Trauma Therapy
Heal, Rise Above, & Reinvent Your Life
Trauma Is Holding You Back
Have you ever felt that no one else understands what you've been through? Dealing with trauma can be isolating, emotionally overwhelming, and frightening. As a result, you may experience uncontrolled thoughts, flashbacks, avoidance of certain situations, numb feelings, and the need to be on high alert. Such flare-ups occur almost daily, even at night, causing trouble sleeping, bad dreams, and nightmares. Sometimes your mind is flooded with self-hating thoughts, and your body and nervous system are so activated that you cannot think straight. Sometimes it's just too much, and you must shut down all your emotions.
Worse, the loss of trust and erosion of a sense of choice and free will are so pervasive and debilitating that they leave you feeling irritable, angry, and alone. Nothing seems to bring any relief when things are at their worst, despite your best efforts. As a result, you can barely go about your daily activities.
Life is unfair. You are not to blame for the trauma you experienced, but you have been left to deal with the challenges of healing from those experiences.
Have you ever wished there was a road map to help you understand how trauma has affected you or to guide you in your recovery?
I Am Not Sure if I Can Call It Trauma
I am sorry if your trauma has ever been questioned or dismissed. You don’t need to prove or justify the trauma that you have been through. I firmly believe in a trauma definition that is both inclusive and affirming.
What is Trauma?
Trauma is any experience that threatens one’s life or betrays our innate need for safety, belonging, and dignity and has a lasting adverse impact on the individual’s physical, sexual, emotional, social, and spiritual well-being.
Your pain is valid whether you have endured a single type of trauma or a combination of traumas. Of course, there are differences in how they may affect you, but there is no need to compare your lived experience of trauma to those of others. "Other people have it worse" is a toxic message that silences your voice and dismisses your pain.
Types of Trauma
There are many types of trauma, which may include:
A single, acute traumatic event.
Traumatic loss: the loss of loved ones in the context of traumatizing circumstances (e.g., losses due to homicide, suicide, accidents, natural disasters, war, and terror).
Attachment trauma: attachment rupture occurs early in life, causing nervous system dysregulation and a lack of trust in one's ability to attach securely.
Developmental trauma: prolonged exposure to high levels of toxic stress during childhood while the brain is still developing (e.g., childhood abuse or emotional neglect)
Complex trauma: prolonged exposure to high levels of toxic stress at any age (e.g., childhood abuse or emotional neglect, domestic violence/abuse, war)
Intergenerational trauma: inherit nervous system dysregulation and some consequences at birth via epigenetic transmission.
Trauma is A Systemic Issue
Sadly, trauma is a much more common human experience than most people realize.
However, trauma disproportionally affects those already vulnerable or suffering, such as children, women, racial minorities, LGBTQ+community, people with disabilities, and the neurodivergent community. In other words, traumatization occurs due to a lack of social power.
What Is Systemic Trauma?
Systemic trauma is the repeated/ongoing violation, exploitation, dismissal, and deprivation of a group of people. Individuals and groups are traumatized when state institutions, economic systems, and social norms systematically deny them access to safety, mobility, resources, food, education, dignity, positive reflections of themselves, and belonging.
How Can Therapy Help?
The goals of therapy are to allow your natural healing process to resume, to achieve a state of natural harmony and balance in your life, and to
restore a wellspring of healing, goodness, power, and wisdom within you by:
✔ Better understanding the neurology of your trauma and how it manifests in the symptoms that you are experiencing
✔ Better insights into how social conditioning contributes to your trauma
✔ Recognizing trauma-related triggers and fears that hold you back from healing yourself
✔ Accurately labeling triggered states as responses to the past
✔ Differentiating between “being triggered” and “being in danger”
✔ Finding the optimal range of emotional and physiological activation that you can tolerate without it becoming dysregulated
✔ Transforming shame/self-blame into compassionate curiosity about how impulses to stop overwhelming feelings can lead you back to less healthy ways of coping despite your best efforts
✔ Identifying and tolerating distressing feelings or symptoms as survival strategies rather than as problems or defects to be eliminated
✔ Harnessing the power of the “thinking/noticing/mindful brain” that is essential for your healing
✔ Offering mind-body techniques and practices that can be easily applied in your life to regulate your nervous system effectively
✔ Building containment/grounding techniques to cope with hyper-arousal symptoms
✔ Building behavioral activation and self-care techniques to cope with hypo-arousal symptoms
✔ Widening the range of sensations and emotions you can feel and be present with them
✔ Finding a way to be fully alive in the present and engaged with the people around you
✔ Identifying the internalized old negative self-belief that developed as a result of trauma
✔ Increasing self-understanding and self-compassion
✔ Building a sense of pride, respect, or awe that you have survived
✔ Restoring a positive sense of self, choice, and control
✔ Developing a new identity that is informed but not dominated by trauma/the past
✔ Reclaiming freedom in choosing a new and vital life direction
“A life after trauma is not a life in which we will never ever be triggered again. It is a life in which being triggered is a nuisance, not a catastrophe or an experience of shame. A nuisance just requires patience and perspective, the ability to “maintain that calm [despite triggers] that remind you of the past”
—Janina Fisher
