Healing the extremes of trauma responses – the pendulation effect

Healing the extremes of trauma responses – the pendulation effect. Reflecting on the ping-pong effect of trauma responses

I present something different for my blog – a video of me reflecting on the ping-pong effect of trauma responses. When one’s window of tolerance is barely non-existent, it is hard to find the place where we can feel our way through trauma responses while also keeping our cognitive mind online to process it. It is common to go from one extreme to another.

I did this for a long time with my insomnia. I had severe sleep trauma and would get stuck in either “I have to or else” to “complete submission to whatever happens.” This is the fawn and freeze response on overdrive.

The idea of pendulation is that our nervous system needs to experience the spectrum between extreme responses and learn how to find a balance and middle ground. I share my experience here on how I got to my middle ground and how this example may help others understand the process.

Healing the extremes of trauma responses – the pendulation effect. Reflecting on the ping-pong effect of trauma responses

Learning how to do this

I teach people how to do this with safe co-regulation in my peer support program. I also use Mother Nature a lot for co-regulation as her elements of life provide my nervous system with a mirror my nervous system can practice with. You can find more information about my program and worksheets here: