From Babette Rothschild…

No3 in Series from the book:  8 Keys to safe trauma recovery.
This below is from the series of short videos summarising the book.

#3 Remembering is Not Required

“One of the holes we have in offerings from professionals and in self help books books is that every process requires that we process revue, revisit the memories of whatever the horrible thing [or things]  was that happened to them as part of a trauma recovery program.

And, more and more I think it’s being recognised that for some people that is not a good strategy. There are several reasons why it might not be…

The first reason, maybe the most important reason is that not everyone wants to do that. And there’s no reason why someone should be forced to revisit  memories if that does not appeal to them.

An other very important reason is some people become worse rather than better from revisiting, reliving, trauma memories. It doesn’t serve everybody well.

And so I wanted to reinforce and maybe introduce for some people that is not necessary to remember and relive and revisit in order to recover.

For some people its useful.
For others its not, and they need other options.
For the people who don’t want to, they also need other options.

In general, people who recover from trauma on their own don’t flood themselves with memories again and again.
They may review for short periods of time or review in bits and pieces
but they go on..
and their memories naturally drift  into the past.

Often people who are still struggling will obsess with trying to figure out,
and then the therapy models reinforce that obsession with tracking down details and reviewing.

We can celebrate our survival and move on.

This is about options from which people can choose
I want a big smorgasboard  I want to add more dishes to the table.”