Think back to the last time you felt something was becoming overwhelming and you figured out a way to settle or calm yourself. Maybe it was an aggravating chain of emails, or endless traffic, or a repeating argument with a family member. What did you notice as your tension levels were rising? Maybe your chest and upper body were getting tight and painful; maybe you noticed your thoughts whirling around negatively. Now think back to what step(s) you took to let some steam off so you could think and breathe again.

Whatever you did–going for a walk, stepping outside for a cigarette, distracting yourself with cat videos on the internet, complaining to a colleague who is a good listener–was a way of ‘titrating’ your stress. Essentially, you did something that allowed you to switch your state, so you could feel something other than the stress for a moment, and that gave you a little bit of space to pause and collect yourself.

In somatic and body based therapies, we call this ‘titration’. It’s the process of switching between opposite feelings, so that you can experience greater relaxation and ease. This trick of switching states is a very cool thing that we mammals do, and it’s quite intuitive to us: if you watch children trying to learn something new, you’ll notice they ‘switch’ very organically in their play to release release steam when things are getting too challenging or tense. This is how they stay regulated and able to learn.

I offer somatic or body-based therapy in Hamilton, and a lot of my work with clients involves building more stress tolerance. Almost every client I’ve ever worked with has wanted to be able to handle the aggravations and frustrations of adult life with less tension. After all, who doesn’t want stress to affect them less? So, to get there, one of the things we practice is flexible and ongoing titration–a key secret to stress management. We work to find that instinct towards balance and regulation, and we bolster it.

Sometimes, when we’ve had big and overwhelming past experiences, those memories can hijack our ability to titrate. This is one of the indicators of trauma. We actually lose the capacity to feel anything other than the memory. This is what most folks call a flashback. It’s a very scary experience, and it can make people feel very out of control. Luckily, we have tools for trauma recovery that can help you regain your ability to titrate and shift your awareness. EMDR, Somatic Experiencing and Internal Family Systems are my personal favourites of these trauma therapies. They all help, in different ways, regain that flexibility. We’re at a very positive point in the history of clinical therapies for treating trauma–there are a lot of different pathways open, and increasing numbers of clinicians getting trained.

For more discussion of titration in the process of healing trauma, check out this video by Peter Levine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFUZHz6_0XE