Trauma Therapy Service Page

Trauma therapy can help those who have experienced a traumatic event at any point in their lives. Unfortunately, over half of people all across the world will experience a traumatic event during their lifetime. These traumatic events include injuries, accidents. violence, neglect, abuse, bullying, a threat to your life, the death of a loved one, and witnessing a traumatic injury or accident. Trauma therapy helps address and process the emotional side effects of trauma, ultimately changing the way traumatic events are perceived and the interpersonal beliefs surrounding them.

The Symptoms Of Trauma

Emotional trauma presents itself in different ways. Some individuals can experience a traumatic event and have no ill effects, while others carry the emotional wounds with them for years. The symptoms vary on a person-by-person basis, but the general symptoms of emotional trauma are as follows:

• Memory loss
• Flashbacks to the event
• Nightmares
• Denial
• Feelings of guilt, shame, and fear
• Feeling withdrawn, disconnected, or numb
• Difficulty sleeping
• Change in eating habits

These symptoms may also vary in when they appear. This can be especially true for those who have blocked out or disconnected from their trauma; in an attempt to cope, the event has been all but forgotten, and the symptoms may appear later in life as the effects still remain in a psychological sense. For others, the symptoms of trauma can appear immediately after the traumatic event occurs and with an intensity that can be debilitating.

How Trauma Therapy Treats Emotional Trauma

To treat emotional trauma, our therapists use a variety of specific methods and treatment plans. These plans and methods vary based on your specific trauma and preferences. Deciding which form of treatment is best depends on if you can remember your trauma, and if so, how much. Blocking painful and traumatic memories is a common coping skill the human brain uses to deal with trauma, but this flawed coping skill can be reversed and retaught. Over the course of a few months, you'll work with one of our trauma-informed therapists using one or more of the following methods.

• Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)

CPT is a form of trauma therapy that challenges and rewrites the beliefs you may have about yourself and your trauma. CPT helps change the perception you have of the event, refocusing it in an impartial and loving light to allow healing and coping. The benefits of CPT encompass the entirety of time you've been experiencing these false beliefs or a self-deprecating perception of your trauma; there is no time limit to when CPT can be effective and beneficial, even if you've been carrying a false perception for years.

• Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE)

Fear is one of the most difficult aspects of trauma to face and conquer. PE therapy allows you to face those fears with one of our therapists at your side, and in an environment that is safe and separated from other areas of your life. With the help of a therapist and a safe environment, you can gradually begin facing the thoughts, emotions, or memories that frighten you until they no longer hold such potent fear, or any fear at all.

• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

Flowing and rhythmic bilateral stimulation of the eyes can help release blocked or built-up emotions caused by trauma. The brain's power to hold onto painful memories and emotions fades when the eyes are bilaterally stimulated. Bilateral stimulation is often created by watching your therapist move two fingers. As EMDR therapy is happening, your therapist will ask you to recount or describe your traumatic event(s). The release of painful emotions and memory blockages is facilitated by EMDR therapy, which effectively allows your brain to truly begin healing.

• Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Trauma-focused CBT helps change false beliefs and reroute behavior patterns that are unhealthy. For example, after a traumatic event, one may start to believe that they are to blame and that they must act a certain way to prevent the event from reoccurring. Trauma-focused CBT helps prove those beliefs wrong and change the resulting behavior pattern. This form of trauma therapy is most often used for adolescents and young children, but its positive effects bridge all ages.

In any and all cases, trauma therapy helps challenge the negative and untrue beliefs you may have about yourself or the world after experiencing a traumatic event. You will also begin the rewarding process of facing the source of your fear, guilt, apathy, and denial, all with the achievable goal of a brighter and more fulfilling future.

The Benefits of Trauma Therapy

The benefits of trauma therapy are described as both an end goal and day-to-day successes in identifying and using healthy coping skills. Trauma therapy ultimately helps you change the way you see the world and yourself after a traumatic event, or a succession of them. With the help of our therapists, you will be able to recount your trauma and challenge the misconceptions you have about it in a safe and loving environment.

• Learn Healthy Coping Skills

The coping skills adopted after trauma are not often healthy. Memory loss and memory blocks are common, as well as being apathetic and withdrawn. While these unhealthy coping skills may seem like they're working in the short term, they aren't healthy to repeat. Trauma therapy helps replace these unhealthy coping methods with ones that reverse and challenge damaging thinking.

• Reduce Fear of Memories And Reoccurences

Direct confrontation of fears instilled by trauma is one of the best ways to reduce and effectively cure them. This can be especially beneficial for those who feel the need to avoid certain places or people as a result of their trauma, which can in turn limit your freedom and cause greater anxiety. A fear of reoccurrence is also common to experience; trauma therapy helps put that fear into perspective and allows you to decide if it is viable or not, which it rarely is.

• Rebuild A Sense of Trust

Trauma makes it easy to forgo the trust you once had in people. Our therapists can help you rebuild that trust, and re-instill the sense of safety people or places once gave you.

• Rewrite Negative Beliefs

Trauma therapy helps challenge the negative thought patterns and beliefs you may have about yourself or the world. Changing these beliefs and stopping the negative thought spiral relieves feelings of fear, anxiety, and a lack of control.

• Validate Your Trauma

Validation can have a powerful impact on the symptoms and effects of emotional trauma. With your trauma validated, each emotion and symptom of your trauma becomes equally valid and more receptive to self-compassion and healing.

• Identify Triggers

Trigger identifying is one of the most long-lasting benefits of trauma therapy. Once you and your therapist have identified the triggers related to your trauma, you can begin to tackle these triggers or use that knowledge to make your time going forward as painless and smooth as possible. Finding what can trigger the negative emotions and reactions to your trauma can be a relieving release, as you can begin to move forward with a greater feeling of safety and trust.