How Trauma Affects The Brain
There are many reasons that trauma hurts us. One thing you may not know is that trauma physically changes our brains. When you experience a traumatic event, your mind changes. Areas of your brain that once worked in a particular way change based on hyperarousal due to trauma. For example, the amygdala gets over-activated after a traumatic experience. When you hear the phrase “fight, flight or freeze” that’s when you have a physical and emotional response to a trigger. You remember your trauma, and your amygdala becomes overactive. You’re hypervigilant, and you’re on alert, making sure that you’re safe from danger. Your trauma is real, and your brain is telling you that you’re hurting and need help.
Getting Help For Trauma
It’s essential to get help after you’ve experienced trauma. You need to talk about your pain and start to process what happened to you. This may sound scary but think of it as an empowering statement. You truly have the ability to process past events and live an empowering, fulfilled life. One of the best places to do this processing is with a mental health professional who is skilled at helping people who have been through trauma. There are many kinds of therapy, but trauma therapy is explicitly focused on helping people who have had unfortunate things happen to them. Remember you didn’t bring your trauma upon yourself, but you can take steps to heal from it with the support of mental health professionals. You can work with a therapist in your local area or seek the help of an online therapist.
What Is Trauma Therapy?
Trauma therapy is a type of mental health treatment that counselors use to help people overcome psychological trauma. A traumatic event is defined as one in which you perceive a threat to your life, bodily integrity, or sanity. The other component of the definition is your reaction to the event or situation. If you can cope with the event, even if it is a serious threat, it isn’t trauma. Trauma occurs when your ability to handle the event is comprised.
Trauma therapy is not one specific type of treatment. A variety of therapies can be used alone or in conjunction with one another to help you deal with the trauma and move on with your life. If you seek trauma therapy, the best way to begin is to find out what type of therapy the counselor uses to treat trauma patients.
Goals of Trauma Therapy
Before you undertake any type of counseling or any endeavor at all for that matter, it’s important to know what you want to get from it, what you want to accomplish, and how you want your life to look when it’s over. It is important to be aware of your trauma, what your triggers are, and in what way do you react. It is also important to know what your goal in therapy will be? Is it to tell your story? To create awareness? To be at peace? To confront your abuser, or some other reason not listed?
The most crucial goals of trauma therapy are typical:
- To face the reality of the past event without getting stuck in it
- To reduce or eliminate trauma symptoms
- To work towards shifting focus from the past to the present
- To improve daily functioning
- Raise awareness of hereditary trauma
- To reclaim your personal power
- To overcome addictions associated with traumatic stress
- To gain skills that prevent relapse
You may have unique goals of your own based on the kinds of problems you’ve encountered since the trauma and the kind of life you want to move towards. Talk to your counselor early on to decide what you hope to gain from your time in trauma therapy.
If you are seeking Help for Trauma, please contact Cape Coral Therapist @info@draprilbrown.com or call us (239) 565-6921