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What is trauma?

Trauma is when the past lives in the present. 

We all experience unpleasant situations, but some experiences are too terrible, overwhelming, or ongoing for our brains to know what to do with them. 

Trauma can be when we experience too much of a bad thing, or not enough of a thing that we need.

When this happens, our brains are unable to process those experiences into our “long-term” memory.

Instead, our brains and bodies keep those experiences in our “working” memory, and can’t differentiate the past from the present. 

What are signs of trauma?

Symptoms of trauma are wide-ranging, here are some common ways trauma can impact us:

  • Difficult Emotions: Trauma can leave us with many difficult emotions, including anxiety, fear, depression, irritability, anger, numbness, and shame. We can feel overwhelmed by intense and turbulent emotions that leave us disoriented and drained.
  • Relationship Challenges: Trauma can make it difficult for us to form or maintain healthy relationships. We may experience fear of abandonment or rejection, or we may have difficulty setting or respecting boundaries. Some trauma survivors may isolate themselves from others.
  • Physical Symptoms: Trauma may influence the emergence of physical pain, discomfort, GI issues, tension, or other sensations without a clear medical cause. Trauma can also lead to disrupted sleep or sleep issues for survivors.
  • Cognitive Issues: Survivors of trauma may experience difficulty remembering things from the past, or experiencing intrusive thoughts or reminders about what happened. Trauma survivors may also experience difficulty concentrating.
  • Other Symptoms: Trauma can lead to flashbacks, nightmares, and dissociation (feeling disconnected from oneself, surroundings, or reality). People who have experienced trauma may also be in a state of hypervigilance, having difficulty relaxing or entering a state of calm. Lastly, trauma also results in extreme avoidance of situations, people, or other stimuli that may serve as reminders of the trauma.

How can therapy help?

Therapy can be a great place to start with addressing trauma. Here are some of the ways that therapy can be beneficial:

  • Supportive space: Therapy is intended to be a supportive space where you can experience acceptance and have room to explore the hardest things. Sometimes, this can be healing in and of itself, especially if we haven’t always found that safety in our past relationships.
  • Making sense of what happened: Therapy can help you connect the dots between what happened to you, and what is happening now. This helps us give ourselves compassion, and slowly find a path forward.
  • Making space for emotions: Oftentimes, when we have experienced trauma, there are difficult emotions or body sensations that we may be avoiding. Therapy can help with learning to make space for unpleasant emotions, and learning ways to manage emotions and sensations that arise.
  • Learning new ways of functioning: Some of us didn’t really experience examples of healthy relationships in our past, so it can be helpful to identify new options for how we want to interact with others in the present.
  • Helping your brain get unstuck: With EMDR, we can target past traumatic or “stuck” experiences, and utilize bilateral stimulation to help us to hold, desensitize, and reprocess those experiences into long-term memory. This helps us to be able to move on from what happened instead of being stuck in old survival strategies.

Take the Next Step

Therapy can help you achieve a more peaceful and balanced life. Contact me to schedule an initial consultation. Together, we will create a treatment plan that works for you.

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