Trauma Therapy
Do You Ever Wonder If Trauma is The Root Cause Of Your Mental Health Struggles?
Is there a painful past experience that’s still impacting your life today?
Are you dealing with flashbacks, nightmares, dissociation, and panic attacks?
Do you have a hard time feeling safe in your relationships because of how you’ve been hurt in the past?
Maybe you suffer from dysregulated emotions—your mood swings wildly from one day to the next and you find yourself veering between states of heightened anxiety and emotional shutdown. Perhaps you’re overly sensitive to situations that remind you of past hurt and you’re always on the lookout for perceived threats. You may have trouble feeling connected to yourself and your loved ones and constantly live in fear of betrayal, rejection, and disapproval from others. Maybe you’ve never identified your past experiences as traumatic, but for the first time, you’re wondering if it’s time to see a trauma specialist who can help you work through your unhealed emotional wounds.
Trauma Often Goes Hand In Hand With Avoidance And Loneliness
When you’re living with unresolved trauma, it’s normal to find yourself avoiding any situation that activates your “fight, flight, or freeze” response and leaves you feeling vulnerable. If you’ve been in a bad car accident, you might avoid driving on the highway; if you’ve been in an abusive relationship, you might avoid getting too close or intimate with significant others. Yet the more these avoidance behaviors control your decision-making, the lonelier your life probably becomes and the smaller your world probably feels.
Thankfully, you don’t have to go on feeling this way. As a trauma therapist, I specialize in helping survivors process and resolve the pain of the past so that they can feel supported, connected, and empowered to be their most authentic selves. Trauma does not define you, and it doesn’t have to hold you back from the life you want.
Trauma Is Far More Universal Than Most People Realize
Many people don’t identify as trauma survivors because they don’t realize that trauma exists on a spectrum. Many traumatic experiences fall into the category of “Big T trauma,” which consists of specific traumatic events like war, car accidents, natural disasters, and sexual assault and can result in the symptoms of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). Others, however, are long-term, ongoing experiences that result in complex PTSD, otherwise known as cPTSD. Most of these experiences happen in the context of relationships—they can range from growing up with an alcoholic or abusive parent to being in a toxic relationship where there aren’t healthy boundaries.
What’s more, many forms of trauma are collective as well as individual. Right now, especially, the social and political climate in the US is contributing to a spike in fear and feeling unsafe. Between a global pandemic, increasing financial strains, an epidemic of gun violence, and a rise in natural disasters due to climate change, it’s fair to say that most of us have experienced some form of collective trauma in recent years.
It’s Hard To Overcome Trauma Alone Because You Can’t Just Think Your Way Out Of It
Oftentimes, trauma survivors try to work through their trauma on their own. The problem is that trauma is a deeply embodied experience—it affects the body as much as it does the mind, since it bypasses the neocortex (the part of the brain responsible for logical thinking). Because of this, you can’t think your way out of trauma simply by rationalizing what happened or trying to change long-held beliefs.
What’s more, since most trauma happens in the context of relationships, you need a healthy relational environment in order to heal. The right relationship can act as a healing balm and provide the care and attention that was missing when you had your traumatic experience.
Therapy Can Help You Experience Deep, Embodied Healing From Trauma
Relief and recovery are entirely possible. The mind and body are naturally built to heal, and believe it or not, most trauma symptoms are simply your body’s way of trying to protect you in the only way they know how. At the time that you experienced trauma, you and your internal system simply didn’t have the resources and support to do anything differently. Now, in the present, we can help your system heal by providing the missing resources and experiences through the power of therapy.
I offer therapy for people who’ve dealt with single-incident trauma as well as complex PTSD. You are welcome to pursue therapy even if you’re “not sure” that you’ve experienced trauma or you’ve found yourself questioning whether your experience counts as traumatic. My aim is to validate what you’ve been through, normalize your feelings, and help you live in the present instead of feeling stuck in the past.
What To Expect In Trauma and PTSD Counseling Sessions
Therapy often starts by exploring current life situations that are triggered by memories of traumatic events. Through experiential exploration, we’ll identify triggering core memories and look at how they are controlling your present-day reactions. We can do this by practicing mindfulness, which encourages you to pay attention to the stories your mind creates as well as the resulting emotional reactions. The goal is to increase your awareness of the “parts” of your personality that have been impacted by trauma. For instance, if part of you has a hard time speaking up for yourself, it may be because you weren’t allowed to have your own voice in previous relationships.
Once you are aware of your reactions to trauma and the ways that present-day experiences remind you of the past, we can begin the work of reprocessing your trauma and integrating it into your long-term memory storage. To do so, I often utilize an approach called EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Therapy, which uses bilateral stimulation techniques like tapping and side-to-side eye movements to help you reduce the emotional charge of trauma.
I also incorporate the Hakomi Method of mindful, somatic therapy, as well as Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and IFS (Internal Family Systems), all of which can assist in the treatment of PTSD and cPTSD. Sometimes I teach clients EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), which works with certain acupressure points on the body to relieve the anxiety and tension that trauma has created.
By drawing from a wide range of approaches and offering a holistic, embodied method of trauma treatment, I’m confident that I can help you develop your resilience and experience long-term healing from the emotional scars of the past.
You May Have Some Questions And Concerns About Trauma Therapy…
What if talking about trauma makes me feel worse?
I will provide you with numerous tools and resources that you can use to stay grounded as we work through trauma, ensuring that you never go outside of your comfort level. What’s more, therapy is so much more than just “talking”—the methods I use are very experiential and body-centered, meaning that you don’t need to recount all the details of your trauma. With approaches like EMDR, only some basic preliminary information is needed, since the bilateral stimulation exercises tap into the nervous system’s natural ability to heal itself.
How long will trauma therapy take?
The effectiveness of therapy depends on your willingness to do the work, both inside and outside of sessions, as well as the nature of your traumatic experience. Some traumas that have built up over long periods of time take a while to heal from, and that’s okay. As long as you’re patient with yourself and remain engaged in the healing process, you can expect to make progress and work toward eventual symptom resolution.
I’ve tried therapy and it didn’t work. How will this be different?
Maybe you tried therapy before you were fully ready to process your experiences. Or perhaps you did talk therapy and found it ineffective. Because of how traumatic memories are stored beneath the level of conscious awareness, talk therapy alone cannot get to the root of trauma. Healing at this level requires experiential methods that access deeper levels of experience. That’s why the approaches I offer are body-based, holistic, and aimed at addressing the whole person instead of just the mind.
The Past Does Not Define The Present
No matter what kind of hurt you’re carrying into the present day, I believe that I can help you release the burden of trauma and experience freedom through the healing power of therapy. To get started, you can call (303) 507-6310 or use the contact form. I look forward to working with you!
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