Here at Green Mountain, our counselors commit to being trauma-wise. To unpack this, we first need to define trauma.
It is estimated that around 70% of adults across the world have endured at least one traumatic event. Examples of traumatic events include but are not limited to:
Childhood abuse or neglect
Exposure to death
Grief and loss
Injury
Natural disasters
Sexual/ emotional/ physical violence or abuse
Life-threatening illnesses
These events may lead to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is characterized by symptoms like:
intrusive memories
fear and avoidance
increased arousal symptoms due to memories and triggers of traumatic events
negative alterations in cognitions and mood.
Experiencing trauma may or may not lead to PTSD. However, even if your trauma does not lead to this disorder, it can be highly distressing to your life or daily functioning. Beyond the above examples of traumatic events, many of us have experienced what are called “little t traumas” - a breakup, loss of a pet, experiencing bullying, job loss or rejection, personal esteem issues, or other overwhelming emotional experiences. Although these little-t traumas do not fit into a formal definition of trauma, these events may still cause intense distress to the mind, emotions, and body.
In general, trauma overwhelms the nervous system, causes feelings of helplessness, despair, agitation, horror, and fear, and may lead to negative symptoms such as stomach or back pain, emotional swings and outbursts, substance abuse, overeating, and nightmares or flashbacks.
If you find yourself feeling stuck, unsure how to cope with debilitating emotions or physical symptoms, and perhaps feeling hijacked by your emotions, you may be experiencing the impacts of trauma. No matter how big or small your pain is, you are worthy and deserving of healing and restoration. Trauma does not have the last word: there are several research-proven and effective ways to treat trauma that can lead to hope and change.
Therapies for Trauma:
Often in trauma treatment, traditional talk therapy is not effective, as this type of therapy relies on cognitive processing. Trauma is stored in the body, and it leaves impacts that people cannot always consciously or cognitively process talk through. Instead of talk therapy, body-based modalities that can help reprocess and release trauma.
EMDR: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a research-based approach which allows clients to relieve traumatic events and reprocess the feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations associated with the trauma. This approach is structured and relies on the establishment of a positive therapist-client relationship, relaxation techniques, and stabilization for the client to then re-experience the trauma. During EMDR, the client will follow the therapist’s fingers along the horizontal axis. This process allows clients to experience long-lasting emotional healing and release.
SE: Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a body-based approach that focuses on resolving psychophysiological symptoms. Rather than focusing on cognitive, thinking-based experiences, SE focuses on a clients’ internal sensations. Through the process of building awareness of the arousal caused by trauma, clients can begin to reduce this arousal through tolerating, accepting, and identifying their bodily, emotional, and physical traumatic responses. As a whole, this therapy style helps build resilience and self-regulation. Clients do not have to relive their traumatic memories, as this approach is indirect, gentle, and gradual. In practice, SE may look like observing shifts in breathing, posture, checking in on feelings of lightness, heaviness, or dizziness, and employing breathing or grounding exercises throughout therapy.
BSP: Brainspotting (BSP) is a brain-wise and body-aware relational attunement process. BSP is a focused treatment method that works by identifying, processing, and releasing core sources of emotional/body pain, trauma, dissociation and other challenging symptoms. BSP employs the visual field to find eye positions which correlate with emotional or physiological experience. Simply put, a BSP therapist will guide clients to find eye positions that correlate with what the client wants to process. From this eye position, the client practices focused mindfulness. This type of body-based processing leads to healing within the non-verbal, non-cognitive portions of the brain (the subcortical brain). Clients may experience a release from BSP, as the brain is being healed at a deep level.
Trauma-Wise versus Trauma-Informed
Trauma-informed is a common buzzword in the realm of therapy. Generally, this phrase means:
Understanding of how trauma shows up in individuals, communities, and families
Recognizing the signs and symptoms of trauma
Cultivating a sensitivity to not re-traumatize individuals in their counseling journey
Here at Green Mountain Counseling, we prefer the term, “Trauma-Wise”. To us, trauma-wise means the following:
Continually growing our knowledge and understanding of trauma through reading, lectures, and trainings
Not just having tools for trauma, but discerning the timing and type of tool to use for each client
Normalizing our clients’ symptoms and casting a vision for hope and health
Placing less emphasis on labels or diagnoses, and rather using trauma-wise as a lens to understand why clients may have the emotions and reactions they do in any given situation
As a whole, wisdom implies that we are always growing, rather than assuming we have arrived. As trauma-wise therapists, we have a deep respect for our clients and their stories, and put immense care into being client-centered.
Sources:
http://files.constantcontact.com/621c30b3101/138239cb-cad8-4167-9198-e89e8db7c32f.pdf
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20008198.2021.1929023