This framework is offered as a lens — not a doctrine, not a badge, not a new rule-system.
Here’s how to ensure it remains the tool it’s meant to be:

• Use it for insight, not identity.
  The goal is not to become “integrated” as a status. The goal is to live more coherently.

• Test it in your experience, don’t just study it.
  Concepts become alive through application. If a section resonates, watch how you show up, what changes, what the consequence teaches you.

• Retain your sovereignty.
  You are the primary authority over your life. I share this framework; you determine whether it fits. If it doesn’t — discard, adapt, or move on.

• Beware of performance.
  If you find yourself pointing to the framework as proof of growth (“I use this philosophy so I’m more evolved”), you’re circling back into the old model of identity through method.

• Accept natural consequence.
  I do not guarantee safety, comfort, or blessing. This is not a promise of avoidance of “bad stuff.” It is an invitation to live accountable, responsive, and aligned. The system is responsive — not protective.

• Stay adaptive.
  This framework is a work in progress. If you spot assumptions, mis-applications, or you feel stuck in it — let that feedback in. Growth doesn’t mean bigger or more complex. Sometimes it means simpler, truer.

Use this framework. See what happens when you stop negotiating with truth. See what falls away, what stays, what realigns.

And remember: no one outside you signs off on your coherence but you.

Della Wren

The Integration Protocol

Five movements — simple, precise, repeatable.

Integration is not a technique.
It is a return — a movement back into coherence with reality.
These five steps describe how that return happens in lived experience.

1. Locate the Chain

Every distortion has a “chain” — a familiar emotional or behavioral loop that signals fragmentation.

You’re not looking for meaning.
You’re identifying pattern:

• repeated reactions

• familiar emotional textures

• recurring tension or overwhelm

• a loop that feels old or automatic

This step is simply: “Something is happening in me that I’ve seen before.”

Awareness begins here.

2. Drop the Story

Once you see the pattern, step out of narrative.

Let go of:

• interpretation

• projection

• moral judgment

• personal mythology

• imagined future

• the urge to make sense of it

Return to the raw experience:

What is here, without explanation, interpretation, or added meaning?

This is the heart of the Stillhouse method: experience before meaning.

3. See the Distortion

Distortion is anything the awareness does instead of meeting the moment:

• tightening

• defending

• bracing

• catastrophizing

• shrinking

• overexplaining

• assuming

• taking responsibility that isn’t yours

• or refusing responsibility that is yours

This step is not self-criticism.
It’s recognition.

Distortion = where you stopped seeing cause and effect clearly.

4. Return to Coherence

Coherence returns the moment you stop fighting the experience you’re in.

This may look like:

• relaxing the argument with yourself

• allowing the emotion to exist

• naming the truth of what is happening

• releasing the illusion of control

• feeling the body instead of the story

• admitting what you know and what you don’t

Coherence is not calmness.
It is alignment with what is actually happening.

You realign with cause and effect simply by not resisting reality.

5. Choose From Awareness

The final movement is choice — but not moral choice, not the “right thing,” not self-improvement.

Choice here means:

• a movement that matches reality as it is

• responding instead of reacting

• acting from clarity instead of fear

• not distorting the field any further

• taking responsibility where you actually have power

• releasing responsibility where you truly don’t

This is where truth becomes lived.

The moment you choose from coherence, the chain shifts — and the loop loses its authority.

⭐ The Minimal Summary

1. Locate the chain (recognize the pattern)

2. Drop the story (return to raw experience)

3. See the distortion (where did reality get replaced?)

4. Return to coherence (stop resisting what is)

5. Choose from awareness (move with cause and effect)

See Also

Integration – Reflection – Coherence – Balance, Integration, Chain Architecture, Coherence, Awareness