Trauma Therapy

Trauma can have a profound impact on a person’s life, influencing their emotions, behaviors, and even their creative output. While it often brings pain and distress, trauma can also serve as a powerful catalyst for artistic expression. In fact, many artists, writers, and musicians have channeled their traumatic experiences into their work, creating masterpieces that resonate deeply with others. Let’s learn more about the link between creative people and trauma, as well as how trauma can shape creative expression.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a therapeutic approach used to treat trauma-related disorders, including complicated trauma (sometimes called complex trauma). Complicated trauma can have long-lasting effects that impact your emotional regulation, sense of self, relationships, and overall well-being. It can lead to symptoms such as hypervigilance, dissociation, difficulty trusting others, struggles with intimacy, and challenges in managing emotions. The good news is, living with the effects of your trauma doesn’t have to be permanent. Let’s explore the benefits of EMDR for complicated trauma.

Childhood is a time of innocence. It is a time of playfulness and carefree attitudes.  As a child, your main goals are to have fun, make memories, and lay the groundwork for who you’ll become later in life. There shouldn’t be a care or worry in your world during those formative years.  Unfortunately, life sometimes has other plans. When you experience trauma at a young age, it isn’t something that can be brushed under the rug and forgotten about. If that trauma goes unprocessed or unmanaged, there could be lasting effects that begin to appear later in the adult years.  Here are some of the common ways trauma can present itself. 

Trauma isn’t easy. You know that it takes time to heal, to overcome, and to move forward again. But trauma isn’t just a battle that you’re fighting in your own head. It affects your body, too. Trauma is not just a figment of the mind; it is a narrative written deep within the very cells of our body. While we try to move on mentally, our bodies have their own way of keeping score. Often, trauma manifests itself in physical sensations, patterns of tension, or even chronic illnesses that can seem inexplicable. From the subtle tightening in your chest to chronic pain or fatigue, your body communicates distress signals long after the traumatic event has passed.  Let’s learn more about some of the common ways you can feel trauma in your body.

At least 20 percent of children are raised by a parent struggling with substance abuse. In more than half of those cases, they are children of alcoholics. Life is uncertain and unpredictable. It can also be frightening and violent. This, of course, can lead to trauma and typically has a long-term impact.  Emotional needs are not met. Succeeding at school can feel impossible. You are neglected while being forced to take steps to keep your home life a secret. Clearly, substance abuse affects far more than the person struggling with addiction. And the outcomes can linger well into adulthood. 

They say that the past makes you into the person you are today. Your positive and negative experiences will both have an impact on who you turn into as an adult. If your parents were both teachers, you might be more likely to become a teacher yourself. If your baked cookies or muffins with your grandma growing up, you may be more inclined to bake as a hobby or passion as an adult. Or maybe you were bitten by a dog when you were younger, and to this day, you’re slightly afraid of dogs. Positive and negative experiences can have a huge impact on the person you become. Your primary caregiver and your attachment to that primary caregiver can play a huge role. Let’s learn more about attachment trauma and what causes it.

Trauma takes a toll on your mind and body. Going through the trauma response and trying to process the experience afterward can make you feel exhausted, anxious, or distressed. One way you might unknowingly cope with the aftermath of trauma is by going numb. If you return to this coping mechanism any time you’re stressed, you’ll find yourself disconnected from yourself and others.

It’s highly likely that you’ve been compared to at least one member of your family within your lifetime, especially while you were growing up. Certain traits or qualities are known to run within a family. You may share similar features or skills to your parents, grandparents, aunts, or uncles. Your hair and eye color may have been passed on from one or both of your parents. The height, weight, and build you are may run in your family as well. Even some of your personality traits may have been passed on or even learned from watching members of your family while you were growing up. Unfortunately, both positive and negative traits can be passed on or inherited. Diseases, disorders, and even trauma can also be passed on from a grandparent to a parent and then onto you and your family. You might be thinking, “How can trauma be passed on if you didn’t experience the trauma yourself?” Let’s find out what exactly generational trauma is, and, and how it gets passed down.

The holidays are officially here. For most, this time of the year means togetherness, bright lights, and holiday cheer. There’s only one problem: You can’t seem to find any of that this year. You want nothing more than to be alone, because that’s how you feel. Flashbacks and traumatic memories may constantly circle in your head preventing you from mustering up even an ounce of holiday cheer. Here’s how the holidays can trigger emotional trauma and hope to cope with it all.

No matter the exact cause or when it happened, you experienced a traumatic event. Even though it’s in the past, it feels like it’s haunting you every single day. You go through the motions each day trying not to think about it, but something always brings you back to that moment. A voice, a smell, an outfit, the weather. The flashbacks, negative thoughts, and PTSD are becoming too much for you to handle on your own. But you don’t have to suffer like this forever. Recovery is possible. Here’s how to begin healing from sexual trauma.