Trauma
Have you ever experienced trauma?
Trauma is defined as a deeply distressing or disturbing event or experience. It can come from anywhere. Car accidents, the loss of a loved one, frightening birth experiences, pregnancy loss, military deployment, abuse and many other experiences can result in personal trauma.
But it’s not just about what happens to you that makes trauma so difficult. It’s how your body responds after the traumatic event.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
We often associate trauma with life-threatening experiences like war or terrible accidents. Working with people in counseling, we’ve learned that trauma can result from the threat of loss of an important relationship–like a marriage.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is one way people exhibit symptoms of trauma. PTSD symptoms can include:
- nightmares
- irrational fear
- flashbacks
- mood swings
- difficulty concentrating
- fatigue, aches, and pains
- feeling numb or hopeless
Trauma symptoms don’t just go away on their own. People don’t just “move on” from trauma. It takes purposeful healing to worko through the effects of painful, traumatic events. This is especially true when whatever has been traumatizing is still happening in the here and now.
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Our brains are designed to keep us alive… Traumatic events can trick our brains into thinking that we’re in danger even when we’re not. Have you ever tried to convience yourself that you shouldn’t feel something, but no matter how hard you try, you can’t actually stop the feeling from happening? That’s a little like how trauma works.
Healing from trauma is possible… Like everything else important in life, it does take work. You know this isn’t something you want to try on your own. You want a specialized, well-trained, and experienced trauma therapist at your side, walking you through each step of healing.
Trauma treatment shouldn’t drag on forever… You need a treatment approach that’s research-driven, proven to be effective, and is efficient. You want to see results relatively quickly and you want to know that the changes will stick. That’s where EMDR comes in.
EMDR Therapy
EMDR stands for “Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing” and is a well-known therapy proven to help people heal from trauma. It’s believed that EMDR mimics the rapid eye movements of REM sleep and helps your brain process traumatic memories in more adaptive ways.
In EMDR, we trust that your brain knows exactly what it needs to heal–but the way it’s “stored” the traumatic memory is getting in your way in the here and now. EMDR allows your brain to “clean up” and put things where they belong–so to speak. It’s quite an amazing process, really.
EMDR allows your brain the freedom to re-experience old, traumatic memories in a safe environment and reprocess them with healthier ways of seeing the world. EMDR has a long history of successful clinical trials and is known all over the world as an effective trauma treatment protocol.
Our therapists are trained in EMDR therapy. We treat clients every single day and experience the amazing results with our clients. We would love to have you experience the same healing as so many others have experienced.
What is betrayal trauma?
There are some types of trauma that can be harder to notice than others. In our counseling work, we’ve learned that you can actually experience trauma when your relationship is in danger. If you rely on someone, like a parent or spouse, and that relationship is threatened, you can actually experience trauma symptoms that can really cause problems in your life.
Because we specialize in compulsive sexual behaviors and sex addiction, we see this type of thing every day. For example, wives of sex addicts often feel deeply betrayed by the behaviors and wonder whether their relationship can survive. These women experience the very same PTSD symptoms they would experience if they had been hit by a semi truck.
The nightmares, fears, panic attacks, mood swings, and flashbacks are all there. Many people, including otherwise excellent therapists, don’t understand how betrayal trauma works. These people, when trying to offer help, can make the women’s trauma worse. Only helpers with specialized training and experience can provide the level of care that those suffering from betrayal trauma need to heal.
