Trauma Therapy
You deserve to thrive, not just survive.
At ECC, we provide personalized therapy to help you cope with trauma, PTSD, and CPTSD.
What is trauma?
Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event or experience (source: APA).
Just as our bodies experience injuries in response to a harmful event, our mental health can experience injuries, too. When we experience stressful, life-altering events, our mind and body respond by prioritizing survival functions that lead us into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses. When we're in survival mode with one of these responses, our prefrontal cortex that controls our language and reasoning abilities is less active as our brain focuses all of our mental energy on essential body functions (like running, defending ourselves, or holding really still.)
Even after the stressful event has passed, we can experience these trauma responses when something triggers the memory of the traumatic event. It’s important to understand that this trauma response isn't voluntary. Several factors such as our brain chemistry, family mental health history, interpersonal dynamics, cultural expectations, and others, can cause our brains to get "stuck" in trauma response mode, making us feel like we're perpetually experiencing the traumatic event, even when we’re technically safe. This can lead to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or complex post traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD).
Common causes of trauma:
Abuse
Accidents
Displacement
Natural disasters
Physical or sexual assault
Witnessing a death
Witnessing abuse or violence
Wars
Career experiences, e.g., active combat, being a first responder, etc.
The incident doesn’t have to happen to you, nor do you have to witness it directly, for it to traumatize you and cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is also important to understand that the event doesn’t need to be literally life-threatening to be traumatic; at the most basic level, sometimes our brain chemistry cannot differentiate between a bear chasing us like our ancestors may have experienced, and something more mundane in modern-day life, like losing our job. Trauma responses are a survival mechanism formed in early humans that has become deeply ingrained in the human experience. We have the therapeutic tools now to help our brains heal from trauma so that we’re not living in a perpetual trauma response state.
What is PTSD?
To be formally diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), symptoms must affect you for more than a month and interfere with your ability to function in daily life. PTSD is typically the result of a single traumatic event, such as an assault, an accident, or a natural disaster.
What is CPTSD?
Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) is typically the result of prolonged or repeated exposure to traumatic events, such as abuse, neglect, or witnessing violence.
Signs you may have PTSD/CPTSD:
You may have PTSD if you experience one or more of the following symptoms:
Anxiety
Experiencing flashbacks or nightmares
Intrusive thoughts
Avoidance: trying not to think or talk about a traumatic event, and/or staying away from places, people, or activities that remind you of a traumatic event.
Heightened emotional state
Difficulty sleeping
Trouble concentrating
Self-harm and self-destructive behavior (e.g., substance abuse)
Suicidal ideation
For young children, PTSD/CPTSD symptoms can also include:
Reenacting a traumatic event through play
Nightmares
If you or your child experience any of these symptoms for longer than a month, talk to a mental health therapist. When it comes to post-traumatic stress, the sooner you seek therapeutic support, the better. Getting therapy sooner rather than later can keep symptoms from getting worse.
How can therapy help treat trauma
In therapy, your therapist can work with you to process the traumatic experience in an emotionally and physically safe environment. Together you can:
Approach traumatic memories to build mental and emotional resilience.
Identify triggers that initiate trauma responses.
Learn to recognize your trauma responses and how they play out in your daily life.
Cope with intense feelings about the traumatic experience and how it has impacted you.
Change your responses to triggers by becoming more aware of your thoughts and feelings.
Improve self-esteem: regain your sense of self, your innate value, and your right to thrive.
Regain control over fear so that you can move forward with your life.
Reconnect with parts of your life you've been avoiding, whether it's places, people, or activities you once loved.
Some modalities for treating PTSD/CPTSD include:
Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR) is a psychotherapy treatment that uses bilateral stimulation, along with visualizing the memory, which helps to decrease the overwhelming feelings connected to the traumatic memory, decrease physical and emotional activation, and change the way the memory is stored by connecting the experience to a more positive or neutral belief or understanding.
Brainspotting Therapy is a type of alternative therapy that processes trauma in the subcortical brain (the area of the brain responsible for motion, consciousness, emotions, and learning), using different spots in a person's visual field.
Prolonged Exposure Therapy is a type of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) that helps clients to confront trauma-related memories and emotions, as well as situations they've been avoiding, with the goal of reducing their fear and anxiety through safe exposure to triggers.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a form of talk therapy that helps clients process trauma by identifying and harmonizing their inner "parts," including the part of them that holds traumatic memories.
What is trauma-informed therapy?
Trauma-informed therapy is an approach in which a therapist takes into account a client's trauma history and its impact on their behavior, mental health, and ability to engage in treatment. (Source: VeryWellMind) This can be applied in every type of therapy, even if the client does not seek treatment specifically for trauma recovery. A trauma-informed therapist will take care to avoid inadvertently triggering or re-traumatizing the client in treatment. (Learn more on trauma-informed therapy here.)
Trauma Therapy Near You
Life after trauma can feel impossible sometimes. Can you ever feel safe and happy again, let alone function day to day? There is hope, and you do not have to cope alone. At ECC Chicago, we’re committed to helping you process your experience and find healthy strategies for dealing with trauma. Our diverse group of licensed therapists offer a multidisciplinary approach to PTSD/CPTSD treatment, often combining different practices to suit our clients’ unique needs. Reach out to schedule an intake session today. Together we can help you connect meaningfully with your life.
