GATZO is how we started to describe the different ways the mind is trying to protect itself. Once someone is more accepting of their experience, then the work of integrating the mind and learning to stay present in stages can begin.
GATZO is living in our reality at the stages. Its reviving our Child Within to come out to play.We have our GATZO moments to off-set our DISSY spells.
When faced with danger, we used to automatically go into fight or flight mode. Ideally, this is a literal response to get us out of danger. Unfortunately, there are a number of situations where we can’t actually eliminate the danger (fight) or get away from it (flee). But there are other ways to accomplish these.
We are survivors of injury both mental and emotional trauma and we report feeling that we had left their bodies during the event. When confronted with the reality that escape is not possible, our mind will check out for the duration of the danger. when fight or flight fails, then freeze will set in, which may be experienced as numbing or disconnecting. We the survivors of childhood trauma find that we are missing a lot of memories, even whole years of our childhood. When circumstances so overwhelm our capacity to cope, then it’s possible for the circumstances to be blocked. We the Survivors must understand that our defences minimised the damage that we experienced at this time.
We have to gently make contact with our child within to build in natural redundancies to our dissociative early coping strategies, as they are no longer needed. This is especially understandable when you consider the fact that we who have experienced trauma severe enough to lead to this have a lot of post-traumatic stress symptoms now frozen and hidden from view. The first stage is not to see the symptoms as scary or bad, but just different ways the child within is attempting to protect itself. When we become is more accepting of our child within, then the work of integrating the mind and learning to stay present can begin.
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