Trauma

You want to live your life in the present, but something keeps hijacking you to the past. You hear a certain sound, smell a certain smell, or see a person who resembles someone you’d rather forget, and suddenly you’re back THERE, the last place you wanted to be. Perhaps your heart quickens, you feel flushed, or a chill crawls up your spine. A horrible memory or string of memories return. It seems like they’ll never go away.

You know intellectually that what happened to isn’t likely to happen again, but the “fight or flight” within you doesn’t agree. Perhaps you spend a lot of energy avoiding specific places, sights, situations, and sounds that serve as reminders of the event. Perhaps even today you often feel anger, irritability or even engage in self-harm in response to the event, or feel anxiety, depression, numbness, or guilt. Perhaps you have a difficult time enjoying activities you used to enjoy.

You wish that you could, for once, just turn that part of your mind off, but something within you feels the need to be “on guard.” Meanwhile, people in your life try to understand, but just ending up saying, “You need to get over this.” Perhaps you criticize yourself for not being able to.

Most people will experience trauma in their lifetime whether it’s a car accident, abuse or neglect, the sudden death of a loved one, a violent criminal act, exposure to the violence of war, a natural disaster, or even a hostile workplace and other threats to a person’s financial security.

While many people can bounce back from trauma over time with the love and support of family and friends, you might be dealing with the long term effects from it. which can cause a person to live with far after the event has passed.

You can overcome the deep emotional pain, fear, confusion, or stress from that trauma. Research has proven psychotherapy to be the most effective form of treatment for trauma. Most commonly, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) are used in treating trauma.

To take the first step towards free yourself from past trauma, fill in the contact form on the right side of this page or click the “Contact” button. Briefly tell me about the challenges and barriers you face and any other help you might need. From there I will schedule a free fifteen minute phone consultation in which we can talk about your challenges and how I can help you achieve the change you need.