“There’s no timestamp on trauma. There isn’t a formula that you can insert yourself into to get from horror to healed. Be patient. Take up space. Let your journey be the balm.” – Dawn Serra
Trauma and trauma-related responses can be debilitating, but there is hope. Trauma counseling is a highly beneficial method of working through trauma and recovering after a traumatic event.
Nearly 70% of adults will go through a traumatic event at some point in their lives. Memories of these events can haunt you for years, affecting anything from the route you take home to the type of butter you buy. Responses to trauma are not always logical, and many people end up developing unhealthy coping mechanisms in an attempt to deal with emotions they haven’t been taught to manage.
What Is Trauma?
Psychological trauma occurs after experiencing a traumatic event or a series of traumatic events. Trauma is not determined by the event itself, but by a person’s emotional response to the event. If you are physically or emotionally threatened during an event, it has the potential to leave lasting effects on your mental well-being, including depression, anxiety, or even suicidal thoughts.
There are several different types of trauma, and each comes with its own set of challenges. Working through trauma and trauma responses in trauma counseling is beneficial for every kind of trauma and helps you to move past the event and keep living life fully.
What Is Trauma Counseling?
Trauma counseling is a specific approach to counseling aimed at treating the emotional and mental health consequences of a traumatic event. It focuses on building an understanding of the effects of trauma, whether on your mental, emotional, behavioral, spiritual or physical well-being. Moreover, emphasis is placed on finding the links between the traumatic experience and the emotional response to the event.
What Is The Goal Of Trauma Counseling?
The purpose of trauma counseling is to learn skills and strategies which will help you better understand, cope with, and process emotions and memories resulting from a traumatic experience. Additionally, the goal is to process what happened to you and to talk about the pain that it caused.
Trauma has the potential to stay with you for the rest of your life, but it does not have to. Trauma counseling provides you with the means to move past that event and continue living an empowered and fulfilled life.
How Does Trauma Counseling Work?
Trauma can directly change your brain chemistry. Areas of your brain that used to work in particular ways change function based on hyper-arousal due to trauma. The good news here is that your brain can also change after trauma counseling, because it is malleable. The pathways in your brain can mold and change over time, meaning that you can re-alter your brain in a positive way.
Similar to depression counseling, trauma counseling rehabilitates your brain and helps you build new, healthier pathways so you can move forward.
Benefits Of Trauma Counseling
Traumatic events do not have to control how you respond to things for the rest of your life. Trauma counseling can bring incredible growth and healing by providing you with the right tools, and a safe space to begin using them. Some of the main benefits of trauma counseling are:
1. You Learn To Identify Triggers
Triggers refer to anything that affects your emotional state by reminding you of a traumatic event. This may be a sound, smell, or situation which makes you feel unsafe. Identifying what your triggers are means that you can work through the emotions that they bring up and anticipate difficult feelings. Recognizing what causes a response gives you the power to adapt and handle that response in the future.
2. You Develop Healthy Coping Skills
Trauma counseling gives you the skills and coping strategies to manage trauma responses and intense emotions associated with the event. These can include anxiety management or relaxation strategies, and help you build resilience so you can bounce back from this difficult time.
3. You Can Decrease Symptoms Of PTSD
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an often-debilitating mental health condition that can develop after you experience trauma. Those with PTSD become stuck in severe depression and anxiety caused by their traumatic experience. Trauma counseling helps you to realize why your body is responding the way it is, and helps you discover coping mechanisms for these responses.
4. You Re-establish Safety
A traumatic experience violates your sense of safety in the world. Trauma counseling can re-establish your sense of physical, emotional, psychological, and relational safety by targeting the emotions that cause you to feel unsafe.
5. You Learn About Your Trauma
Understanding trauma, and your own responses to traumatic events, is a huge part of taking away its hold over your life. This is possibly the greatest benefit of trauma counseling
Your responses to traumatic events, as well as the coping mechanisms you develop, don’t make you weak. In trauma counseling, you will work with your therapist to understand where your reactions came from, what ripple effects the event has had on your life, and how unhealthy coping mechanisms can inhibit your healing.
Trauma Counseling With P.S. Love Yourself
Psychological wounds seldom heal on their own. However, with the guidance of a caring and experienced therapist, any of trauma-related symptoms can be alleviated. If you or a loved one have experienced a traumatic event and are battling with trauma symptoms or unhealthy coping mechanisms, it is vital to reach out for help.
At P.S. Love Yourself, we are a safe place for you to work through any and all emotions you may have following trauma. Contact us at 954-806-5569 to start moving forward, today.
Do you want more helpful tips on how to deal with anxiety, depression, sexual assault, and more? Check out Priya’s Self Love Blog! You can also follow P.S. Love Yourself on Facebook for daily inspiration and regularly updated content.