In a society that uses that word flamboyantly, it is easy to dismiss or not give credit to what you have experienced being called trauma.
Trauma can be something obvious, like a car accident, sexual assault, witnessing a tragic event, or living through a natural disaster. But big life events don’t fully encompass this difficult topic.
Trauma happens when the brain is no longer properly processing and making sense of something that you have experienced. That experience can be something like going through years of fertility issues, being parented by a parent that was never emotionally available, or being in a romantic relationship or friendship that persistently made you feel less than.
The brain is like a filing cabinet, and trauma is like that filing cabinet being ripped open and hundreds of individual pieces of paper are cast all across the floor. The brain becomes overwhelmed, and detaches from the chaos and never attempts to create order and structure over these pieces of paper again.
Life moves forward and in the most inconvenient, inopportune times, these pieces of paper begin to show up and wreak havoc on your personal and professional life. This is where the importance of trauma-based counseling comes in.
At Replenish Her Counseling we specialize in helping clients begin to pick up those metaphorical pieces of paper, process what is on it, and then bring order back to the brain.
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4 Signs that Trauma is Occurring
- Emotional Distress
- Dissociation
- Isolation
- Memory Impairment
How we treat trauma at Replenish Her
Step 1: Establishing Coping Skills
The first and most essential step to trauma treatment, is first working with a person to have the tools and capacity to regulate their emotions and nervous system. It does not benefit an individual to come into our office and immediately jump into discussing distressing topics, if that level of distress is so big that it overwhelms them and keeps them from ever coming back. This is why our clinicians take time and intention around first establishing coping skills and resources to help decrease the level of distress you feel when discussing hard things. We also work to ensure that you supportive plan for yourself outside of therapy. We don’t want you leaving counseling and immediately going to work, or interacting with the very person you are doing trauma work around. It is just as important and critical for you to have a good self-care plan after therapy, as the work you do inside therapy itself.
Step 2: Reprocessing Trauma
Our clinicians are trained in a variety of approaches that are evidenced based to be effective in addressing and processing trauma.
These approaches include;
- Attachment Based EMDR
- Brainspotting
- Trauma Focused- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT)
- Narrative Therapy
- Expressive Therapies
Step 3: Planning for the Future
Clients will know when they have worked their way through trauma, when they begin to no longer feel distress and overwhelm when discussing or experiencing things that they once could not. We love getting our clients to this point in therapy, but we also normalize for clients that it is normal for triggers to come back up from time to time. Healing is not a linear process. The human brain and human experience is complicated. For that reason, we discuss with our clients ways in which they can be more self-aware of triggers occurring, and tools they can use to manage and work through these triggers rather than feeling stuck and held hostage by them again.
3 Simple Steps to Get Started
Schedule a phone call or complete a contact form.
Complete screening call with Laurel, our intake coordinator.
Start Counseling!
Whether this is the first time you have visited our page or the twentieth time, we are here to support you when you’re ready.
Take the first step by reaching out to us today through the contact form on our contact page; or scheduling a phone call and getting your personal questions answered by our intake coordinator.