You have been walking around feeling bad, wanting things to be different, but nothing has helped. You dread the next “unreasonable” mood swing when you become deeply depressed, highly agitated, or quickly angry. Relaxing is hard because you are always on guard, looking for threats. Even simple activities can be draining because of a heavy, dark weight inside of you. With all of that happening, you are afraid that somebody will see the real you and you will be rejected or shunned. These are pointers to a history in which something bad happened to you and you’ve still not recovered.
It’s Depression, It’s Anxiety and It’s More
What are other concerns that you have? Are there situations from your life that make you feel agitated when you think back to them? Do you fear that people that you get close to will leave you? Are you hopeless that things will ever get better? As you read this, when you said yes to a question, did you assume you are to blame? There is a likelihood that you are blaming yourself for the bad things that happened because you don’t know how else to make sense of them. You try to gain control over how you react to the situations, but you can’t. That leaves you feeling more alone and desperate. Getting the right kind of support can help to change that.
It’s in The Past, But You Can’t Leave It Behind
If this sounds familiar, you could be experiencing Trauma, a long-term reaction to an experience (or experiences) that was overwhelming to you when it happened, that continues to overwhelm you, and that you aren’t recovering from. It can be brutal. It’s also normal; it’s a natural response people have when faced with a situation that is beyond their capabilities and that scares them. Though time doesn’t heal these wounds, treatment can help.
For some of us, we are clear about what happened that resulted in our wounding, our Trauma. Others have done a lot of work on it and don’t understand why it still haunts them. For some, the symptoms seem to have existed their whole life; they don’t know why they are there and wonder if it’s just who they are. There isn’t one way to become traumatized or even a way that makes the most sense. It’s unique to the individual and results in its own wounding. Regardless, though time doesn’t heal Trauma, treatment can. My clients notice that they become calmer, able to discriminate between when they need to act and when they first need to shift away from reacting and to reconnect to themselves. They talk about becoming confident and learning to trust themselves. Rather than having plans they won’t fulfill, they become intentional and feel powerful. Ultimately, through our work, clients have a better understanding of how their wounding impacted them; they resolve the pain and feel better equipped to embrace the things they like and to face the things that they don’t like.
As Trauma is the result of an overwhelming experience with a significant amount of fear and disconnection, there are several challenges in treating it. The nature of Trauma is such that even thinking about the incidents can bring you back into the fear and disconnection, reinforcing them rather than healing them. Additionally, it can be hard to access and process traumatic memories and challenging to sort out the complex nature of trauma symptoms. So, treatment has to be applied carefully, prioritizing safety while supporting the resolution of issues. We often think of therapy as a time to talk about problems, figure out why they are happening, and then find other ways to address them. While that is how some therapeutic processes work, with Trauma, other techniques can be more effective. I use three of them: EMDR, Brainspotting, and Somatic Experiencing, all of which have proven to be highly effective in addressing Trauma. These techniques address non-verbal parts of the brain where trauma wounding is stored. (I describe EMDR more fully on my Therapy Approach page.)
Please call or text me and we can talk more about how I might be able to help.
Suggested Resources:
Reading:
What Happened to You by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
The Complex PTSD Workbook by Arielle Schwartz
Links:
Inspiration for Teachers