Counseling for Traumatic Experiences and PTSD
Moving forward with life
Often people reflect on their lives and aren’t sure if they have experienced trauma or not. Generally speaking,
trauma is the experience of living through an extremely stressful event or series of events. Some people may experience a single, easily identifiable, extremely stressful situation. However, this isn’t the case for everyone. Others go through periods of extreme stress over a longer period, making it harder to explain “what exactly happened”.
Frequently, single-event traumas include a loss of control, serious injury, the threat of serious injury, or the threat of death. Trauma can occur when “the thing” happens to you, you witness it happen to someone else, and even when you learn about it happening to someone you are close to.
Whether a person experiences a single event trauma or a consistently traumatic environment, trauma can often lead to a person feeling strong negative emotions including fear, shock, horror, helplessness, disgust, and more.
What is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?
Many people will experience traumatic events and stressful situations in their lifetime. Often people will notice changes in their mood such as depression or increased anxiety, as well as physical changes such as trouble eating or sleeping how you normally would. Often these changes can persist for days, weeks, or even months after a traumatic experience. For many people, their minds and bodies heal on their own. Over time the person makes sense of what happened to them, and they can move forward and function similarly to how they did before the trauma. However, for some people, these symptoms don’t alleviate naturally.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a term commonly used to describe the challenging and impactful symptoms that can occur long after experiencing trauma. These symptoms tend to be grouped into four categories: intrusion, avoidance, changes in thoughts and mood, and alterations in physical and emotional reactivity.
You don’t have to have PTSD for your trauma to be valid
Often people struggle to feel like what they went through was “bad enough” to be worth talking to someone about. If a memory or situation consistently pops up in your mind, and you struggle to work through your thoughts and feelings about it, it’s worth talking about.
TLDR: Your trauma is valid, even if you didn’t experience a threat to your life.
Trauma treatment looks different for everyone - let’s come up with a plan
Some of my clients value speaking about what happened to them and confronting the experience head-on. We know that exposure therapy (allowing yourself to think about it, talk about it, imagine the experience, and start doing things you have avoided) can be very helpful for many people.
However, I also work with many people who feel like the above treatment plan sounds like their worst nightmare. Luckily, there are approaches for each type of person. After getting to know each other in the intake, I will recommend a course of action depending on your unique challenges, where you are at in your journey, and what you’re ready to do. You always have the power to ask for a new approach at any time!
