Why BioGraffs?
Trauma often feels overwhelming because it gets “stuck” in our minds and bodies. When we try to process it verbally, it can feel too raw or unmanageable. BioGraffs offers a gentle, creative way to externalize your experience—literally taking it out of your head and giving it form through cubes. This process can provide a safer perspective, helping you see and understand the pain without being engulfed by it.
The Power of Externalizing
When trauma stays internal, it can feel tangled, confusing, and unrelenting. By using BioGraffs, you turn your experience into a tangible visual story. Arranging the cubes gives you space to step back and observe your emotions and experiences, as though they belong to a character you can guide and nurture. This distance can make it easier to approach the pain with curiosity and care, rather than fear or avoidance.
Integrating Both Sides of Your Brain
Trauma processing requires balance between the logical, language-oriented left brain and the emotional, intuitive right brain. BioGraffs’ creative, non-verbal method bridges this gap. The act of choosing, placing, and arranging cubes engages your right brain’s creative and emotional insights, while the structure of the activity taps into your left brain’s ability to organize and make sense of the experience. This integration fosters deeper understanding and healing.
An Exercise for Using BioGraffs to Process Trauma
1. Creating A Visual Story
Write down the parts of this story. What are the actions, feelings, things that were said or done, or any elements that you need to tell this story? Give each one a cube color. Use just a few words to stand for each thing, enough to mark it for you what each color stands for.
Arrange the cubes in a way that feels true to your experience. It may be like a timeline, where the thing that happened first is on the left side of the page, and the story moves to the right. Different quantities might indicate amount of time. Layer things to indicate things happening at the same time.
3. Tell Yourself the Story
Think about what you've created. You might want to go through the story again, touch each cube as you do. How would it feel to move the cubes around to change the story?
Add new cubes to represent moments of strength or support, even small ones.
How does seeing it as a progression affect your feelings about the experience?
4. Sharing Your Story
Pair your BioGraffs exercise with a simple written reflection, if that feels right to you. Now that you have your visual story, take five minutes to write down your thoughts. What does the arrangement reveal? How does it feel to see your experience in this way?
What would it be like to share this with someone else? You might want to take a picture and show it to someone close to you, or your therapist. Telling this story with a visual guide to help you might make sharing it easier.
Gentle Reminders
Be kind to yourself. Processing trauma takes time and courage.
BioGraffs is a tool to support your journey, not to replace professional care. If your trauma feels overwhelming, consider working with a therapist who can guide you.
Focus on the process, not the outcome. The goal isn’t to “fix” your pain but to begin understanding it in a new and empowering way.
By giving shape to what feels shapeless, BioGraffs can help you find clarity, compassion, and a path forward.
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