Module 2: How I Made it Through

Coping, Strengths, and Survival

Welcome to Module 2. Now that you’ve taken a moment to check in with where you are (Module 1), we’re shifting focus to how you made it this far.

This module invites you to reflect on the coping strategies, habits, and inner strengths that helped you survive — even if they came at a cost.

We’re not here to judge your coping. We’re here to understand it — with curiosity and compassion.

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The Strength Behind The Strategy

What we often call symptoms — anxiety, shutdown, impulsivity, perfectionism — are often just adaptations.

Maybe your nervous system learned to numb out to avoid overwhelm. Maybe a part of you jumps in to please others before they can leave. These aren't flaws — they're responses that once made sense.

In trauma therapy, we don’t rush to erase these parts. We build trust with them.
Because healing isn’t about wiping away coping — it’s about expanding options and reducing urgency.

Parts work, polyvagal theory, and trauma neuroscience all point to this:
We survive in the ways we had to. And once we feel safer, we can start choosing different responses — not because we should, but because we can.

Compassionate Reflection

Now, let’s get specific.

The worksheet below will guide you through identifying some of your key survival strategies, reflecting on what they protected you from, and gently exploring what you might want to keep, shift, or release.

Take your time. This isn’t a test — it’s a compassionate check-in with the parts of you that got you here.

👉 Coping, Strength, and Survival

🌿Integration Exercise

To wrap up, choose one of your survival strategies and express it through art, metaphor, or words:

  • Draw or collage it as a tool, armor or a shield, or a character

  • Write a short letter to or from that part

  • Or create a “resilience timeline” showing key moments where this strategy helped you cope

If nothing comes right away, that’s okay. Let this be a space for honoring what helped you survive — even if you’re still figuring it out.

Takeaways

In Module 1, you began by noticing where you are now — your patterns of regulation, dysregulation, or shutdown.
As you look at your survival strategies this week, see if you can connect them to your Window of Tolerance:

What strategies show up when you’re outside your window?

What helps you stay inside it?

In EMDR, we often notice survival strategies show up during reprocessing — protectors may try to jump in when something feels too vulnerable. That’s not a problem — it’s information. We slow down, resource, and build trust with those parts.

These dots matter. You’re already starting to connect them.

And you’re doing great work!

Where next?

 
 

© 2025 Kirsten Boulier, MSW, RCSW | Healing Quest Counselling 

Please do not share, copy, or distribute this content without consent. This work is offered with care and attention.