Sooner or later in our recovery journey we will have to decide where to start processing. Because of the amount of trauma we experienced we cannot possibly process everything and the good news is that we don’t have to. But we will have to use some kind of concept to help us prioritize what to work on and what to leave as it is. I will share a number of different approaches and add my own perspective. Maybe it can help you to make informed choices.

There have been a couple of different rules of thumb for processing over the decades:

 

Where to start

 

The First

Trying to process the first trauma first is an old and outdated approach. It is hardly useful for us because our earliest trauma often happened during a time when it was not stored as a narrative and instead only in fragments of sensory experiences. These kinds of memories are among the hardest to process, most techniques fail altogether and it is simply not a good starting point. With DID we probably don’t even remember the first event or it is split off into parts who are very young. So: probably not a good idea

 

The Worst

Processing the worst memory first is another outdated concept that is not a good idea. Why in all the world would you use the most difficult topic you have to try out a new technique you are not familiar with. When your T has no idea how you respond to that technique and neither do you. Back when this was commonly done for PTSD the plan was to get the worst out of the way and then everything else will be easy. It’s just not a good tactic for complex trauma.

 

The Test

Today it is much more common to use something with medium difficulty for the first attempt with a new technique, like a test run. That way both we and our Ts can gain some experience and security with the process. If you are just starting processing and you are looking for a scene, then one of medium difficulty is a good idea.

 

 

Useful approaches

Processing is never done for its own sake. It serves a purpose. It is supposed to make our life easier or increase our quality of life. That is why it makes sense to keep these factors in mind:

 

The most triggered

Some Ts will ask you to keep a flashback log where you write down the scenes and how often they get triggered. You pick the next scene for processing from the top of the list. This is useful because it makes sure that it eliminates the things that cause the highest number of disruptions in everyday life. It makes sense to work on these scenes. We just need to remember that we do need cooperation with all parts involved to safely confront these memories.

 

The most limiting

Instead of just the quantity you look at the quality of the disruptions as well. You list the flashbacks that keep you from living the life you want to have, either because the disruptions are so dramatic or because the triggers are so mundane that you have to avoid crucial parts of everyday life to keep the flashbacks down. In this case, the memory doesn’t always have to be the worst, just the most limiting for what you want to be or do.

 

Where parts are stuck

Even when we manage to get traumatized parts grounded in the present most of the time, that is often not enough to resolve the trauma. They will get triggered and they will feel like they are back in these very specific scenes. It can help to make a list of the main scenes where parts still get stuck and process these together. There are more gentle rescripting techniques that can work wonders in these cases.

 

 

The reality of complex trauma

The window of tolerance

Real life is not like a textbook. All these ideas of what to prioritize fall short if we simply don’t have the distress tolerance to work with the memory. If we cannot hold it safely it is better not to bring it up on purpose. Without capacity we cannot integrate. We just get overwhelmed or we dissociate. Whenever we try to choose a scene for processing we need to ask ourselves if we have the capacity for that. And sometimes we need to move the worst and the most triggered and the most limiting scenes to the back of the list because we aren’t ready to handle them yet.

 

The Fragment

It is a lot more common in complex trauma treatment to pick only a fragment of a scene (could be a single sensory experience or a 20 second sequence) and process that isolated from the whole memory. We are working our way from the very edge towards the core. That way we slowly eliminate more and more of the scene until it becomes small enough to manage the rest. This can lead to important victories that already change the level of freedom in our life even without facing the whole trauma memory.

 

The Trigger

Triggers are just a special kind of fragment and under specific circumstances they can be addressed without having to dive into the memory at all. All we basically do is work on staying grounded when the trigger is present until our brain learns that the trigger is not the trauma. It doesn’t automatically lead to trauma. It is just a sensory thing. If the stars align this is a useful way to reduce certain flashbacks without a deep dive into the memory. We just need excellent grounding skills and cooperation. More

 

The End

(CN: non-graphic examples of what might have happened after a traumatizing event)

Sometimes when the trauma itself is far beyond our window of tolerance we can still look at the things that followed after the trauma. Maybe some kind of recovery phase, medical attention, being left alone etc. These things have often been traumatizing in themselve and we could use some processing here. They also represent the end of the experience. Realizing that it is over is one of the key elements of presentification that leads to trauma integration. Processing the very end can sometimes help to find closure for the whole scene

 

The Cluster?

Something you can find in literature is the idea that if we process a fragment that was a common element of many different trauma experiences, it could resolve all of them at once. This could be a good strategy when there isn’t much structural dissociation. With DID, what we could potentially get is a cluster of different parts who all get triggered at the same time. I have had this happen with only 2 parts getting triggered by the same fragment but with different scenes and it was more than could be dealt with in the session. We had to stop processing and it was only because of our advanced skills that we didn’t get fully overwhelmed. I cannot recommend this approach for DID.

 

 

With all that being said, this is how we pick scenes right now:

 

What we are ready for

We work with parts and when we are ready and we know that we can contain it we give them some space to share the memory. We write about it, draw it, tell our T a little bit about it. Then we test how much realization and presentification we can achieve with these parts through plain old grounding and playing ‘same but different‘ (what americans usually learn as ‘Past vs Present’). Next we try reframing and cognitive restructuring. Many times that is actually enough to find a resolution and no further confrontation is needed. Work smarter, not harder.

When we notice that we cannot get any further but more work is needed because the pain stays on the surface of the mind and the system, we process as much as necessary. We try rescripting first because it is very effective for our parts. We don’t dig up topics and we don’t force anything. It is more like skimming whatever floats to the top. These are sometimes the worst, sometimes the most limiting, sometimes the most triggered things for these specific parts. They are usually the scenes parts are most stuck in. But most of all, they are the scenes that present themselves as naturally ready for processing.

We don’t pick them artificially and pull them from the depth to confront them. When we process whatever is on the surface already it is usually easier and more gentle. Whatever we do artificially will feel harder and creates a greater chance that we are not ready for it. This is a personal opinion. I am old enough that I was dragged through ‘the first’ and ‘the worst’ when that was the trend. It was nothing but hard (and ended up not being the first or the worst at all…). With all I know today, I think our next scenes for processing are best found on the surface of our on-going inner work. The right scene is the one we are ready for. They will come forth and present themself. Maybe we can stop over-thinking it and just do the work that is right in front of us. We will get to the other things eventually.

 

Sometimes people are forced to rush their treatment because they have limited access to help. It makes everything harder and it creates the need for rules of thumb that don’t follow natural processes. In these cases I would go for the priorities listed as ‘useful approaches’. If you have to do it, that sucks but it is what it is. I just wish you had the time to follow a gentler path for recovery. Trauma healing does take time and I don’t think that rushing it improves the results. It just increases the risk of retraumatization and destabilization. I hope that whatever you choose works out for you and you get to process things the way you want.