ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how to understand the issues and symptoms described by the clients as manifestations of the "living legacy" of trauma. In the context of life threat, survival is a necessity. Being able to consciously witness the experience, preserve a sense of time, place, and identity, and clearly encode a memory of what happened frame-by-frame is an unnecessary luxury when human beings are in immediate danger. In traumatogenic environments where the threat of danger is ever-present, it is more adaptive for both children and adults when their bodies are conditioned to maintain a readiness for potential danger. Because survival depends upon sympathetic highs and parasympathetic lows to drive animal defense responses, these clients' nervous systems have been conditioned to dysregulate under stress. For trauma treatment to be effective, no matter what methods we employ, survivors have to be able to integrate past and present.
