PTSD Therapy in Asheville using The Rewind Technique

Your Happy Place

The Rewind Technique is a non-intrusive, safe and highly effective psychological method for healing trauma and reducing the intensity of emotion around the traumatic event.

To start you will be led to a peaceful and relaxing place in your imagination where you feel totally at ease. In this relaxed state I then help you watch the traumatic event on a TV screen. The film begins at a point before the trauma occurred and ends at a point at which the trauma is over.

Then, in your imagination, you will experience yourself going backwards through the trauma, from after it was over to before it started, as if you were a character in a video that is being rewound. Then you watch it on the TV again, but faster this time.

All this is repeated back and forth, at whatever speed feels comfortable, and as many times as needed, until the scenes evoke no emotion.

If the feared circumstance is one that will be confronted again in the future — for instance, driving a car or interacting with a particular person — you will be asked to visualize yourself doing so confidently.

Besides being safe, quick and painless, the technique has the advantage of being non-voyeuristic. Intimate or painfully upsetting details do not have to be made public. This reduces the distress for the client, and also helps protect the therapist from the possibility of being vicariously traumatized themselves when de-traumatizing particularly disturbing events.  We’re local to Asheville, NC and we’re happy to serve you.