A stressful experience can create a change in your body’s nervous systems “standard” way of organizing your ongoing mood, thought and behavior.  When severe enough, experience can alter the physical nervous system’s process of survival. This altered survival process becomes part of your “standard” life experience.  Where you once felt at ease most of the time you begin to feel pending doom most of the time - after a life threatening experience.  You can’t be talked out of this feeling because survival is the body’s primary job.

 

Mental processes may even develop to protect the new standard way of experiencing life with pending doom. Words like, “Yep, I’m fine. They’re the ones that need help.” will attempt to distract everyone from the feeling. Thoughts may maintain or compound the truth that there is pending doom. “This ain’t going to change. I’ll just have to live with it as a consequence of war.” Like a scar of valor.

 

Pending doom can seem to be a core experience - the new standard to live with, but it can be changed.  To change the experience of living with pending doom the nervous system must experience something to alter the pending doom as the standard. Usually, this means the body needs to experience the resolve - feeling at ease most of the time.

 

How do you do this? Consider life as a revolving process - a cycle, birth, growth, maturity, decline then its over. The same for experience - a cycle, the beginning, the intensity, the satisfaction or dissatifaction, the disapation and then its over. Simple. However, in stressful situations, especially of long duration the cycle doesn’t get to complete. Where survival is most important conclusion or outcome, which mean the threat has passed, are not significantly experienced. Alerted systems remain alert.

 

The Triage Method of Emotional Therapy honors this cycle for change. The word emotion refers to the body’s physical nervous system’s processes. The method is how the cycle is supported to allow change.