Move toward healing and find relief.
“Shame dies when stories are told in safe places.”
— Anne VosKamp
Trauma is a term used to describe the impact on a person when something bad happens (or something that needed to happen didn’t) and it overwhelms the person’s capacity to cope with this or to make sense of it. Some common examples of traumatic experiences include child abuse, domestic violence, child neglect, death of a loved one, or experiencing a natural disaster or car wreck. Other examples that are not talked about as often as being traumatic, but that have the potential to be extremely traumatic for many people include living within a controlling or abusive religious environment or experiencing racism, sexism, or other forms of oppression from your family, community, or the systems around you.
Even if or when you’re able to physically get away from the traumatic experience, the effects can and often do stick around for much longer. Again, trauma is not about the event that happened. It’s about the impact it has within the person. This can lead to feelings of shame and frustration for survivors of trauma who often believe that they should “get over it” or “move on” and struggle to understand why they can’t seem to shake the thoughts or still find themselves feeling easily triggered or unable to feel safe or secure. These traumatic effects can play out not only in our thoughts and feelings, but also in how we navigate relationships, conflicts, stress, parenting, and careers. While most of us have heard the phrase, “time heals all wounds,” that simply is not true for many people. As with physical wounds, emotional wounds (which actually DO have physical impacts on our brains and nervous systems) often require attention and care in order to heal.
Therapy can be a way to tend to those wounds, get unstuck from the trauma, and finally move forward. There are several effective forms of therapy that work especially well for treating trauma. Below you can find information about a few types of therapy we offer for treating the effects of trauma. If you choose to reach out for therapy, we will discuss what approach might be the best fit for your individual experiences, needs, and treatment goals.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy (EMDR)
EMDR is an extensively researched form of therapy that has been shown to effectively treat trauma and PTSD symptoms as well as a variety of other mental health issues.
EMDR therapy does not require you to talk in-depth about what happened to you which makes it appealing to many people who find trauma to be understandably difficult to process through talking. It is also different from many other forms of psychotherapy in that there is no “homework” required between sessions.
In EMDR therapy, we are focusing on integrating unprocessed trauma in the brain rather than trying to change thoughts, emotions, or behaviors. After completing EMDR therapy, you will still have the facts and memories of what happened; however, the fight/flight/freeze response from the trauma will be resolved.
For more information about EMDR, click “I’m interested” below to email for additional information or check out the EMDRIA website.
Accelerated resolution therapy (ART)
ART is an evidence based therapy shown to significantly reduce symptoms for many people in an average of 1 to 5 sessions. It works by incorporating techniques from a variety of other therapeutic approaches such as mindfulness, gestalt, rapid eye movement, and voluntary memory and image replacement to produce quick progress to help you move forward towards relief.
Participating in ART is different than many other types of therapy in that it does not require the client to verbally discuss their experience. This can be especially helpful for people who have experienced significant trauma and may have difficulty speaking about those experiences with others. Instead, ART targets the images and sensations associated with a traumatic memory or other distressing symptom or experience.
Brainspotting
Brainspotting is a powerful method that works by identifying, processing, and releasing unprocessed trauma or pain in the subcortical area of the brain that is responsible for memory and emotion. Brainspotting works by using spots within a person’s field of vision to help them process trauma and other sensations.
Brainspotting was developed by David Grand in 2003 through his work in developing and advancing Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. One of the benefits of Brainspotting over many other types of therapy is that one does not need to retell or relive the traumatic experience in order to process it and release it.
While Brainspotting is primarily used to address trauma, it can also be used to treat anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and other presenting issues.