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As your certified therapist I do not need to know the content of your trauma, as with Havening you just have to feel. First, you first choose whether the therapist, or you, should treat yourself to “the Havening touch”. For online sessions, you do it yourself. It too has a pleasant effect. 

The gentle, constant touch puts you in a very relaxed and slightly drowsy state lie in REM sleep, just before you fall into deep sleep. 

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During the continued touch, you are asked to recall the trauma or emotions that you are currently feeling. I will encourage you notice where you feel the emotions in your body and give it a score of 1-10 on a subjective discomfort scale. SUD 10 is the worst feeling imaginable. Soon after the recall, you are systematically interrupted with a series of concentration-demanding exercises that confuse your brain. We measure your discomfort along the way, while you think briefly about the trauma. 

Gradually, the emotional response to the trauma (fight, flight, freeze) changes. The brain’s biological and biochemical “mirror” changes. After a successful session, the trauma can be recalled from memory, without the associated feeling of discomfort (fight, flight, freeze). We do our best to keep going until the feeling of trauma is completely gone, with an SUD 0-1. 


Successful Havening typically results in the client feeling very relaxed and at peace together with memory retrieval of the traumatic event being either fuzzy or incomplete, unable to access it at all, or some positive replacement in the form of a metaphorical solution.

What is a Havening session like?

© 2022 by Sonya McCullough

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