NAOMI CASEMENT Therapy
Trauma Therapy
Trauma Recovery
Defining Trauma
The word “trauma” is a popular term describing difficult situations and experiences that have an intense impact on our lives. The term trauma has been expanding as people describe many distressing experiences they encounter as traumatic. This may or may not be a traumatic experience.
We must ask ourselves what exactly is trauma? How do I know if I’m affected by a difficult, distressing situation that may cause a trauma response? The definition of trauma is a challenging and difficult emotional reaction to a terrible event experienced in the body’s response as “fight, flight, freeze”. These disastrous events may include experiences such as, a car accident, being directly harmed by someone through experiences like physical violence, rape, mugging, or even medical trauma from surgeries, or direct combat. These disastrous events psychologically overwhelm the persons system resulting in them responding in a shock, denial, changes in the body, their mind or behavior. The events encountered can be a one time experience we call “little T” (trauma), or a repeated experience called “big T” (trauma or complex trauma).
To break this down a little further for understanding the professional field identified five different types of traumas. The explanation is as follows:
Adverse childhood experiences (ACE). This area covers a vast range of situations that children face directly, or witness in their childhood. During this formative time the child has not yet developed effective coping readiness to navigate and handle their emotional and physical responses. The ACE can affect the normal course of childhood development as the child may develop anxiety, low self-worth and self-blaming, depression etc. These emotional injuries can last into adulthood if gone unnoticed. The type of experiences that cause ACE, are experiences such as, sexual abuse, physical, emotional, abuse and neglect, loss of a parent, divorce and all common types of adverse childhood experiences.
Secondary or vicarious trauma. This type of trauma arises from exposure from peoples suffering. This is not an uncommon response for people who work as first responders in their careers, servicing the community. This includes law enforcement, physicians and nurses, EMT’s,
Firefighters, and behavioral health therapists to name some experiences. Over time the individuals in these fields of work are at a higher risk for “compassion fatigue”. As a result, they may avoid connections with others more often in an attempt to protect themselves from distressing experiences whether it is in the person’s awareness or not.
Chronic trauma. This can occur from injurious events that are repeated and/or prolonged. This can develop in response to repeated “bullying”, persistent domestic violence, and witnessing, physical/emotional, neglectful or sexual abuse which may result in a deep long term trauma response if gone untreated.
Complex trauma. This is similar to chronic trauma as it is repeated/multiple traumatic events where there is no escape. The sense of not being able to seek safety and having to endure the repeated abuse undermines one’s sense of safety in the world. Hypervigilance develops as an exhausting, constant, monitoring of one’s environment as they are on the lookout for an unsafe injurious experience that may or may never come.
Acute Trauma. This is the experience of intense distress that immediately follows a one-time horrendous experience. The reaction to the event is of a short duration. Common examples are experiences such as, a car accident, a surgical procedure, a mugging, a sudden death of a loved one.
Complex Trauma
Move forward in Life with Trauma Therapy
Trauma can be a very difficult, distressing and even debilitating reaction to a horrific event. The good news is that it is treatable. People do heal from these shocking situations that occur in life.
Human beings are resilient. There are tools available that can help one to heal and to be able to break free from past emotional injuries. One must be ready to face this head on by being kind to oneself and to begin to design a new path to move forward.
Self-care is a very important place to start; especially in a hurried, rushed world. By taking time to engage in activities that create positive physical and emotional responses, such as yoga, 30–60-minute exercise, taking up a hobby that interests you, such as painting, dance class, hiking, etc. This is not the cure but is an important step in changing the brain responses to a more positive one.
Trauma Healing
For added relief: Seek Professional Help
If you are noticing that the symptoms and struggles you experience are not improving then it may be time for you to seek professional help. This is not a weakness to seek help. We cannot do everything alone and need an outside look to help us navigate these very difficult experiences. Your professional needs to provide a safe and welcoming environment that you feel safe/secure enough in. There are different treatment approaches that can be used to help you on your healing journey. It is best when therapy is a collaborative and tailored approach to your unique situation. Everyone responds differently to treatment and there is “no one size fits all”.
Trauma Therapy
Trauma therapists use a variety of modalities for your needs
A variety of methods used for trauma therapy may include:
IFS, (Internal Family Systems therapy). This method focuses on the parts of self or multiple sub personalities within each person’s mental system. These sub personalities often were injured and painful emotions such as shame and anger take up a lot of the system as a result. These parts try to control and protect the person from the pain of the wounded part. It is not uncommon for the sub personalities to be in conflict with each other and with the person’s core self. The core self is present when the person experiences confidence, compassion, centeredness to name a few responses in their being. The goal is to heal the wounded part to restore balance and harmony in the persons system.
EMDR ( eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). This method incorporates cognitive behavioral therapy with eye movement or another from of rhythm movement (such as tapping) that moves left to right to “unfreeze” traumatic experiences to calm the system.
Somatic experience. This is a form of therapy that focuses on bodily sensations by concentrating on what is going on in the body so pent up/stuck trauma related memories and energy is released.
These modalities are a few different approaches that can be used alone or woven together to reach specific outcomes for the individual. Your trauma specialist will work with you to design the best approach for your needs.
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