Trauma
What is trauma?
Trauma therapy helps people who have had traumatic experiences cope with them and recover.
Many of my clients have minimized not only what happened to them, but the impact it’s had on their lives. They think what happened to them wasn’t as big a deal as it actually was. They think that they should have been able to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They think they must be weak, inadequate, complaining failures to have continued to have their problems.
There’s a stereotype of trauma victims as total victims, crying through life, blaming and refusing to take any responsibility. But I find that people with trauma don’t want to be victims. They want their lives to get better, and they’re willing to do what it takes.
What a great place to start therapy!
And what a broken place to be in, when things seem like they are crashing down around you, and you finally admit that you need help. My heart goes out to each of you, and my hope wants to enfold you with strength, compassion and the vision of possibility.
Because possibility is powerful. I see it when you don’t. I’ve watched many people recover.
You also can recover. You can get your life back.
Sure, you lived with this trauma for awhile now. Sure, you used to function much better than you do now. Neither of these things means that the trauma wasn’t that bad, or that there’s something wrong with you. There’s only so long a person can hold it together when their foundation was never solid to begin with. This was NOT your fault!
There are lots of types of trauma.
It could be that you had a childhood experience that horrifically changed your life. Or a whole bunch of childhood experiences.
Perhaps it was a more recent experience. Perhaps a rape, an accident, or one or more episodes of violence.
Whatever the case, you can recover. If I didn’t think you could get better, I wouldn’t be in this business. I would have no right to be in this business.
Part of why I’m so passionate about knowing that there is a path to recovery for you is that I’ve seen it so many times. I have a handle on where the pitfalls are and what you need to know to keep moving forward.
You may have heard that people with trauma have more difficult lives. It is true. Many people who went through trauma have compromised health, trouble in relationships, difficulty achieving and deep down cannot seem to like themselves.
However, these things can change. That’s why I do therapy – to help create these kinds of life changes. To me, this work is not just good, it’s holy.
You may be wondering what this kind of therapy looks like, especially at the start.
First, no worries about having to dump all kinds of painful information out of yourself. You won’t be pushed to talk about anything unless and until you want to and are ready to talk about it.
See, one of the biggest troubles people run into is that they push themselves TOO hard. They expect that if they just push hard enough, they’ll magically get better.
I do understand what they’re trying to do. I do exposure therapy, and it works. But a tremendously important part of doing successful exposure therapy is that you don’t push yourself beyond what your brain can process.
Many very well-meaning people push themselves so hard that their brain flips right back into fight-or-flight mode and can’t rationally process what’s happening in any useful way.
So, people inadvertently re-traumatize themselves.
And then they feel like they are failures, weak and inadequate. What misery! You try so hard to overcome, and your own brain isn’t cooperating.
What I do is help you understand how your brain works in relation to the trauma, and how it affects your behavior. For instance, you learn to figure out whether you’re in rational mind or whether your limbic system is driving your behavior. We talk a lot about the value of the limbic system in helping save your life.
You learn that you are way! way! way! less inadequate than you think you are. You experience this as well as learn it intellectually.
You learn how to handle emotions, even strong and overwhelming ones.
Some (not all) of this happens through using the technology of mindfulness.
Probably one of the concepts that people with trauma have a hard time with is that of boundaries.
If you’re thinking: well, what the heck are boundaries even? You are So. Not. Alone.
There’s a great reason you have trouble with boundaries – you weren’t “allowed” to have them during whatever events happened that were traumatic.
Kind of the definition of trauma is that: violated boundaries. You were helpless when you were violated. Your brain got re-wired. Now all your brain seems to do is flip out and worry about being taken advantage of again, even in situations where you’re obviously safe. Thanks so much, brain.
But really, you learn to appreciate your brain taking care of you – yes, even when it totally doesn’t need to.
That’s the crux of trauma therapy to me: doing the behaviors and experiences that help teach the brain that YOU, that actual YOU (not the trauma YOU) are a trustworthy person who can reliably take care of yourself, and you don’t need your freaked out limbic system to jerk you around to avoid danger anymore! YOU can be the one who has the good judgment and the smarts… and your brain learns to get that straight.
Your brain adjusts to actual reality instead of living in a past reality and constantly watching (hypervigilant) out for danger.
Wow. The possibilities! I love this!