The Art Narrative Process is a structured drawing exercise designed to help your nervous system recognize that a past trauma is truly over.

It supports your body in reprocessing difficult memories through a safe, creative lens—so they can finally be resolved and stored as complete.

This gentle, brain-body method involves drawing your experience through the five steps of the trauma response: startle, stress, the wall, freeze, and shutdown. By engaging both brain hemispheres—visual and verbal—you allow fragmented body memories and linear understanding to meet and integrate.

Important Safety Notice: This process can make one relive the emotions of the past stories if attempted without proper preparation. We never want to overwhelm our nervous system in the name of healing.

For a guided demonstration of this exercise, watch Dr. Aimie’s brief step-by-step video at book.biologyoftrauma.com/art-narrative-process.

How to Begin Drawing

• Use 9 blank pages and drawing tools (crayons, colored pencils, or pens).

• Keep physical comfort in mind—pillows, soft lighting, a weighted blanket, or supportive seating can be helpful.

Page-by-Page Guide

1. Page 1: “Title” (complete this last)

2. Page 2: “It was an ordinary day…” (depict the moment before any sense of danger or the trauma began)

3. Pages 3–8: Draw each trauma step (startle ? stress ? wall ? freeze ? shutdown)

4. Page 9: “The End” (a moment of present safety—now, or sometime later)

Key Tips

• Focus on an experience you can manage, not your most overwhelming trauma.

• Work with one page at a time (except “The End” which stays visible).

• Draw yourself in every picture and label it with your name.

• Include sights, sounds, body sensations, emotions—anything your body remembers.

• When complete, tell the story aloud in third person (“She felt…,” “He saw…”).

The goal is not to relive trauma—but to help your nervous system register that it survived. This process helps you file the event away as something that is no longer happening. For many people, this shift alone has been enough to spark emotional reconnection, resilience, and deep relief.

As you move through the steps of this process, keep in mind that healing doesn’t require you to revisit your most overwhelming memories. Even choosing a manageable story—one your body can hold without shutdown—can be transformative.

What matters is giving your nervous system a new message: It’s over. You’re safe now.

Even a gentle practice like this requires care. Without proper pacing, we risk reinforcing the very trauma patterns we seek to heal.

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Well Being Journal adapted the above excerpt from The Biology of Trauma by Aimie Apigian, MD. Copyright © 2025 by Aimie Apigian and reprinted with permission from BenBella Books, Inc.