Understanding trauma and the window of tolerance

This programme supports care, it does not replace it, and it is not a trauma treatment. At no point will it ask you to recount or revisit what happened to you: work on the memory itself is done with a trained professional, for good reasons explained in section 14. If you have suicidal thoughts, if you are hurting yourself, if you are currently in danger — ongoing violence, a situation you cannot leave — the priority is not to understand: contact your local emergency services today, or someone who can get you to safety. And if reading becomes too difficult, stop: that is information, not failure.

1. Before you start

A noise in the street, and you are on your feet before you have understood. You avoid a road, an area, a smell, without always knowing why. You sleep badly, you startle, you are short with people who have done nothing. Or the reverse: you are far away, cottony, watching yourself act, and people find you calm when you are nowhere at all.

And you have been told it is over, that you should move on, that others have been through worse.