When we’ve experienced trauma it can feel as if we’ve lost our internal compass. On the outside we might appear highly emotional or the opposite, indifferent and shut down. On the inside we may feel mixed up. We don’t want to be alone, but we hate to be around people. One moment we feel like we’re going to explode, the next we feel like we’re walking around in a fog. We think we want to go to our friend’s house, but now that we’re there we want to leave. Someone does something nice for us and now we feel mad at them. We feel like we should feel something, but we feel nothing. This is the kind of thing that can make us feel crazy inside.
In the last fifteen years neuroscientists have greatly advanced our understanding of trauma and have helped us to make sense of these experiences which feel so overwhelming. We know much better how to find our way back from this tangled-up place. We know that as crazy as it may feel, this is a predictable response to a deeply, overwhelming event. We have a clear road map to find relief and begin healing.
I am honored to be part of creating a safe place for you to begin healing after trauma. It can be an especially hard time to reach out. I have learned through my own healing work, and supporting many children and adults over the years, that it is possible to heal. Many people worry that in coming to therapy they will have to talk about things that are simply too hard to talk about. There is a time when processing the trauma can be useful. However, the first step in healing begins in the present. The goal is to find relief, to stabilize, and to sooth your heart and nervous system. Together in therapy we can discover strategies and resources that will help you to feel more yourself again and feel relief from pain. The journey to healing should feel calming and integrating, not frightening or overwhelming.
I ground my trauma treatment in research-based, well-designed methods which help to make healing safe, and to bring relief as soon as possible.
It will not always be this hard. Through counseling you can find renewed strength, ease, joy, and a deep sense of well-being.
Some symptoms of trauma counseling may help with:
- Feeling numb
- Feeling like emotions are out-of-control
- Can’t stop thinking about memories of traumatic events
- Problems with sleep
- Hard time concentrating
- Feeling on-edge or hypervigilant
- Irritability
- Walled off from feelings
“you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.”
― Ellen Bass