Audio – Installing Resources – Tapping In

Before engaging in processing trauma work, it’s important to dedicate some time to equip yourself with some resources to be able to manage any difficult feelings / emotions that may arise.  This is because when someone experiences a traumatic / distressing experience, it can overwhelm the body, and take some of the body’s functions offline.  This blocks the healthy processing of the experience which causes the old experience to be triggered and experienced in the here and now, as if no time has elapsed since the original experience. Therefore to avoid overwhelming / re-traumatising the body again, we try and work within something called the Window of tolerance which is a range within which a person feels emotionally safe and any difficult emotions still feel manageable.  Installing resources is a way of helping a person to stay within their window of tolerance, and keeping their body’s functions online.

Given our imaginations can sometimes cause us difficulties in life, for example imagining the worst, we can use it to install something positive too. The process is to use guided imagery whilst doing some form of bilateral stimulation at the same time. Bilateral stimulation can be done with any activity which alternates from the left and right such as listening to sounds in headphones, tapping on the body, or watching a light.

Here are two audio recordings which give background to the use of tapping as a way of installing resources, which you can listen to and have a go yourself.

Part 1 – Recording of an introduction to tapping, taken from Laurel Parnell’s book called “Tapping-In”. This is Part 1 which gives you the background to “tapping”.

ReflectChangeBe · Part 2 – Starting To Tap In Resources