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anxiety, Babette Rothschild, dual awareness, panic attacks, psychology, psychotherapy, PTSD, The Body Remembers, trauma, treatment methods, writing about anxiety, writing about trauma
For survivors of trauma, I’m learning that the ability to practice dual awareness is vital to healing.
Dual awareness, according to trauma specialist Babette Rothschild, refers to the ability “to recognize that I’m feeling upset right now…that I might even be having a flashback, but what’s going on with me right now has to do with something from the past, and I’m aware of where I am in the here and now, which is separate from that memory of the past.”
In other words, it is an acceptance of the past and the present at the same time.
Good psychotherapeutic methods for healing involve explorations of both the body and the mind. Quite simply, there are visceral, physiological effects of trauma that aren’t “all in one’s head.” Ask anyone who’s ever had a true panic attack. Rothschild says that trauma survivors don’t always take well to focusing just on the body or just on the mind, but need to develop dual awareness so as not to deny those physical symptoms (of PTSD, of panic, of anxiety, and so on). Eventually, the goal is for the survivor to feel more fully present in the safe space of the now, even while being triggered or flashing back to a traumatic experience.
Of course, when I encounter a compelling topic, I’m already thinking of ways to write about it. The first thing that came to mind was a double or meta narrative, a poem rendered in two columns of text.
No, I haven’t written it yet. But I will.
Here is a short interview with Rothschild on dual awareness, because I find it fascinating:
Does anyone have any book recommendations or any expertise/insight on dual awareness or other trauma healing practices? I’m open like a book.
another writing mom 
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Thanks for the recommendation! I’m learning a lot about how our brains process (and don’t process) trauma–helpful for healing, but just generally fascinating. We are simultaneously both tougher and more tender than we seem. I will definitely read this book.
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There’s a really interesting book on emotional trauma & the mind-body relationship called Healing Back Pain. It’s by an MD named John Sarno. Essentially, his argument is that the subconscious mind (he calls it the unconscious), lacking an understanding of time, persists in experiencing trauma as if it is happening in the present and so, when triggered, feels intense emotion that the conscious mind deems too dangerous to feel — which prompts it to create a physical distraction in the body, to focus your awareness away from the triggered emotion. It uses the autonomic nervous system to restrict blood flow / oxygen to a particular muscle, most often the back, which causes real physical pain. But the pain is caused not by injury, which is what we think — that we’ve hurt ourselves & need to heal / tend to it — but simply by the mind afraid of consciously experiencing emotion, most often rage. So then we obsess over our “injury” and avoid what really hurts.
I may have gotten that somewhat wrong; it’s been a while. But, good book! Cured me of chronic hip pain.
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