Finding a Trauma Therapist
As a therapist, I notice how often a person may repress childhood trauma, from neglect, abandonment or abuse, and end up internalizing the belief that they are bad or worthless. The suppressed anger towards abusers gets repressed and internalized, so it becomes redirected towards themselves.
When you suffered trauma in attachment, being dependent on attachment figures may have caused you not to feel safe, so the feelings get buried and re-surface later in life.
A sign that attachment trauma show up is when a person has a tendency of beating themselves up, abusing themselves or becoming hypervigilant such as not trusting others to be there for them. Often sabotaging relationships when they get close, or not recognizing abuse because it feels familiar. This occurs when there are deep seeded attachment wounds to do with betrayal, mistrust or abandonment.
Signs you of may need to see a therapist for trauma.
Trauma or abuse can cause the follow symptoms:
- Feel frozen, checked out of life, dissociated, disconnected from oneself.
- You don’t recognize when your boundaries are being crossed.
- You become hypervigilant of how others react, or keep the peace.
- You discount your needs or please others.
- Many have memories, flash backs, hyper-arousal or nightmares.
- Do not feel safe in relationships, avoid of intimacy or trusting partners.
- Difficulty setting boundaries, protecting oneself or expressing oneself.
- Often get lured into abusive relationships, where boundaries are violated.
- Some resort to self-injury, to escape the intolerable feeling of worthlessness.
- Substance abuse, alcohol misuse, using sex to numb or feel
- Shutoff or detached from painful feelings
- Minimize what happened to you.
Relationship can being triggering and can cause you to re-live the feelings that underpin the original trauma (even though you may have no memory of the trauma you endured). The body reminds you, by reliving the traumatic experience, feeling unsafe.
Trauma occurs when we react to what happens inside of us, as a result of learned felt experiences that shape the way we feel. When our amygdala threat detector goes off, it acts as an alarm warning us of danger, when the threat may no longer exist. But the threat feels real.
When we get stuck in trauma, we are not present with ourselves, we become off line, stuck in trauma responses such as, fight, flight, freeze or appease. When this occurs, we have no access to our pre-frontal cortex, the thinking part of our brains. So we believe what ever we feel, once we get triggered, based on our trauma history.
Treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
When traumatic memories are pushed down, individuals can suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with flash backs, numbing, dissociation, hyper-vigilant behaviours, feeling depressed or anxious. Many develop coping strategies to put these feelings out of their mind. But the trauma persists, if the feelings stay repressed and unprocessed, which can be depilating to ones life
It is important that individuals do not feel over-flooded with intense emotions or feel re-traumatized by delving straight into the trauma before they’re ready to cope with the feelings.
As a therapist, healing trauma carefully allows individuals to go at their own pace, so they can feel safe to do so. The ‘self ‘needs to feel strong enough to cope. Once a person has access to their self, this allows them to overcome the survival coping mechanisms that causes them to be stuck in their trauma. When a person feels psychological held, they can overcome PTSD symptoms so they no longer persist.
Trauma healing and childhood abuse.
Often, relationships can bring up past childhood abuse or trauma, re-experiencing earlier pain, which becomes felt with their partner. It is important for these individuals to be able to protect themselves and feel safe in relationships, otherwise intimacy can feel re-traumatising for them.
They can find partners where the abuse is re-created, by not knowing how to protect themselves or avoid risky situations, and set appropriate boundaries.When relationship difficulties arise counselling for relationships can also be useful.
Our trauma counselor helps to move past traumatic experiences
Gradually, enduring the process of therapy allows individuals to modify intense feelings, so they are better able to handle triggering episodes. A specialist trauma counsellor will allow you to feel safe at your own pace, within your own comfortable limits. When we reprocess our emotions in a way that is not threatening to ourselves, we can overcome the fear and move on with our lives.
Contact us
Call: 0449 861 147 or enquire on the contact form.