What is Trauma?
There are many things in life that can be traumatizing. We experience emotional trauma when we
survive an incident or a pattern of events that threaten our physical and/or emotional sense of
safety and security.
Trauma may be a major trauma, such as being raped, assaulted, held at gun point, witnessing or
experiencing a violent crime, a car accident, subjected to physical, emotional, or sexual abuse as
a child, illness, war, natural disaster, death of a loved one or pet, domestic abuse, etc...
Or, it can be a non life threatening trauma as in finding out that your partner is having an affair,
losing employment, relocation, going through a nasty break up of a relationship, changing jobs,
child custody battle, serving as a jury member on a capital case, etc...
Trauma's Impact on Life
Trauma has serious implications for all aspects of our lives. For example, it isn't uncommon for
our most important relationships to breakdown following a major traumatic life event; many people
experience dropping grades in school, employment problems and may have a major physical problem
arise during a highly stressful time. Many people find they suffer from the effects of over
eating, or experience a significant weight loss due to loss of appetite.
Activities and hobbies that once provided you with satisfaction and relaxation no longer hold any
interest and the joy seems to have "stolen" from life.
If you've experienced trauma getting through the day can feel like struggling to climb the Mount Everest. Traumatic experiences are encoded and stored differently in the brain than normal experiences. This means that trauma won't just go away after time. People who have experienced trauma know this first hand because they repeatedly relive the trauma instead of remembering it.
Many trauma survivors suffer in silence, believing that they are "going crazy"
A traumatic event can result in feeling a loss of control quickly. You may first experience numbing
and disbelief. It may also seem as though things around you are not so real, or you may even have a
sense of being outside of your body. Sometimes a person may not be able to recall some or all, of
the trauma. Then, it may feel like the event is happening again in different ways including
nightmares, intrusive memories, and flashbacks. With a flashback you may feel as if you are
re-experiencing the same thoughts, feelings, and physiological sensations that occurred during the
traumatic event.
You may also put forth effort to avoid thinking about the trauma and avoid people, places, and
activities associated with the event or that may remind you of the traumatic experience.
Lastly, you may have difficulty falling or staying asleep with frequent wakening, and find you are
overly vigilant and easily startled.
Symptoms Related to Experiencing Trauma
A traumatic or stressful event can result in an ongoing struggle with anxiety or depression.
Symptoms can include:
- sleep disturbance
- helplessness
- agitation
- irritability
- startle response
- numbing
- avoidance
- intrusive memories
- nightmares
- flashbacks
- dissociation
- concentration difficulties
Coping with Trauma
What makes one person able to cope with tragedy and another struggle depends on many factors.
Having a history of being abused throughout your early childhood and the loss or disruption of
early childhood bonds may have an impact on a person's ability to cope later in life. A person
whose parent died when he was 5 may have more trouble when a traumatic event occurs than a child
who had his same parents through childhood.
Having a supportive network of friends and family who understand you when you are in a crisis and
who come together to support one another can positively impact your ability to cope.
Having a calm, naturally positive type of temperament is another factor that makes a person more
resilient than others. Some people are born with temperaments that make them able to deal with life
tragedy better than others, and some of us were lucky enough to have families who taught us how to
cope better with trouble than others. If your family coped with problems by coming together, being
supportive of one another, comforting each other and being constructive about seeking solutions to
problems, you are more likely to have an easier time adjusting to stress and loss than the person
who was raised by alcoholic and violent parents.
The person who had more stress and trauma in childhood is more likely to have more problems when
faced with a tragedy. Neither of these people are to blame for their backgrounds, and learned
coping and problem-solving abilities.
You are born with a certain amount of resiliency (ability to cope), you learn skills from the
people who raised you from childhood on and you can learn better coping skills throughout your
life that can assist you, but your response to trauma typically comes from the combination of
factors.
Even people whose families were good at problem-solving and being supportive of one another may
have major problems coping, because the temperament that they were born with is the type that makes
it harder to deal with crisis.
Your ability to deal with problems, crisis and tragedy is complicated.
Typically, we are very critical of ourselves when we are unable to function "normally."
Unfortunately, trauma is a part of every person's life at some time, and yet some of us are
overburdened with life's difficulties, more than others. When you consider the impact of trauma on
people, the very idea of trauma's impact is based upon the lack of one's control over events. This
is key to what makes one feel overwhelmed, unsettled, shocked and disheartened. This loss of
control is the very reason people experience a sense of trauma and horror when they survive
traumatic events.
If the feeling of being overwhelmed or loss of control in your life is persistent for a period of a
month or more you may be suffering from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder),
please contact Conscious Healing Therapy for more information and assistance.
Conscious Healing Therapy and Trauma Healing
Regardless of the type of trauma you have experienced Conscious Healing Therapy can help you work
through your traumatic experience and its aftermath by helping you create and build a new sense of
power and control where non existed.
With help, the path towards sleeping better, maintaining and creating healthier relationships,
overcoming substance abuse and/or eating disorders, can be a reality.
Conscious Healing Therapy will assist you in discovering the way to become healthier
emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
Please contact us for more information regarding Trauma Therapy.
