💪 Your Strengths and Resources
Before focusing on challenges, let us identify experiences that built your strengths. This is not optional positive thinking — it is clinically essential. EMDR processing requires resources: internal states of resilience, competence, and connection that the system can draw on when processing activates.
Positive Memory Networks
Just as trauma builds negative memory networks, positive experiences build positive ones. Memories of competence, connection, courage, love, belonging — these are real resources that EMDR can strengthen and draw on.
- A time I handled something difficult well: _______________
- A relationship in which I felt genuinely safe and valued: _______________
- A quality I have that has served me: _______________
- Something I have survived that I did not think I would: _______________
- A moment of genuine pride or satisfaction: _______________
For each one, spend a moment letting yourself feel what it felt like. Where do you feel that in your body? Let yourself stay there for a moment. Add slow BLS — alternate taps — while holding the positive feeling. This is resource installation: you are strengthening the neural connections to positive material.
People with complex trauma often find this exercise unexpectedly difficult. The negative networks are more accessible than the positive ones. If that is the case for you, this is important information — and it is one of the reasons this program emphasises daily positive tracking (Three Good Things) from early on. You have been building this capacity throughout the program.