Trauma can keep you feeling trapped by the past.
Some painful past experiences can have such a profound impact that they may continue to haunt you in the present. If you are have intrusive, upsetting memories of events in which your life or physical well-being was threatened, trauma-focused therapy may help you make peace with the past and find relief.
Examples of experiences that may result in PTSD or a Trauma or Stressor Related Disorder include the following:
Physical abuse in childhood
Physical assault or having your life threatened by another person
Sexual abuse, molestation, or inappropriate sexual experiences in childhood
Sexual assault, rape, or unwanted sexual experience as an adult
Witnessing violence
Witnessing the sudden or violent death of another person
War and military trauma
Accident or near-death experience
Abandonment or neglect in childhood
When life-threatening events happen repeatedly in childhood, they are sometimes called complex trauma, because of how frequently they occur during a sensitive developmental period…
Do you struggle with the following?
Haunted by one or more upsetting past experiences?
Feel ashamed, guilty, afraid, horrified, enraged when you remember?
Have bad dreams or nightmares about the experience?
Hard to feel safe?
Hard to trust?
Constantly watchful and ‘on guard’?
Hard to stay present?
Can’t enjoy the people or the activities you used to?
Angry, frustrated, or agitated?
Feeling unsettled especially when other things are going well for you (“waiting for the other shoe to drop”)?
Can’t Sleep?
Can’t relax?
Sometimes feel as if you’re experiencing the event all over again?
Do you struggle with trauma or PTSD?
When trauma results in PTSD, you may feel trapped by your traumatic experiences. Even a subtle reminder can trigger overwhelming emotions (shame, rage, terror, horror) and make you feel like you are back in the situation. You might relive the situation during the day, or have disturbing dreams about it at night. You likely struggle with your sleep—either because of upsetting dreams and nightmares, or because it is so difficult to rest your mind and body. You may feel hypervigilant, frequently ‘on edge’ and have a sense that you are not safe, even though you may know on some level that you are safe now. You may a hard time trusting yourself, a very hard time trusting others, and need to feel in control. You may hold negative views about yourself, other people, or the world in general and wish that you could feel more connected to the people in your life.
Trying not to think about trauma can keep you stuck.
If you have PTSD, you may avoid reminders of your traumatic experiences. Certain people, situations, smells, sounds, or places that have any association to the event(s) can trigger a flood of overwhelming feelings—shame, horror, rage, disgust—and your body may even react similarly to the way it did at the time.
When reminded of trauma, PTSD memories are experienced at a visceral and emotional level. They are disturbing and often fragmented. Because of how horrible it feels to think about for long, the memory never get to be fully processed and encoded into memory like other non-traumatic experiences do. This is the difference between PTSD-memories and memories about other experiences. Memories of events that were not-traumatic may sometimes be unpleasant, but when these events are recalled the body does experience the recollection as if the event were occurring all over again.
To heal from PTSD and feel safe again, a person usually needs to be able to ‘process’ the trauma so it can be encoded like any other experience. Allowing yourself to think about the event, talk about, consider new perspectives about why the event occurred, and feeling all of the complex emotions associated with the experiences encourages the memory of the traumatic event to get stored like other non-trauma memories. This kind of “processing” ultimately allows traumatic memories to be encoded properly into long-term memory, so that reminders of the traumatic event(s) no longer elicit intense and overwhelming emotions like those experienced at the time the event occurred. Although difficult, trauma processing is necessary for healing and resolution, and tends to need to take place in a safe space and facilitated by a trusted person.
Trauma-focused therapy can gently and securely help survivors get relief and resolution.
If you are struggling with unresolved trauma, peace is possible.
Evidence-based treatments can help you recover from trauma and PTSD. One of the most difficult but necessary tasks of trauma recovery is sharing a safe space with a supportive, trained professional, who can guide you in the process to resolve your traumatic memories. By talking about, thinking about, and writing about your experiences in a safe and contained way, resolution can be achieved and you can feel relief. You can start to make peace with the past.
Therapy is meant to feel safe and empowering, and always moves at a pace that is comfortable for you.
See options for evidence-based treatments for trauma and PTSD below.
There is effective treatment for Trauma and PTSD
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Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) for PTSD
CPT is an evidence-based therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). CPT focuses on finding freedom from upsetting thoughts and feelings about traumatic events. CPT is a structured treatment where you learn specific skills to help you examine, challenge, and effectively process the troubling beliefs you may have about traumatic events. CPT involves daily written exercises between sessions.
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Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) for PTSD
EMDR is an effective, evidence-based intervention to reduce the intensity of PTSD symptoms. This treatment focuses on resolving the intensity of the body’s response to trauma reminders to support the brain’s natural memory processing.
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Skills Training for Affective and Interpersonal Regulation (STAIR) for Childhood Trauma
STAIR is a skill-based treatment that uses cognitive-behavioral therapy techniques to help people who have experienced childhood trauma (e.g., sexual, emotional, and physical abuse) and other childhood adversity (e.g., emotional abuse; emotional or material neglect). Through STAIR, you learn new ways of understanding and managing emotions, and you also learn strategies to improve relationships.