TRAUMA THERAPY

YOU are not your symptoms.

Trauma distorts our sense of who we are. Untreated, it wreaks havoc on our nervous system, sleep, emotions, self-esteem, thought patterns, social connections, and even our physical health. Trauma survivors are often left believing that something is wrong with them. Feelings of shame, distrust, and alienation are extremely common among people who have experienced trauma. You may be exhausted from hypervigilance or nightmares. You may panic at what seems like the slightest thing. You may crave social connection, but feel so triggered in your relationships that you end up shutting down or pushing people away. Living with trauma can feel draining, terrifying, and isolating. Even if you view your trauma as being less severe- being called names in school, for example- any level of trauma can still have a profound impact, and deeply affect your sense of who you are.

Trauma therapy can help.

With help, you can heal. Life does not have to be a life sentence. You can find relationships that feel safe and supportive. You can learn to rest in your own thoughts without always having to avoid the fears in the back of your mind. You can find a sense of peace and comfort in your own skin. You can gain a new understanding of yourself and the world. I have the training to help you find your intact, healthy center, and to resolve your traumatic experiences so that you can move forward and live the life you want to live, instead of just working to avoid your triggers.

Treatment might involve direct work on your trauma, if you feel ready. It can also include building positive coping skills to manage stress and trauma triggers. I can help you learn to tune into your body and “befriend” your physical sensations, so that you can better judge what is a genuine threat and what is a residual trauma response. I can teach you ways to discharge the survival energy of a trauma response, and to retrain the brain to improve its ability to recognize safety. I can also help you address the stuck negative thinking patterns that can result from trauma.

Social support is an important part of the trauma healing journey. Since trauma disrupts our ability to connect with others in a meaningful way, part of therapy often involves rebuilding your ability to engage in positive relationships and learning to trust others and yourself. The communication skills you practice in therapy can be applied to your outside relationships and help you express your needs and relate to others more effectively.

Trauma therapy doesn’t end when a trauma is successfully reprocessed. It also involves orienting toward a new sense of meaning and purpose in life. It involves turning toward joy, and actually learning to feel it. Yes, this is possible.

WILL THERAPY ACTUALLY HELP?

While there is no way to predict the ways in which therapy will help you, the trauma therapies in which I am trained are statistically very effective in treating trauma. EMDR therapy, for instance, eliminates PTSD symptoms in 84-90% of survivors of a single-incident trauma. Together we will choose the most appropriate form of therapy to help you heal from the specific ways in which your trauma has impacted you.

Schedule a free consultation now:

zoelewis@therapysecure.com

435-979-3564

You may be unsure whether you have experienced trauma.

Trauma is an emotional response caused by severely distressing experiences. Trauma can result from a single catastrophic event, like a car crash, or from repeated exposure to stressful or disturbing situations, like child abuse, domestic violence, living without enough food in the home, etc. You may think of trauma as something specific to war veterans or survivors of natural disasters, but trauma is actually extremely widespread. Being bullied or neglected as a child is enough to create a trauma response in our internal system. Even chronic work stress can tip our nervous system into a trauma state.

How does PTSD treatment work?

Trauma therapy involves addressing the different layers of the body, mind, and emotions impacted by your experiences. It often isn’t enough to simply understand what happened intellectually. It can be frustrating to gain insight into your situation, only to find that your emotions and body seem stuck in their old reactions to the world. If we begin trauma work, we may use a variety of treatments to address the different ways in which your trauma has affected your emotions, thinking patterns, and body.

You might still have questions.

WILL I HAVE TO RELIVE MY TRAUMA IN THERAPY?

Many people feel scared to begin trauma therapy. My top priority in PTSD treatment is to go at a pace that you can manage without feeling overwhelmed. I will not push you faster than you are ready to go. You are the boss of your treatment, and this means that you decide what pace of therapy is right for you. Some people find that they need to revisit their trauma in order to heal, which might involve retelling their story or reprocessing it in a different way, but this is not necessarily the case for everyone. Healing can also come from recognizing stuck thinking patterns and emotions, and learning to see things from a new perspective.