Rapid Resolution Therapy: What is It and How Does It Help with Trauma?

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Rapid Resolution Therapy

Things that happened to you in the past, can replay in your mind day after day. But you don’t have to live with it.

You may avoid seeking counseling because you may have gone to counseling in the past and it wasn’t pleasant. Your experience was one of talking about it- over and over- until you felt as though you were reliving it. It may have felt like it only made things worse.

It’s understandable why you would be reluctant to go through that experience all over again. Fortunately, Rapid Resolution Therapy (RRT) is different. RRT does not require you to re-live the trauma or talk about it in detail.

You may not have heard of Rapid Resolution Therapy, but it’s worth a closer look. Here’s how it works.

The Basics of Rapid Resolution Therapy

Rapid Resolution Therapy (RRT) is a newer form of therapy developed by Dr. Jon Connolly, who established the Institute of Rapid Resolution Therapy, in Florida. Although RRT was originally designed for combat veterans and women who have suffered sexual abuse, it is also effective with many types of problematic behavior. RRT has significantly helped those who have suffered traumas, panic attacks, anxiety, depression, or childhood abuse, as well as, other difficulties.

Unlike traditional talk therapy, RRT is considered a brief therapy and achieves lasting results comparatively quickly. Most people experience relief from the issues that were troubling them in 1-6 sessions.

RRT is gentle and utilizes symbolic imagery and metaphors for trauma recovery and emotional healing. The process helps you get your life back on track almost effortlessly. Rapid Resolution Therapy clears the mind so that your passion, humor, wisdom, energy, logic, and joyfulness can once again be part of your world. Your RRT therapist will guide you through the process.

How Do You Know if Trauma is Still Affecting You?

Even if you think that something that happened to you in childhood couldn’t possibly still be affecting you, it can. Trauma from childhood can have an effect on you many years later. Many people who experience traumatic events at key developmental stages in childhood, can struggle with them for years.

Some of the signs of unresolved trauma include the following:

  • Sleep problems

  • Weight gain or loss

  • Chronic pain

  • Hyper-vigilance (always being alert for possible threats)

  • Fear of rejection

  • Difficulty in personal relationships

  • Constant anxiety

  • Social anxiety

  • Feeling hopeless and like you won’t achieve your goals

How RRT Can Help with Trauma

The majority of unwanted behaviors, thoughts, and emotions (anxiety, panic attacks, fear,apprehension, anger, negative self-talk) are driven by learning that has taken place while in an emotional state (terror, fear, or anger, etc.) according to recent neuroscience research.

Emotional learning takes place during times of distress that can occur in both childhood and adulthood. Times of distress means things like neglect, abuse, sexual abuse, trauma, or domestic violence, etc.

Our human mind creates a model of how the world works based on the mind’s perception and emotions of things that happen. This model is saved in implicit memory with no conscious awareness of doing so.

Later, the emotional brain (amygdala) actively uses this model for self-protection by anticipating similar experiences in the future, so it can recognize them instantaneously when they appear and respond with a behavior that is valid and appropriate- a behavior that we know as flight-or-fight, which is swift and is meant for survival.

Emotional memory transforms the past into an expectation of the future, without our awareness, which can be helpful or not-so-helpful. We rely daily on emotional implicit memory to navigate our world and many situations without requiring us to go through a slow labor-intensive process of having to figure out what to do. We simply know what to do, and we do it quickly. See Blink: Thinking Without Thinking, Goldwell, 2005.

This model does not exist in words, but just the same, it is skillfully defined and then becomes locked in the memory circuits of the brain. Until recently, it was believed that emotional learning was forever locked in the brain and could not be changed.

According to recent neuroscience research, memory re-consolidation (which is conducted in the RRT process) is the only known form of therapy capable of eliminating unwanted emotional learning. You will still remember the experience in which the response was acquired and you will remember having had an emotional response, but the emotional response itself is no longer activated (Ecker, Ticic, & Hulley, 2012). Under the guidance of your Rapid Resolution Therapist, you will be stepped through the memory re-consolidation process.

Trauma happens to many people. There are numerous types of trauma. However, frequently people do not recognize that what happened to them, is considered trauma.

You don’t have to live with it.

Rapid Resolution Therapy can help you: Clear your mind. Change your world.

You have a life to live.