How to recognize when your watchtower is going off.

I often talk to my clients about their watchtower. Recently while working with one of my clients, I explained to her how her watchtower is always on alert telling her she is in danger; her anger reaction in the moment is based on her activated watchtower. She had been angry about different things, mostly, her anger over a conversation she had with her son. She was not able to assertively have a conversation with her son in the moment, as she couldn’t control her anger reaction, so she ended the conversation. She has struggled with how to resolve the conflict with her son and find forgiveness.

These are the ways she is learning to cope with her watchtower alarm:

1.   Bring back the image of the conversation with her son that made her angry

2.   Identify where she is feeling discomfort in her body. She was able to identify that her throat and chest became tight. Our bodies hold tension and arguments, our bodies too give us warning signals and sensations to let us know that our watchtower is activated. After finding sensations in her body, we were able to start using grounding techniques to live in the here and now and not in the past.

3.   This client took the work we did in session to her everyday life. She started to identify when she was feeling sensations and warning signals in her body and halted, recognized what was happening as this was a trigger for anger and started to practice her grounding activities.