traumatherapy
traumatherapy
phase 2: train the tiger
phase 2: train the tiger
Wall of text for now but I'll make it look nice, promise. It works.
The nibbana protocol trauma therapy is deceptively simple yet (almost) effortlessly effective. The activities are enjoyable and the release is tangible and permanent, though bigger trauma takes more repetitions. Efforts are taken during the day, with a physical and auditory anchor to see you through the difficult ‘looking’ part, and then a somatic release phase toward the end. The climax is a mini-party that can feel positively orgasmic. The process is then consolidated during the REM cycles of your sleep, and you wake up in a better world.
This is the devkit but you are the developer. Nobody can see inside someone else’s mind, so you need to identify the code you want gone and take steps to wipe it. Luckily it is easy, and, dare I say… fun.
Step 1: Mindfulness-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Venue: Cycling meditation or moderate stimulation meditation
Purpose: Increase tonic dopamine while allowing phasic bursts, export trauma
~30 minutes
… or running or brisk walking or anything else that you can do with both focus and awareness, and the ability to stop and use your phone. I recommend rhythmic music like 90’s trance.
Find your rhythm and settle in. Focus on the motion and let your face go slack. Bring to mind the code that is bothering you; for example school hood trauma. Hold it there and focus on the ride. You are not trying to ‘do’ anything with it.
Allow the code to spool out of your mind naturally as your legs turn and your dopamine drips. When you reach the point where a line of code is repeating in your head and feels ‘complete’, stop and get your phone out. Text yourself the experience and feelings; write it down and do not use voice messages. The writing keeps it concise, removes emotional charge, and allows you to review it later.
Get back on your bike, repeat. This cycle may go on multiple times and that is good. Keep the exported code ‘matter of fact’ and do not sink into anger or victimhood. You may cry; that is good. You may feel surges of joy; that is good. You may feel anything. It is all good.
What we are doing here is allowing the snake to rear its head. We are not trying to kill it. We are seeing it for what it is. If you are able to see how the trauma occurred due to a desire for self-preservation, or some other evolutionary purpose, that is good. Allow it all to just be. The snake was a friend but now it wants out.
Step 2: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Venue: Cycling meditation or moderate stimulation meditation
Purpose: Increase tonic dopamine while reducing phasic bursts; compile new rule
~30 minutes
Continue with the high stimulation meditation or switch to a moderate stimulation one. Rocking or humming can be good here, but anything goes. Whatever you are doing, make sure you are settling into a calmer, more relaxed rhythm.
The new rule we are compiling is not so much a conscious thing as an observation of the reality of what happened and how you felt. An acceptance of it; this happened to a person who I used to be and it left an imprint. It was not my fault, not intentional, and holding onto it only hurts me. The code is from an old system; I am no longer that system.
Allow the snake to be. Let it slither around. See it in all its glory. See how the snake was actually a response to protect this idea of self you have; either physical or mental. See how it is not something that came about with the intention of hurting you; it was born out of the desire to protect. But the you it was protecting is no more; you are a new person.
We are allowing the snake out of your brain now. It has wanted out all this time; that is why it kept rearing its head. But we kept grabbing its tail in an attempt to kill it. We were preventing it from being released. The steady drip of dopamine is what will help this snake on its way. The drip is the loom and the snake is the thread and the weaver is weaving the tapestry of your life. Let it happen.
Step 3: Somatic Embodiment
Venue: Sitting meditation
Purpose: Further increase tonic dopamine while reducing phasic dopamine and approaching equanimity; allow the thought-formations to spool out
~20 minutes
This is where we allow the snake to leave our brain. The spool of tonic dopamine is running and we have the ability to allow a gentle recoding to happen, as opposed to the aggressive carving that occurs with phasic dopamine.
Do not worry about doing meditation right; there is no right. Do not worry about focusing on your breath unless it comes easily. Just sit. Feel the sensations in your body. All of your body. Allow your attention to move to wherever they are strongest. Allow them to release.
Do not try to sit completely still; let yourself to move gently when your body wants to. Allow your head to loll and your fingers to slowly stroke. The aim is to just be in your body and allow your body to be.
There may be pleasant sensations in your hands, or jagged spikes up your spine. For me there are often pulsing and warping sensations around the face and temples. The sensations might be within your body or without it. You might feel the air a few centimetres from your thighs or have quantum strings of energy manifesting in your cranium. You may feel silken sand in your joints or an electric hum in your skull. You might feel anything; that is good. Let it be.
In extreme cases you may find yourself jerking, or even need to get up and do some weird witch-doctor stuff. Do it. This is all somatic release. This is the snake, on its way out. You are the developer; you are the snake charmer. You do not grab or snatch; you coax it gently with hypnotic motions and you just keep moving calmly and without agenda until it is completely out of the basket.
Step 4: Neural network consolidation
Venue: Dancing in your bedroom (or sitting; anything goes)
Purpose: Rapidly increase tonic dopamine; close the basket so the snake stays gone
~5 min
This is the fun part. Once the sensations in your body have died down you know that the snake is out of the basket and it’s time to close the lid and keep it out. Sorry snakey-boy; I know you were trying to help. But those abusers are gone now, and you can go too. Thank you. Really. You helped me, back then.
So what we do here is we crank up the volume and get the dopamine firing like crazy. Not too crazy or you might have a seizure (or encounter nibbana), pretty bloody crazy. The reason for this is to consolidate the attractors in your brain or some other sciencey jargon. Remember that phasic dopamine is how we learn? Well the previous steps were lining up a new algorithm of thought which does not involve the snake, and this step is consolidating that algo and getting the synapses to bind.
You can put on your favourite music and start to dance. You can do your favourite yoga pose and breathe deeply. You can spread your arms to the sun and smile your biggest smile. Whatever gives you the right amount of tingles. The more you believe this will work, the more it will work. Because dopamine! Dopamine is belief and belief is your friend! You are using that chisel to carve a new groove. This is the same chisel that carved the snake in the first place so you know it works.
Or you maybe just sit there in meditation and start breathing deeply and intentionally from your diaphragm all the way to your head. You swing your head around and get blood to your cranium, feeling the synapses realign. The bigger the trauma, the bigger the ecstasy; the release when I erased my trauma of self was... well... I can't even begin to describe how incredible it felt.
But…
Don’t worry if there’s no major release here. Sometimes it takes multiple passes of the planer, and the process will continue at night while you sleep.
Interim:
Do your normal daily life and maybe read happy things or spend time in nature. Be with your loved ones and do something you like. You might develop a processing headache; that’s good. Means you’re processing. Ha.
Step 5: Sleep
Do not drink or do drugs or anything else that will damage your sleep architecture. Sleep is where your brain consolidates and learns. The REM phase of sleep is filled with both tonic and phasic dopamine and it is how our brains integrate the lessons of the day.
You might have some weird and wonderful dreams. Write these dreams down if you remember them; keep your phone by your bed. These are, in my experience, evidence that the trauma is on its way out. And all of this data will feed back into your confidence in the process, which will increase your dopaminergic arsenal, which will improve the efficacy of subsequent sessions.
In short:
Ride your bike.
Go for a walk.
Sit down for a bit.
Go mad for a bit.
Have a good night’s sleep.
Not so hard really. It’s all about manipulating your dopaminergic tone.
And part of the way you do that is by having fun.
So enjoy this. You are saying so long and farewell and thank you to all those snakes.
They were born to protect you. They did for a while. But now it’s time to let them on their way.
The weaver in you will take these threads and place them into the tapestry of your life and you will feel whole in ways you never have before.
Enjoy the ride!
/jb202509121605
PS. all of these steps are from the buddha // righteffort