Keeping a Balance Of Attention is maintaining a balance between experiencing the safety of the Here-And-Now and 'reliving' a difficult experience of the past. This balance should prevent the client not to be "swamped" by total immersion in the material being worked upon and by doing so repeating it instead of processing it.

If the counsellor can offer powerful, deep free attention, the client can work powerfully and deeply.

If the client seems to be drowning in emotions, the counsellor can offer Attention Switch (Present Time, Attention Out ) exercises.

CornuCopia Approach

Traumatic experiences are linked to memories in the amygdala. This organ in the brain does not know here-and-now; it works with trigger and response. When working on strong emotional charged traumatic experiences the cortical side of the brain needs to control the amygdala functions by paying attention to the actual safety in the here-and-now. So in CornuCopia terms the balance of Attention is the balance in activities of the amygdala and the cortex.

The Video Technique has been designed to stimulate this balance and to prevent the amygdala based past experience to take over the here-and-now. So it prevents that people repeat the experience in the here and now when re-experiencing the traumatic experience instead of healing it.