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Unfortunately, when it comes to trauma, not all therapists are created equal.
Finding trauma-informed care is a vital first step in recovery, whether from a recent traumatic incident or from a past trauma that keeps returning to negatively impact behaviors and quality of life.
But what should a patient expect from a therapist when dealing with the effects of trauma?
Modern therapists are leaving behind many outdated methodologies for dealing with traumatic responses.
Digging up old memories, reliving terrible moments, endlessly discussing the same negative events over and over–these approaches are not the gold standard of healing anymore, and in some cases in-depth discussion of the actual traumatic event may be unnecessary.
Instead, evidence-based care and trauma therapy NJ revolves around healing the nervous system, desensitizing the patient to their triggers, and equipping the patient with tools to better handle future situations and avoid re-traumatization.
A Safe Place: Therapy Lays a Foundation of Safety
The first step of trauma therapy is establishing safety for the patient.
When the nervous system has experienced trauma, it can become so keyed in to its surroundings that a feeling of safety becomes impossible.
The body is always looking for the next threat, the next trauma, the next trigger.
So a therapist’s job is to help the patient to feel safe.
The therapy office, therefore, needs to be a place of relaxation and calm.
The therapists themselves need to non-threatening, trustworthy and transparent. They must be able to carry difficult emotions with grace and understanding, and not be easily impacted by patients’ reactions.
Finally, the therapist needs to be able to help the patient to assess their life and establish their safety outside the therapy office. Are the sources of trauma still in their lives? If so, is there a way that they can insulate themselves from being retraumatized?
Only when the nervous system learns to differentiate between safe and unsafe situations can healing truly begin.
Calming Responses: Bringing Down the Stakes In Triggering Situations
A major complicating factor of trauma is its tendency to perpetuate and propagate itself.
When a patient is triggered, their responses–often outsized to the actual requirements of the situation–can cause them to be retraumatized, perpetuating the patient’s perception that a certain type of situation is fundamentally unsafe.
After establishing a baseline of safety for the patient, the next step of therapy is to help patients to feel capable of handling these situations in a way that will remove the perceived threat.
Techniques like exposure therapy, EMDR and others work to detach specific triggers and memories from their emotional implications, allowing the patient to accurately assess their own safety under a variety of circumstances.
This way, instead of being re-traumatized and learning to avoid more and more situations over the course of their life, patients are able to expand the number of circumstances under which they feel safe and comfortable–dramatically improving their quality of life and healing the inner wounds that trauma created.
A healed patient will be able to recognize safety when they experience it, not constantly looking for threats. And they will be able to respond appropriately when actual threats do arrive, not falling back on trauma responses like panic or shock that don’t increase their safety.
Empowerment: The Ultimate Goal of Trauma Therapy
Trauma patients are often conflicted about the impact of their trauma.
They may be able to recognize that their lives are made smaller and darker by the limitations that trauma imposes, while also having the sense that these restrictions create security and prevent further trauma.
A therapist can help patients to sort through the coping mechanisms they have developed as a result of trauma. Some changes that they made as a result of trauma may be good and prudent. (For example, someone who was struck by a car may be much more careful in the future about jaywalking.)
Others may be too constrictive for functionality and unnecessary in order to establish a real degree of safety. (To continue the above example, the same person may refuse to go outdoors, or may experience panic at the sound of a car engine–both of which responses are unnecessary and create outsized limitations on the patient’s functionality.)
Therapists can help patients to weigh the costs versus benefits of constrictions they have placed on their behavior as a result of trauma, empowering them to see which of these limitations are good and helpful, and which they can let go of without substantially increasing the level of risk in their lives.
With a good therapist, patients learn that even with a tragedy in their past, a normal and enjoyable life is still possible.
Trauma Therapy Today
Experiencing tragedy or danger is a life-changing event, which can have repercussions that echo through the entirety of life.
The patient may feel that they are no longer the same person they had been before the trauma occurred because of the disparity between their past life and the present.
But with trauma-informed care, PTSD can be managed and even healed.
With the guidance of a therapist, fear can be replaced with boldness, over-caution with wisdom, and stress with peace.
The impacts of trauma on the body cannot be ignored. A traumatized nervous system signals to the body that normal health is not possible, leading to a cascade of effects in all the systems of the body.
Patients who heal their trauma often find that chronic conditions begin to reverse themselves, issues that they thought were part of aging disappear, and their energy levels and sense of wellbeing increased.
Healed patients begin to see that glimpses of the old self still exist, and if they keep pursuing healing they can re-inhabit the parts of themselves that they thought were lost.
Seeking the help of a trauma therapist today is the first step to recovery, allowing you to be equipped and empowered to take back control of your life.
