Trauma

I am not quite sure when I became interested in working with people who have had traumatic experiences in their life.  It is more like I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t interested in this area.  I admire clients who have come from such challenging experiences to become people I think are pretty amazing even when they don’t think that way themselves.  With a keen interest in the area of trauma I spend a lot of my professional development hours learning more about trauma treatments and how I can better help you.

Trauma Informed Therapy

There are different types of trauma that people experience;  trauma due to medical condition, natural disaster, accident and interpersonal (person to person) trauma.  There are what we call acts of commission such as when somebody strikes you or threatens you or puts you down.  These are easier to recognise when they have occurred.  There are also acts of omission which are harder to recognise and talk about.  These are things that we ideally should have experienced but did not such as being emotionally validated, having your right to have your own opinions respected even if others do not agree with your opinion.  A trauma informed treatment approach means that we look at things that happened in your earlier life and how these shape your beliefs about yourself and others and whether or not they affect you in your relationships and day to day life now.

Some experiences that people have faced are painful and thinking about them even years later can feel overwhelming.  Some experiences were too much for us to deal with at the time and even now are fuzzy or bring out feelings of numbness when we think or talk about it.  And sometimes individual experiences are not so overwhelming but have happened so often they effect us nonetheless.  As a trauma informed therapist we are looking at keeping you in your window of tolerance so you are not overly aroused (fight / flight) nor under aroused (numb and detached).

As a trauma informed therapist it is important that you feel safe and heard and understood without any judgment from your therapist.  I prefer to adopt an attitude of curiosity rather than judgment “why does it help you to do that?” instead of “you shouldn’t do that.”  It is important you feel that you can control what we do and don’t do in therapy and when we do and don’t do or talk about things.  We also want to help you develop strategies that you can use to calm yourself before we dive into addressing challenging life experiences.  We want to work on what your goals and make sure they are realistic and most importantly that you have a say in what we do.

Trauma Treatment

Trauma treatment has many different components to it that include but are not limited to:

•    Education about the components of trauma and what this means for treatment

•    Understanding how repeated developmental experiences are linked to current life problems including managing your emotional
reactions to things and having healthy and supportive relationships

•    Understanding your coping mechanisms and evaluating whether they are good for you in short or long term

•    Practicing strategies to calm your body and mind

•    Engaging in activities that are helpful such as yoga, exercise, self-care

•    Reprocessing traumatic memories using techniques like Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing (EMDR)

•    Planning how to better manage current triggers in new situations