Trauma

Trauma—it’s a loaded word

When it comes to trauma, the cause is often less important than the impact the event has on your life—the way you think, feel and behave.

For some people, whose bodily safety or lives have been threatened, it may easier to recognize that they’ve experienced trauma in the form of extreme violence, abuse, or natural disasters. But trauma can also result from less obvious experiences, such as witnessing your parents divorce, grief over the death of a loved one, emotional neglect, bullying, financial stress, and so much more.

A traumatic event is one that overwhelms your internal ability to cope. When the negative event becomes internalized, your brain and body get rewired to be more hyper-vigilant and perceive information differently. This is the nervous system’s attempt to keep you safe and protected from future threats.

Symptoms of trauma may include:

Experiencing somatic pain (headaches, chronic pain, fatigue, digestive issues)

Feeling your mind/body going into high alert mode of fight/flight/freeze/fawn
Overwhelming feelings of anxiety, guilt, and shame
Feelings of worthlessness, not feeling good enough, low self esteem
Feelings of depression, anxiety, constant and/or intrusive negative thoughts
Displaying behaviors that can cause you to feel badly about your worth, such as procrastination, fear/self-sabotage, perfectionism, avoidance/isolation

Feeling detached from yourself and the world around you
Experiencing imposter syndrome, or pervasive feelings of self-doubt, insecurity, or fear of being discovered to be a fraud

Experiencing and not able to distance ourselves from our inner critic
Flashbacks and/or nightmares
Finding it hard to trust others and/or navigate interpersonal relationships (romantic, work, family, friendships)

Trauma can be hard to tolerate, but having a safe therapeutic space can allow you to slow down these experiences to take a closer look at what's going on

EMDR is an extremely effective modality for looking at how the event(s) were processed, how they are being stored in your body, and your beliefs and perspectives. With this, we’ll work together on specific symptoms, issues, and/or memories that are still affecting you today. From there, we use EMDR techniques to allow your mind and body to do the healing that it’s been needing so you can move on and have a calmer nervous system/body.

You may wonder why you have trouble coping when other people seem to be fine. Everyone’s nervous system is different, so it’s unfair to compare your experiences with others. What is experienced as traumatic can vary greatly from person to person, and the only person who can judge this is you—the person who experienced it. We all have our strengths, and sometimes there are things we need to work more at to build up having the resilience to process at our own pace.

Book an appointment today