Trauma Therapy
Have You Ever Wondered If You Suffer From Symptoms Of Trauma?
Trauma can be defined as an extremely distressing or disturbing experience that can cause physical, emotional, and psychological harm. Traumatic experiences and events can leave deep emotional wounds that affect mental health. Trauma can lead to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), as the body and mind remain on high-alert to fight against any future triggering events.
If you have been experiencing challenges in your life due to PTSD or have not healed properly from a traumatic event, you are not alone. It is common to feel hypervigilant and tense, as well as constantly thinking that something terrible might happen. This continuous state of alertness can lead to emotional and physical sensations such as panic, anxiety, depression, and other negative behaviours.
Over time, the symptoms resulting from a traumatic experience can take a toll on your well-being. Do you have difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up and not feeling rested? Lack of sleep can affect your concentration and your activities of daily living, leading to decreased performance and irritability, and longer term chronic illness. As a result, you may struggle with feelings of guilt, shame, or hopelessness.
It’s important to note that untreated trauma can cause a vicious cycle of negative behaviour patterns. However, seeing a professional for trauma therapy can guide you to breaking this cycle. It is never too late to seek help, and as a professional, I can guide you on the road to recovery.
Unresolved Trauma Can Make You Feel Vulnerable Around Others
If you are living with untreated trauma, it can be difficult to manage your emotions. Perhaps you worry about leaving the comfort of your home, so you often experience intense fear and anxiety while carrying out tasks outside of your home. You pre-imagine yourself being easily startled, frightened, or triggered by anything that reminds you of your traumatic experience, and the sense of failure consumes you.
Your day might be characterized by dissociation, which can cause challenges in your personal and sexual relationships. By the end of the day, you feel overwhelmed and are unsure how to regain control over your professional and personal life.
Trauma therapy can offer you the tools to become more self-aware and regulate negative emotions more effectively. Learning these tools can make you feel more at ease in your body, and you can begin moving forward in your life.
Untreated Trauma And Undiagnosed PTSD Are A Common Concern
There are a variety of reasons why trauma and PTSD are so prevalent in today’s society. Some of the more obvious causes include the pandemic and ongoing wars, which have impacted millions of people across the globe. These kinds of trauma are collective in nature since they leave an emotional scar on a whole population.
However, there are also many individual reasons why someone may experience trauma or develop PTSD. These can range from emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, neglect, or abuse from caregivers during childhood, ongoing divorce or relationship battles, loss or miscarriage, or going through multiple or back-to-back challenging life events.
As a professional trauma therapist, my personal opinion is that trauma is often undertreated, and PTSD is frequently underdiagnosed. Due to people not wanting to confront their issues head-on and not wanting to open up the past. Fear is one of the primary reasons people don’t ask for or seek help.
What survivors of trauma may not realize is that a skilled trauma specialist is trained to provide a safe and non-judgmental space for healing. While trauma therapy may involve revisiting sensitive topics, it’s important to remember that this process is intended to help people work through their experiences and ultimately recover from them. In the long run, seeking out trauma therapy can be a valuable investment in one’s mental health and overall quality of life.
Trauma Therapy Gets To The Roots Of Your Mental Health Issues
When working with clients, I like to tell them that I “get to the root of your concerns.” I don’t believe in only dealing with surface-level problems. Instead, I like to tackle the unhealed trauma that’s driving your struggles with anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges. Even though I want to go deep with you in your therapy process, I also want to work with you and where you are at. So that may be starting with the small, simple tasks to make working on the deeper more manageable.
Honesty and open communication are critical elements of my approach. I encourage my clients to be honest with me, and I will extend the same courtesy to them. Together, we will explore different aspects of your personal history, including core beliefs, childhood experiences, bodily responses, and any memory loss that may have affected your ability to work through trauma.
During trauma therapy, we will discuss the losses associated with your trauma, the emotions and physical responses that come up as a result, and how you currently cope with them.
Due to avoidance, do you try to distract yourself from the issues with substance use, over or under sleeping, or overindulging in Netflix, social media, or fantasy? I call these “coping” tactics “STERBs” or “short-term energy relieving behaviours.” After trauma therapy sessions with me, you won’t have to worry about STERBs anymore, you will have effective, real-life coping skills for managing your trauma responses and decreasing your stress.
Treatments and Methods Utilized For Trauma Therapy
At Pearl Psychological, it is understood that every individual has a unique response to trauma and may require different approaches to therapy. That’s why I utilize a variety of techniques to ensure you feel as comfortable as possible. Some of these methods include:
- Behavioural Activation: Behavioural Activation: This is the starting point for trauma therapy and some other types of therapy as well. Behavioural activation involves creating routines and schedules to help you stay on track and acknowledge your accomplishments. It can also help you build a sense of control and stability in your life.
- Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (TFCBT): At its core, TFCBT helps you identify the triggers, thoughts, and beliefs related to your trauma. By understanding how these factors affect your emotions and behaviours, you can work towards better managing your symptoms.
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR): This approach utilizes bilateral stimulation to help your brain process traumatic memories and reduce stress and bodily responses related to painful memories.
- Dialectic Behavioural Therapy: An evidence-based method that helps you self-monitor and reduce symptoms of trauma by changing your coping techniques and minimizing negative behavioural patterns.
- Grief Recovery Method: If you’ve experienced loss because of trauma or as a result of your experience, the Grief Recovery Method can help you work through your emotions and recover. It involves a series of small and action-based approaches made by you, with the guidance of me as your Grief Recovery Specialist and with the exercises guided by the Grief Recovery Method Handbook, which was written by John James and Russel Friedman.
Your symptoms of trauma are natural and normal reactions, and you are not alone in your response to your experiences. I’ll teach you the tools to help you safely delve into your trauma, emotionally regulate, and become more aware of what’s happened to you. You can find peace, relaxation, and calmness by checking in with yourself, using new coping techniques, and processing and resolving the hurt and pain of the past.
You May Be Interested In Trauma Therapy, But Have More Questions…
This is a common misconception. While discussing trauma isn’t always easy, avoiding or distracting yourself from your emotional pain won’t make it go away. Talking about your trauma with a compassionate and understanding professional can help you release negative thoughts and feelings and process the past in a new way.
There are of course risks and benefits of trauma therapy. However, the coping skills I teach you can empower you to remain calm and grounded throughout treatment, ensuring that you don’t feel retraumatized as you work through your struggles.
I pride myself on taking a non-judgmental approach with clients. I am sincerely disheartened about your past experience and I hope that I can provide you with a different environment in which to work in.
I believe in fostering a warm, judgment-free, and authentic environment for our therapy sessions. Your feelings, thoughts, and experiences are of utmost importance, and I am committed to creating a safe space where you can openly explore and express yourself.
You may need a bit more time in therapy than someone who is experiencing a mental health concern of a lesser degree. Trauma is a bit more convoluted, and there can be more emotions entangled in the experiences. Therefore, being patient with yourself and giving yourself compassion, empathy, space, and time to heal will be of value.
Are You Ready To Feel More Relaxed And At Ease?
If you want to be relieved of your traumatic past and the symptoms that come along with it, , I encourage you to make the call to start the healing process. Call me, Vanessa Iceton, at (780) 719-2807 for a free 10-minute consultation. You can also send an email or access my contact page.
