Healing from Trauma
The word “trauma” makes people think of…
… BIG events in life that are disruptive – like car accidents, sexual assault, abusive relationships, and so much more. These are the kinds of things that undeniably change the way we see the world.
It’s really scary to get back in the car after a wreck, nightmares become an every-night occurrence, loud noises make you jump a foot into the air.
It’s nearly impossible to trust anyone after a sexual assault or abusive relationship. No one feels safe to be around; it’s impossible to trust yourself to determine a safe person from an unsafe person.
You stop leaving the house altogether, so you don’t have to deal with the constant stress of being out in the world.
Important note: Trauma is defined by each individual person.
So, it’s not just about the “big events” just described, and it can depend on the person. Here’s an example:
Two sisters, Anna* and Jessa*, grew up together in Colorado. There’s a one-year age difference between them (Anna was the older one), so they grew up experiencing a lot of their childhood together. Their house was on a quiet suburban street, and there were a few other girls in the neighborhood they played with all the time.
Their mom was the most calm, sweet, nurturing person in the world; and they had the most fun going to the park and adventuring together while they were growing up. Their father, on the other hand, was an alcoholic. He was nice enough when he was sober, which was a lot of the time, but when he drank, he often yelled at both girls viciously and sometimes became physically abusive.
Both sisters grew up, went to college together, and got jobs in Denver after they graduated. It’s safe to say their experiences were pretty similar in life. But Anna is 25 now, and she’s really struggling, whereas Jessa seems to be totally fine.
Anna has nightmares and panic attacks almost every day. She seems irritable most of the time and rarely remembers things that Jessa has told her. Anna doesn’t go out often and doesn’t like to socialize. She usually stays in on the weekends with a bottle of wine (or two) and a movie.
Jessa can’t figure out what is “wrong” with her sister. She can’t think of anything that Anna experienced that would explain this, since they’d been together almost their entire lives and knew that nothing had happened to her that she wasn’t aware of.
Even though they experienced the same childhood, their father’s abuse was traumatic for Anna, but it wasn’t for Jessa.
I can’t stress enough that trauma is a completely individual thing.
Two people who both experience the same plane crash and survive may have completely different experiences after the fact. One person may be completely functional, while the other one is crippled by panic, anxiety, anger, etc.
Even things that may seem “small” can also be traumatic. A child who was always met with a withering look or an overly tight grip on the arm when they’re simply excited and expressing themselves, for example, can live with shame about being themselves for the rest of their lives. That look from mom that made them shrink into themselves when they were children can appear in their mind and make them shrink into themselves as grown adults, too – even when mom is nowhere near. For these children, those withering looks and that shaming glance were traumatic.
If you feel as though something in your life was traumatizing and it affects your life in a notable way, you are right, no matter what anyone else’s definition of trauma is.
So… what do we do to help you heal from trauma??
Healing from trauma can happen, and it happens all the time. I have had clients who have come into their first session with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), and by our last session, they were WELL beyond it.
Just as all people are different from each other, healing from trauma looks different for each person. I’ll describe some of the specific tools we may use in therapy to address trauma symptoms:
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
EFT changes the way our bodies react to a given traumatic memory.
It’s an incredible tool because it can immediately, in a matter of seconds, diminish those horrible body sensations (pounding heart, shortness of breath, tense muscles, faintness, tightness in the belly, nausea, clenched throat, tightened fists, furrowed brow, tightened jaw, etc.).
Instead of trying to talk through these disruptive events or revisiting them with our imagination, which can often cause us to relive the events and experience the full-body reactions we fear…
… we use tapping to retrain our bodies to be calm when we remember those events.
The way it works is that we identify specific moments from your past that cause you to have overwhelming body sensations. When you think about one of those moments, your body likely tenses; and you can feel a tight, trapped energy gripping your body.
By using the tips of our fingers to tap repeatedly on the top of the head, between the eyebrows, on the temples, and several other target points, we teach the body to release that energy and unravel the tension associated with that memory. These specific points on the body have clusters of nerve endings; and by stimulating those nerve endings, we are un-freezing an automatic response that happens when that memory comes to mind.
The next time you remember that moment, your tension response will be less, because we’ve taught the body to have a different reaction. And by repeating the tapping sequence, we eventually train it to have little or no response at all to the memory.
Depending on your experience in therapy, it may be a new concept to think of memories being held in the body; but we know through extensive research that, on a cellular level, our bodies carry memories in places other than our brains.
If you’re curious about this, Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score is a really helpful read.
Skill Building
In my experience working with clients, I’ve learned that so much of post-traumatic experience takes the form of uncomfortable body sensations. Often, the first thing that goes haywire is our breath… you may even start to hyperventilate or hold your breath without realizing it. Then your heart may start to pound, your hands might get clammy, or you may feel as though your knees have turned to rubber and you can’t move. You may start looking for exits. Sometimes these combinations of body reactions happen upon you inexplicably.
The cool thing is that we can build a “tool kit” that’s completely individualized to you that can help you stop those body sensations in their tracks. These tools include breathing techniques (WAY more powerful than it sounds), tapping techniques, grounding tools, mindfulness tools, and many other tools that help you slow down your thinking and feel in control.
A grounding tool is a mental game you can play with yourself to bring your focus back to your immediate environment. When you’re panicking and having a response to a memory, your brain is using the imagination to predict the worst-case-scenario or think of hypothetical threats.
Using our five senses to connect back to the present shifts our thinking away from imagination and into logic, where rational thought lives. Logic is the antithesis to panic. An example of a grounding skill is the 5-4-3-2-1 tool. You’d start by listing 5 things you can feel with your fingers (e.g., a wood table, the softness of your shirt, your ponytail, the texture of your phone case, and the seam on your pants.) Then you’d list in your mind 4 things you can hear (e.g., the sound of the HVAC system, someone talking down the hall, a dog barking in the neighborhood, and a clock ticking). For each number, you’d use a different sense to notice things in the environment. By the end of this exercise, your logic brain is working again, and the imagination is no longer predicting danger that is not actually there.
Skill-building is such a powerful way to gain mastery over your body in a way that can help you feel safe, trust yourself, and gain (or regain) the freedom and confidence you wish you felt in your everyday life.
Reiki
Our bodies hold memories at a cellular level. This is something we know through extensive research. When we think of “memory,” we usually immediately think of a clear, linear memory that we can bring to mind easily and replay. But your body is also holding memories in its cells, and that plays a huge role in the way we react to our environments.
For some people, talk therapy can’t quite access those cellular memories, and Reiki can help. It provides an access to those cells that talking can’t and delivers a powerful healing energy directly to the body in a unique way that can make a big difference. This is ENTIRELY optional and certainly isn’t necessary for everyone. I list it here because I believe it to be a wonderful complement to the work we can do with our logical brains.
Are you ready to heal from your trauma?
Feeling fearful, avoiding leaving the house, nightmares and poor sleep, not trusting others and not trusting yourself, and having tumultuous relationships are all absolutely normal things that happen after a traumatic experience, no matter how “big” or “small” the trauma was.
AND they’re all things that can be healed and tamed. I can help you get there.
Give me a call and find out how: (720) 432-3842.