Trauma Therapy

Is The Past Causing Problems In Your Present?

Are you affected by an adverse experience from your past? Is a sense of lingering fear causing you to be constantly scared or on edge? Or do you find that your emotions waver between intense reactions and numbness?

Maybe you’re a survivor of childhood abuse and neglect, or perhaps you’ve experienced physical or sexual assault as an adult. You may have been in an accident, active combat, or other life-threatening situation that you recall often. It may feel like you’re holding onto the most upsetting and frightening memories from your past—unable to be present or feel in control of your life.

Perhaps your experience was not life-threatening or dramatic, but you nevertheless hold onto it. Maybe you endured emotional or verbal abuse over time, or you experienced a loss that has left you shaken and distressed. It may be that you’re living with vicarious trauma, having witnessed a distressing situation or working in a field where you’re exposed to life-or-death situations.

Trauma Often Results In Physical, Emotional, And Cognitive Symptoms

Trauma has a way of storing itself inside of the body, creating symptoms that you may not be able to fully understand or manage.

Physical symptoms of panic—including a racing heart, hypervigilance, and sweaty palms—may appear when you’re stressed. Or you may have found that nightmares and flashbacks affect your ability to sleep, causing you to feel depleted and unable to focus.

Perhaps you often feel sad and irritable, but you don’t know why. Maybe anger is your go-to emotion in moments of distress, causing daily agitation and conflict with those around you. You may struggle to strike a healthy balance in your relationships—caught between doing too much for others or pushing them away.

All you want is to regain a sense of normalcy in having healthy, regulated reactions to stressors, both big and small. However, you likely feel isolated and alone in navigating your experience, convinced that no one else could relate or understand.

Therapy gives you an opportunity to trace your symptoms back to their root so that you can learn how to process and heal from trauma.

There Are A Wide Range Of Human Experiences That May Be Deemed As Traumatic

As we expand the definition of trauma, we begin to see the wide range of individuals impacted by distressing experiences and post-traumatic stress. Trauma can occur at any time of life and ranges from life-altering events, to work-related exposure, to smaller incidents that compounded and became too much to handle.

Beyond the aforementioned experiences that often lead to post-traumatic symptoms, there are other common traumas that tend to be overlooked or minimized by those who experienced them. Children who grew up in families with loss, poverty, or substance abuse early on may grow into adults who struggle to fully understand their emotional responses. Or, if there was a physical or mental illness impacting a loved one, such distress can become compounded over time, creating trauma that goes unseen and unresolved.

In addition, there are community and global factors that can contribute to a traumatic response. It goes without saying that engaging in military combat or living in a war zone commonly results in PTSD. But there are other situations, such as natural disasters and community violence, that can traumatize individuals across race, gender, and socioeconomic lines.

Unfortunately, instead of addressing trauma head-on, we feel more comfortable trying to forget or minimize our experience. For example, in instances of emotionally or verbally abusive parents, we may try to convince ourselves that they weren’t that bad or attempt to justify reasons for their behaviors.

Feelings of shame prevent us from discussing our experience or we may worry that by talking about it, we’ll end up dwelling and just feeling worse about ourselves. However, if we continue to use coping skills developed at the time of trauma, that can become counterproductive and even harmful in everyday situations.

Therapy gives you a chance to use new skills to create a safe environment where you don’t have to feel threatened or controlled by your trauma any longer.

Therapy Allows You To Create A Healthy Distance From Trauma

Having survived a trauma, you may feel as though it’s up to you to have all of the answers. Yet a therapist gives you a chance to stop, listen to your inner wisdom, and gain a new perspective on your trauma. Counseling allows you to use your strengths to adjust how you respond to your trauma, yourself, and the world around you.

Therapy with me will always be a tailored, client-centered experience that will give you the coping strategies you need to move forward. As I learn more about your personal strengths in early sessions, we will collaborate on a treatment plan that will draw from various evidence-based methods that are particularly effective in addressing trauma.

My Approach To Treatment For Trauma

Psychoeducation will be used throughout counseling to help you understand the connection between traumatic responses and the specific symptoms you’re experiencing. In addition, other evidence-based treatments will be used to provide you with effective skills for coping with trauma.

Behavioral approaches—like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (CBT and DBT)—are helpful in identifying counterproductive thoughts and behaviors while enhancing emotion regulation and stress management skills.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) can help you overcome obsessive and negative ruminations, including disruptive memories of your trauma.

A psychodynamic approach to trauma treatment will help you see how past experiences shaped you and created patterns that may or may not aid in your healing.

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) for PTSD is a very structured method of addressing trauma symptoms that works within an average of 12 sessions. It is clinically shown to be effective without having to recount the details of traumatic moments, but it does require you to do the homework and to dedicate yourself to weekly sessions.

Using one or a combination of these methods, you can expect to have increased understanding and insight into your core beliefs and the role they are taking in your life. I’ll provide you with tailored tools for calming your nervous system and communicating your needs to others.

I’ve seen many of my clients transform their lives from feeling stressed and miserable to being happy, relaxed, and empowered. Though overcoming your trauma takes hard work, therapy is worth the time and effort to create the life you want.

Maybe You’re Considering Seeing A Therapist About Your Trauma, But You Have Questions…

I’d rather not discuss my trauma history in counseling—isn’t it better to just stay positive and focused on the future?

You’ve probably already tried this. If ignoring your past and simply focusing on the positive worked, you would probably already be feeling better, and you wouldn’t be considering therapeutic treatment for trauma.

Recognizing the pain and where it comes from is an essential part of the healing process. However, my approach does not require you to recount your painful experiences in-depth—unless you feel that would be helpful, of course. Instead, we will tailor treatment to your needs so that you can feel as comfortable, safe, and productive as possible.

What if I can’t remember my traumatic experience because I was too young or blocked it out?

You don’t have to remember what happened to learn how to heal—you can still learn valuable ways of managing emotional distress. As we work together to understand your core beliefs, you’ll have an increased awareness of how those beliefs impact your life and how to feel more emotionally safe.

I just don’t think anything—including therapeutic treatment—will help me overcome my trauma.

There is hope for you. I know we can’t erase the memories, but we can certainly change your relationship with them.

I’ve seen a lot of clients for therapy who thought they were doomed to relive their trauma forever but were able to come to a place where they could accept the experience and observe it without a strong reaction. Treatment allowed these clients to regain a sense of control and distance from the trauma instead of constantly re-experiencing the event.

Learn To Escape Past Patterns That Are No Longer In Your Best Interest

If a distressing experience from your past has caused you to live in constant distress, therapy can help you process and heal from trauma. To schedule a free consultation or learn more about my services, please contact me.