7 Ways Therapy Can Help You Heal From Trauma
If you have gone through a traumatic event, you know how hard it is to move forward. Most people associate trauma or PTSD with military members and veterans. However, any person, regardless of age or gender, can experience trauma symptoms.
Trauma refers to a situation or event that made someone feel unsafe. Following the event, they may experience negative symptoms that can affect their daily life. There is a common misconception that people must deal with their trauma alone. However, working with a licensed therapist can help you move forward and live the life you want.
Here are 7 ways that therapy can help you heal from trauma.
1. You Will Learn How Everything in Your Body is Connected
Most people are unaware of just how connected our brain is to the nervous system. If you are dealing with trauma, you are likely experiencing anxiety or depression.
Working with a licensed therapist will help you see the connections on how your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are all interconnected. Collaboratively, you will learn how managing your thoughts in a more proactive way will help to ease the feelings of anxiety or depression that you feel.
2. You Can Process Your Trauma in a Safe Place
People who suffer from PTSD often feel isolated because of their trauma. In fact, most people will try to push the feelings and thoughts they have away as a means to cope with trauma—which can worsen symptoms of PTSD. Not wanting to deal with the intrusive thoughts or memories, many people will just refuse to talk or deal with it.
However, working with a therapist provides you with the opportunity to process the trauma you went through in a safe place. Having this space to process your emotions and thoughts can go a long way towards your healing process. In addition, seeing how you react to the memory, a counselor can help tailor a specific treatment plan to help you begin towards healing.
Additionally, working with a licensed counselor will likely ease your anxiety over talking about the trauma. When we talk to our family or friends about traumatic events, they can often give unhelpful advice or empty words that don't really help us. Instead, we may hear things like, "You should just get over it," or "That was so long ago. Why are you still letting it affect you?"On the other hand, a counselor can give you real solutions to the problems you are facing.
3. It's Set at Your Pace
Many people avoid treatment for trauma because they don't want to bring up the past. We completely get it.
The fantastic aspect of trauma therapy is that while it is helpful to understand what happened, it does not require you to go into full detail about the event. Instead, trauma therapy focuses on working through the emotions, feelings, and reactions you have towards the event. Our goal is not to make you relive the memory even more than you already do.
4. You'll Learn Coping Skills When You Feel Triggered
A common symptom of trauma is that you may feel triggered by certain smells, sounds, or situations that are similar to when you first experienced the trauma. In therapy, you can learn coping mechanisms that can help you deal with symptoms of trauma as they come. In addition, these coping mechanisms can support you in learning how to counteract the negative symptoms you experience.
5. You'll Understand Your Past
While you may begin counseling because of a specific event, you could discover other situations that worsen your symptoms of PTSD. Counseling can help you unravel the threads of your past and how it is affecting your present.
6. It Counteracts Your Inner Critic
After a traumatic event or situation, it is hard to not become negative. You may begin to feel negative towards yourself, or think you are unworthy or lose self-esteem.
Trauma therapy can help you quiet that inner critic and replace the negative thoughts you have towards yourself. No matter what the trauma was that you experienced, you can find ways to love yourself again.
7. It Will Help You Rebuild
Trauma therapy will help you rebuild so many areas of your life. From the negative self-talk, your reactions to triggering events, and your thought process about the specific event. No matter if the trauma happened last month, last year, or 10 years ago, you can find healing and renewal in yourself and the world around you.
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Taking the first steps to overcome trauma and its associated symptoms is hard. If you are ready to take the first step to heal or have any questions, please reach out to us for any questions.
Click here for more information on trauma therapy.