One of the things I’ve been keen to impress to students of my college is to be neuroscience-informed where possible, especially when dealing with trauma and especially if you are going to consider using regression techniques to revisit past memories and experiences. I’ve written and recorded videos previously about the capacity to re-traumatise if you are simply asking a client to re-live a memory – when we do so, it recreates the conditions of the trauma in the subcortical regions of the brain. However, if you introduce acceptance, awareness and mindfulness within the recollection, you integrate the upper regions of the brain and get the opportunity to recode the memory, recondition the response to it and start to respond to it differently.
So integrating self-awareness in trauma therapy can prevent retraumatisation. Some consider it an essential strategy to help individuals observe their experiences mindfully, ensuring effective healing without the risks. There is more discussion to this of course, it is a deeper topic, but it is a point that needs to be impressed I believe.