Trauma Counseling
Have you experienced a trauma in your past that you just can’t get out of your head?
Do you snap at your loved ones and then feel deep guilt?
Do you stay super busy every minute of every day to avoid unpleasant thoughts or feelings?
Are you constantly on edge because deep down you think you’re about to be attacked?
Do you wish you could go back in time and change the events of the trauma?
If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, then you understand what it’s like to wake up with your heart pounding, a million thoughts through your head, body tense, and a sense of dread hanging over you. Sometimes individuals struggling with a past trauma don’t understand how the past connects to the present. They find themselves often acting defensively or passively not knowing how to be assertive and proactive. Do you find yourself wishing your daily life was “normal?”
Many individuals experience emotional pain and physical reactivity from past trauma.
In the United States, 60% of men and 50% of women experience trauma at least once during their lifetime (reference listed on Free Report). Trauma is caused by sexual, physical, or emotional abuse as well as severe medical treatment, severe car accident, or the tragic death of a loved one. It can also be caused by living through a tornado, hurricane, flood, or another type of natural disaster, or any other life-threatening or perceived life-threatening event. Trauma effects all regardless of sexual orientation, sex, religion, socio-economic status, profession, or ethnicity. Many survivors of past trauma often feel as if things will never be better. However, there is hope with a compassionate, skilled, and experienced therapist you do have a choice to improve the quality of your life.
Trauma Counseling can help to mitigate and manage symptoms related to past trauma.
I have compassion for the survivor and understand personally and professionally how difficult and challenging it is to deal with these and other symptoms. Trauma counseling begins with building a trusting therapeutic alliance between the survivor and the therapist. As your therapist, I’m mindful to make the counseling environment safe and comfortable, and this includes keeping your story and personal information private and confidential.
The first steps in your healing journey begins with a thorough assessment, so that I can best understand what your individual needs are to be addressed. I assess not only your challenges, but your individual strengths. You’ve made efforts to cope with symptoms from past trauma and those strengths have carried you this far. I honor those strengths and build from what you have established.
Next, we’ll practice various relaxation-breathing skills, learn affirmations, and continue to identify the positives in your life. I will encourage you to practice these often to rebuild your inner self and to provide you with understanding about the embodied brain, and what is going on when you have symptoms that are uncomfortable and often feel overpowering. During these beginning steps, I will emphasize the importance of self-care, time management, problem-solving, and decision-making skills if these are needed. Your individualized care is most important along with your commitment to adhere to practicing new skills to enhance and improve daily living.
Trauma counseling provides a safe environment to face your past unresolved trauma. Building on the foundation of trust, dignity, and respect, together, we will work through the trauma using a step by step process. I use various techniques that fit each client to be able to process the trauma and make peace with your past. Two of these techniques are writing your story and using sand-tray therapy. Writing your story provides a way for you to distance yourself from the trauma, while not avoiding. Your story is unique, the timeline, the events leading up to the trauma, and this includes who you are as a human being and thinking about what you like or don’t like. Slow exposure to the trauma with a safe experienced therapist will lead to a healthy perspective and a shift from surviving to thriving. Sand-tray therapy integrates both sides of the brain, which promotes a change in the area of the brain that often stores unresolved trauma. Sand-tray directives are given to provide a way for thoughts and emotions to be expressed in a non-threatening manner. As a result of your hard work in trauma therapy, your last steps will be to learn to recognize trauma reminders and have the tools to address these, mitigate and manage symptoms, increase your self-confidence and sense of calm.
Recalling the last 13 years of clinical practice, I have helped dozens of individuals to address trauma and to move forward with their lives. I have helped survivors with not only physical, sexual abuse, but also abandonment cases and other types of trauma. As a skilled and experienced therapist, I’ve worked with numerous individuals who have found peace and a quality of life they have not had before attending trauma counseling.
You may still doubt that trauma counseling will truly help you.
What if I don’t want to talk about my past trauma?
There are a handful of folks who are reticent to talk about their past, and I understand the strong emotions that keep this truth from bubbling out. However, most individuals, by the time they reach adulthood have carried the trauma with them for so long that they are ready to let someone else help carry the trauma with them. By sharing their story, their truth of what happened, a sense of relief and lightness replaces the heavy tightness they have experienced for so long. After building a trusting relationship, most individuals feel comfortable to speak, write, or express in another manner what has happened to them.
How long is trauma therapy going to take?
My answer to this is ‘how long does it take a bone to heal?’ A healing bone knits more efficiently when it is set and wrapped or casted. Depending on the type of break and the individual’s age and health condition, a healing bone can take anywhere from six weeks to much longer. We often believe things we can’t see should simply heal faster, but all healing is a process and takes time. A person’s trauma healing depends on each individual, and trauma therapy accelerates the healing process. With commitment to recommendations, many experience improvement within 1-3 sessions. You are worth every session to help you feel engaged in your life.
What if I invest all this time and money, and it doesn’t work?
When I hear people ask this question, what they’re really wanting to know is ‘what if my symptoms come back?’ The difference is after trauma counseling, now you have the tools, skills, and understanding to help you cope with the symptoms. We spend the last few sessions preparing you for trauma reminders because these will pop up from time to time. Many clients opt for maintenance sessions, which is basically a few sessions per year to review and refresh the skills they have learned. You need to remember as I stated earlier, you are worth the investment of time and money to improve the quality of your life.
Join others who have completed trauma counseling to move from surviving to living.
I will be glad to speak with you to provide a free 15-30 minutes phone consultation. You can reach me at 479-531-9844. You can also download the free one-page report that lists statistics related to different types of trauma. Your life matters, please seek help whether you decide to see another therapist or to work with me.
If you feel you cannot keep yourself safe, please call the following number or text the crisis hotline.
National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255
Crisistextline.org: text 741741