work? Is this something that they're trained in, that they're familiar with? If you feel like it would serve you. 

all right. Takeaways from today's episode number one is that retelling your traumatic experiences without titration and resourcing can re traumatize your system, your brain and your body. Oftentimes don't know the difference between retelling and re experiencing that event. 

Number two is just another final invitation to reflect on the resources, the resourcing that you already have available to you By intentionally focusing on these things, by writing them down, by thinking about them, you are going to have quicker access to them in the moments that you need it most. 

And number three is just a reminder that this pendulation teaches your nervous system to oscillate between states of distress and calm, helping you to regulate emotions without getting stuck in any one particular state. 

And if this is a process of healing that resonates with you, these are all things that our practitioners at rise as we integrate into our sessions, and we would love to support you in our one on one coaching program. 

And if you're looking for support outside rise as we then some verbiage to look out for is. Is things like somatic experiencing, somatic trauma trained. You can even email or ask in your first couple sessions if the practitioner is familiar with titration, resourcing, pendulation and what that might look like in sessions. What is it that these practitioners do to make sure that they don't flood your system. And all three of these practices are something that should be integrated into trauma informed sessions and care these are also things that you can potentially visit and practice on your own in something like my monthly guided release class, or what I'm going to give you for next week's podcast episode is a guided practice that allows you to not just have what this week is, which is the informational learning. But my hope is that with the practice next week, you will also inside your body, be able to have some experiential learning with these three techniques and skills as well. 

All right, until then, sending so much hope and healing your way and I'll see you next week. 

Thanks for listening to another episode of The regulate and rewire podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a five star review to help us get these powerful tools out to even more people who need them. And if you yourself are looking for more personalized support and applying what you've learned today, consider joining me inside rise my monthly mental health membership and nervous system healing space, or apply for our one on one anxiety and depression coaching program, restore. I've shared a link for more information to both in the show notes. Again, thanks so much for being here, and I'll see you next time you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai