The Telltale Signs
Are you suffering from chronic neck and shoulder tension, gut discomfort, or digestive issues? Is lower back or hip pain a persistent problem? Does your hand feel heavy? Do you feel a tightness in your jaw? Are headaches and migraines interfering with your daily functioning?
All of the above may be warning signs that unresolved trauma is stored in your body.
The word trauma comes from the Greek traûma, meaning “wound” or “injury.” While it originally referred to physical harm to the body, its meaning later expanded in psychology to describe deep emotional or psychological wounds caused by distressing experiences.
Just as physical trauma, such as a fracture or internal bleeding, a third-degree burn, or a gunshot wound, requires immediate treatment at the hospital, mental or emotional trauma, albeit invisible, also needs healing. Hence, a need for trauma therapy.
Trauma therapy can help the individual to come to terms with the pain they’ve felt, so their emotional life or sense of self is no longer controlled by the effects of trauma. Trauma is often diagnosed by identifying how the nervous system reacts to overwhelming stress.
Trauma therapy attempts to restore the individual’s sense of security through emotional regulation and personal empowerment. Rather than forcing individuals to relive painful memories, modern trauma therapy focuses on pacing, consent, and emotional safety throughout the healing process.
How Trauma Therapy Works
Trauma therapy works on the brain and body to slowly guide them out of survival mode to a state of normal living. Trauma forces the nervous system to operate in a state of hyperarousal (fight-or-flight) or shutdown (freeze). Therapy initiates the process of change by first establishing an environment of safety and trust, allowing patients to feel grounded before they start navigating their trauma experiences.
In trauma therapy, the therapist teaches individuals methods and ways to recognize triggers, regulate emotions, and apply coping strategies. Trauma memories, when processed within a controlled and supportive environment, are re-categorised by the brain as events that happened in the past rather than present, ongoing threats. Over time, therapy helps clients reduce the emotional intensity of past traumatic experiences, helping them regain a sense of control over their responses and choices.
Also read: Teletherapy vs In-Person: Which Is Right for You?
Types of Trauma Therapy
Trauma therapy follows a tailored approach and covers several evidence-based methods:
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) helps individuals assess and redirect distorted beliefs about trauma, such as self-blame or guilt. It helps clients counter unhelpful thought patterns and view their traumas from healthier perspectives, reducing the emotional distress of painful memories.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) uses bilateral stimulation, such as guided eye movements, training the brain to reprocess traumatic memories more flexibly without triggering overwhelming fear or anxiety.
Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) is often used to treat children and adolescents. It combines emotional regulation, coping skills, and trauma narration in an integrated approach, where caregivers are also brought in to extend healing outside the therapy setting.
Somatic Therapies, such as Somatic Experiencing, prioritize bodily sensations and nervous system regulation along with verbal processing, to ensure individuals gently release stored physical tension to restore their brain and body to a sense of safety.
Psychodynamic Trauma Therapy studies the impacts of trauma that manifest in unconscious patterns, relationship problems, and a questioning of self-identity. By drawing out these patterns into conscious awareness, therapists help clients gain insight, mend relationship wounds, and foster a more integrated sense of self.
Related article: The Role of Mindfulness in Trauma Therapy: Simple Practices That Help
Trauma Processing Therapy Techniques
Trauma processing techniques have been designed to include traumatic memories within the larger gamut of life experiences without overwhelming the client.
Some of these techniques are:
Grounding techniques help the individual cope with emotional distress by keeping them grounded in the present. These techniques help the client to keep their attention focused on the body, breath, and their immediate surroundings to help them feel less overwhelmed.
Narrative processing encourages clients to narrate their traumatic experiences from a logical and empowered perspective to help them deal with shame and fragmentation. The individual is taught to process the traumatic memory not as an isolated incident but as an integrated part of their coherent life story, thus reducing its emotional intensity and impact.
Bilateral stimulation, used in EMDR, activates both hemispheres of the brain to trigger adaptive memory processing. Traumatic memories are reframed so they feel less upsetting and more manageable over time.
Mindfulness and breathwork enhance the individual’s understanding of their inner states of consciousness to bring about more emotional regulation. They calm the nervous system, helping individuals cope better with stress.
Exposure-based techniques, when used carefully, these techniques help alleviate fear responses by dealing with trauma-related memories or cues cautiously. Over time, the reduced number of fear responses redirects the brain to regard these responses as non-dangerous and reduces avoidance behaviors.
The individual is allowed to apply these techniques at his own pace and time, respecting their readiness for and emotional capacity to absorb therapy.
Benefits of Trauma Therapy
The benefits of trauma therapy go beyond symptom reduction to more positive outcomes such as improved emotional regulation, reduced anxiety and depression, better sleep, and fewer intrusive memories or flashbacks. Individuals develop better self-esteem, handle relationships well, and are able to nurture a stronger sense of identity and purpose. The final goal is posttraumatic growth, which enables the survivor to gain resilience and insight that they would not have had without their traumatic experience.
Trauma need not be your lifelong burden. Begin the healing process with a visit to a trauma therapist.
If you’re looking for an experienced trauma therapist in Upper East Side, NYC, Laura Pearl uses a blend of somatic and psychodynamic therapies to help clients overcome trauma and attachment issues so that they can connect more fully with themselves and others.
