Mapping Your Inner Landscape
A Trauma-Informed Workbook for Understanding Your Protective Parts
Written by Linnea Butler
Psychotherapist and Founder of Bay Area Mental Health
MS in Genetics • Certified in trauma therapies (DBT, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy, MDMA) • Author of "How Healing Happens"
This workbook is available exclusively for paid subscribers of How Healing Happens
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You have taken a courageous step by opening this workbook. The very act of seeking to understand your inner landscape, to meet the parts of yourself that have been shaped by difficult experiences, is an act of profound bravery.
This workbook is designed as a companion to the essay series on trauma defenses, offering you practical tools to map your protective responses and begin the gentle work of integration. Each part of you that we'll explore arose from intelligence. They are not problems to be solved but aspects of self to be understood, appreciated, and ultimately integrated into a more complete sense of wholeness.
Trauma-Informed Safety Principles
- Go at your own pace: You have complete control over how deeply you engage with each exercise.
- Honor your boundaries: If something feels too intense, pause and return to it later.
- Stay grounded: Keep your feet on the floor, breathe deeply, and remember you are safe in this moment.
- Seek support: This work is not meant to replace therapy with a qualified professional.
- Trust your wisdom: You know yourself better than anyone. Trust your instincts about what feels right.
Grounding Technique: 5-4-3-2-1
Use this technique whenever you feel overwhelmed or disconnected:
- 5 things you can see (look around and name them)
- 4 things you can touch (feel the texture of your clothes, the chair, etc.)
- 3 things you can hear (traffic, voices, your own breathing)
- 2 things you can smell (coffee, fresh air, etc.)
- 1 thing you can taste (gum, tea, or just notice the taste in your mouth)
Emergency Resources
If you're experiencing a mental health crisis, please reach out for immediate support:
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988
- Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741
- National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
- National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
Guided Meditation: Meeting Your Parts
Before we begin mapping your protective responses, let's take some time to actually meet the parts of yourself that this work is designed to help you understand. This guided meditation creates a safe space for your different parts to reveal themselves to you.
Click to open the audio file in a new tab
Meditation Script
Take a slow, deep breath in. Let it out with a long sigh, like you're releasing something heavy and old. aaaaaahhhhh…
Now, close your eyes if you're comfortable, or just soften your gaze.
Imagine you're standing in a beautiful, peaceful place, maybe a meadow, or a clearing in a forest, a cozy room, or a quiet beach at sunrise. Someplace spacious and inviting.
Make an internal announcement, for example: "I want to ask every part of me to come into a meditation circle... this is not to criticize or judge or control you. I want to get to know you. I want to know when you're having a hard time. I want to know what's bothering you so I can help."
As you stand there, a wide circle begins to form around you, drawn in light. One by one, different parts of you come into the circle.
You don't have to force it. Just notice who shows up. Do you recognize anyone? Are you surprised at who shows up or at how they present themselves?
Maybe you see a small, scared version of yourself hiding at the edge.
Maybe a fierce protector walks right in, arms crossed.
Maybe there's a playful, barefoot child spinning in circles and laughing.
Maybe you see a fierce child gripping a stick like a sword.
Maybe you glimpse an older, wiser version of yourself smiling from the shadows.
Maybe you sense a tired figure, weighed down by burdens they've carried too long.
Let them come. All is welcome here.
If you like, offer them a greeting such as a nod, a smile, a hand over your heart, or a simple hello.
Once you have an image or sense of parts in the circle, you can gently ask:
"What are you worried about?"
"What do you want me to know?"
"What do you need from me?"
"How can I help?"
Listen without needing to fix or change anything. There's no rush. Just be with them, however they are.
Try to listen deeply to what they're telling you about themselves. Take their fears and feelings seriously. Be an "equal opportunity welcomer" and try to accept all of feelings and beliefs expressed by the parts as natural and normal given their experiences.
To the extent that you can, try to offer the support and validation they need:
"I will remember how scared it makes you when people get angry—maybe you can stand behind me so you don't have to worry about someone blaming you."
"Maybe I can help you look out for bad things—maybe I can promise to protect you."
"You've been alone a long time—I won't forget that."
Try to keep the focus on today or right now. You might say, "Notice that right here, right now, I am here and I'm not leaving." Traumatized parts have many fears, and it doesn't help them to open them all up at once or try to solve them all at once. It is natural that some parts won't trust you at first, will hesitate to hear you, or even be angry. You can tell them, "Every time we meet, you can tell me more about your worries and what I can do to help. Maybe over time, you will trust me… There is no rush—take all the time you need."
When it feels complete, thank them for showing up. Promise to keep listening.
Take another deep breath, wiggle your fingers and toes, and come back whenever you're ready.
Take a moment and reflect on the experience. Jot down a few notes in a journal if you like.
Meditation Reflection
After completing the meditation, take some time to reflect on your experience:
Understanding Your Internal System
This diagram illustrates the Structural Dissociation Model, showing how trauma can create different organizations of consciousness within us. The "Going on with Normal Life" Part (ANP) handles daily functioning, while the Traumatized/Emotional Parts (EP) carry the protective responses we're exploring in this workbook.
The five trauma responses - Fight, Flight, Freeze, Submit, and Attach/Cry - are different expressions of these emotional parts. Each represents a different strategy your nervous system developed to handle overwhelming experiences.
Understanding this model helps us see that these responses aren't character flaws or weaknesses, but intelligent adaptations that served a purpose. Our work together is about helping these parts feel safe enough to integrate back into your whole self.
Initial Assessment: Meeting Your Protective Council
This comprehensive assessment will help you identify which trauma responses are most active in your system. There are no right or wrong answers - only information that will help you understand your unique protective patterns.
Overall Trauma Response Assessment
For each statement, rate how often this applies to you:
When I feel threatened or overwhelmed, I tend to become angry or aggressive:
When I feel threatened or overwhelmed, I tend to want to escape or avoid:
When I feel threatened or overwhelmed, I tend to freeze or become paralyzed:
When I feel threatened or overwhelmed, I tend to become very small and invisible:
When I feel threatened or overwhelmed, I tend to desperately seek connection and reassurance:
Mapping Your Current Patterns
Chapter 1: The Guardian's Fire - Understanding Your Fight Response
The fight response is your inner guardian, the part of you that learned to protect through force, aggression, and unyielding boundaries. This isn't about being "angry" or "difficult" - it's about understanding a protective system that once saved you when gentleness would have meant destruction.
When the fight response activates, your nervous system transforms into a biological battlefield. Your amygdala floods your system with stress hormones, your muscles tense for combat, and your prefrontal cortex goes offline. This is your body doing exactly what it was designed to do when it perceives mortal danger.
The fight response carries the memory of every time you couldn't protect yourself, every boundary that was violated, every moment when fighting back was the only thing that stood between you and complete annihilation. It holds the rage that wasn't safe to feel at the time, the "no" that you couldn't say, the strength that you needed but couldn't access.
Fight Response Assessment
Rate how often these experiences apply to you:
I have a harsh inner critic that tells me I'm not good enough:
I sometimes surprise myself with the intensity of my anger:
I have very rigid boundaries that feel like walls:
I tend to be overly confrontational or aggressive when I feel threatened:
I have thoughts of self-harm when I'm overwhelmed:
Dialoguing with Your Inner Protector
This exercise helps you begin a conversation with your fight response. Take your time and approach this with curiosity rather than judgment.
Integration Practice: Healthy Boundaries and Assertiveness
The wisdom of your fight response can be transformed into healthy assertiveness and appropriate boundaries. This practice helps you channel that protective energy constructively.
Chapter 2: The Escape Artist - Understanding Your Flight Response
The flight response is your inner escape artist, the part of you that creates safety through distance, movement, and avoidance. Where the fight response builds walls and brandishes weapons, the flight response creates exit strategies and escape routes.
This isn't cowardice - this is your nervous system's brilliant assessment that survival depends on creating distance between yourself and perceived danger. The flight response has mastered the art of beautiful disappearing, the graceful exit, the slow fade from situations that feel overwhelming.
In our hyper-connected world, the flight response has found new territories to explore. We can now escape not just physically but into digital realms, substances, or compulsive behaviors that offer unlimited distraction from whatever we're trying to avoid feeling.
Flight Response Assessment
Rate how often these experiences apply to you:
I tend to leave situations before they become too intense or uncomfortable:
I use distractions (social media, substances, shopping, etc.) to avoid difficult emotions:
I have difficulty committing to plans or relationships:
I feel chronically restless or like I need to keep moving:
I have been described as "flaky" or unreliable:
Creating Safety for Stillness
This exercise helps you practice staying present with difficult emotions without immediately escaping.
Integration Practice: Conscious Choice vs. Reactive Escape
The goal isn't to eliminate your flight response but to help it become more discerning between strategic retreat and avoidant flight.
Chapter 3: The Sentinel's Stillness - Understanding Your Freeze Response
The freeze response is where panic lives, where hypervigilance meets immobility, where your nervous system floods with activation but your body refuses to move. This is the deer caught in headlights, the rabbit motionless beneath the hawk's shadow.
Freeze is a state of hyperarousal - your sympathetic nervous system firing on all cylinders while your muscles lock into complete stillness. It's like having your foot pressed hard on both the gas pedal and the brake at the same time. Every system is activated, but nothing moves.
The freeze response often develops when both fight and flight have proven impossible or dangerous. Your nervous system learned that the safest strategy was to become as small and still as possible, to avoid detection entirely.
Freeze Response Assessment
Rate how often these experiences apply to you:
I experience panic attacks or intense anxiety that leaves me feeling paralyzed:
I know what I want to say but my voice disappears in important moments:
I feel paralyzed when I need to make important decisions:
I feel like I'm constantly scanning for danger even when I'm safe:
I appear calm on the outside but feel like I'm screaming inside:
Gentle Movement and Voice Reclamation
This exercise helps you begin to thaw the freeze response through the smallest possible movements and sounds.
Integration Practice: From Paralysis to Conscious Presence
The goal is to help your freeze response transform from frozen terror into conscious stillness and deep listening.
Chapter 4: The Invisible Guardian - Understanding Your Submit Response
The submit response is the most misunderstood of all trauma defenses because it can look like calmness, like being "easy-going" or "low-maintenance." But submit is actually a state of hypoarousal, a collapse of your nervous system into shutdown and disconnection.
This is survival through invisibility, protection through the complete abandonment of resistance. Like the gazelle going completely limp in the lion's jaws, submit represents the moment when your nervous system calculates that complete surrender offers the best chance of survival.
Submit learned that safety exists in taking up no space, in having no needs, in being perfectly compliant and utterly forgettable. It's the response that would rather disappear than be hurt again.
Submit Response Assessment
Rate how often these experiences apply to you:
I often feel like I'm watching my life happen from outside myself:
I try to make myself as small and invisible as possible:
I rarely experience strong emotions - I feel numb or empty most of the time:
I agree with others to avoid conflict, even when I disagree:
I feel exhausted even when I haven't done much:
Reclaiming Your Right to Exist and Be Seen
This gentle exercise helps you begin to reclaim your right to take up space and be visible in the world.
Integration Practice: Visibility Without Vulnerability
The goal is to help your submit response learn that being seen doesn't automatically mean being hurt.
Chapter 5: The Heart's Reach - Understanding Your Attach Response
The attach response is the baby bird response, the desperate cry that says: "I cannot survive alone. Please don't leave me. Please see how much I need you." This isn't a defense against danger in the traditional sense, but a defense against the ultimate threat for a young nervous system: abandonment.
When this part is activated, you might find yourself becoming younger, sweeter, more innocent. Your eyes might seem larger, your voice softer, your entire presence designed to evoke protection and care. This isn't manipulation - this is your nervous system's ancient wisdom about what it takes to secure the attachment bonds that mean survival.
The attach response carries the accumulated hunger of every moment when you needed comfort and received criticism, every time you reached for connection and encountered rejection, every instance when your natural dependency was treated as a burden rather than a birthright.
Attach Response Assessment
Rate how often these experiences apply to you:
I feel like my need for connection and reassurance is bottomless:
I become very young and vulnerable when I'm scared or hurt:
I have fantasies about being perfectly loved or rescued by someone:
I stay in relationships that don't serve me because I fear being alone:
I have unexplained physical symptoms that seem to invite care from others:
Internal Attachment and Self-Nurturing
This exercise helps you develop a nurturing relationship with your own attach response.
Integration Practice: Secure Connection with Self and Others
The goal is to help your attach response learn that you can both seek connection and provide your own sense of security.
Integration & Moving Forward
You have journeyed through the landscape of your protective responses, meeting each part with curiosity and compassion. This is not the end of your healing journey, but rather the beginning of a new relationship with the different aspects of yourself.
Integration doesn't mean eliminating these responses or forcing them to disappear. It means creating enough internal safety for them to work together, each contributing their unique gifts to your wholeness. Your fight response holds healthy assertiveness, your flight response offers adaptive flexibility, your freeze response provides deep listening, your submit response carries wisdom about conservation, and your attach response brings the capacity for deep connection.
Creating Your Ongoing Dialogue
Healing happens through ongoing relationship with your parts, not through a single conversation.
Resources for Continued Healing
- Therapy: Consider working with a trauma-informed therapist trained in IFS, EMDR, or Somatic Experiencing
- Books: "No Bad Parts" by Richard Schwartz, "Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors" by Janina Fisher
- Body-based practices: Yoga, dance, martial arts, or other movement that helps you connect with your body
- Mindfulness: Regular meditation or mindfulness practices to stay present with your internal experience
- Community: Support groups or communities of people who understand trauma and healing
- Creative expression: Art, music, writing, or other creative outlets that help you express your inner world
Remember that healing is not linear. There will be days when your protective responses feel overwhelming, and that's okay. They arose from intelligence, and they deserve your continued patience and compassion. The path forward is not about perfection but about ongoing relationship, curiosity, and the gradual building of internal safety.
You have everything you need within you to heal. These protective responses are not evidence of your brokenness - they are evidence of your remarkable capacity to adapt, to survive, to preserve some essential aspect of who you are when wholeness felt impossible.
The circle is complete, but the journey continues. Trust the process. Trust yourself. Trust that healing is possible, one gentle step at a time.
© 2025 Linnea Butler. All rights reserved.
This workbook is part of the "How Healing Happens" series
Visit How Healing HappensFor additional support and resources, visit linneabutler.com
If you're in crisis, please reach out to local emergency services or call 988