Trauma can take one of two courses in its aftermath:

1. obvious and intense

2. subtle and sometimes hard to notice

When it’s obvious and intense it looks like this:

Without your consent, your life has been hijacked – you’ve organized your days around self-protection and avoidance.

Something – or a few things – happened and it scared and hurt you so much that  the fear of it has taken over and is now dictating your actions, your routines, your relationships and your mood.

It may have happened last week, last month or many years ago.

When it’s subtle it can manifest in emotions and relationships:

You find yourself reacting to the people you most care for, most love in ways that cause them – and ultimately you – pain. 

Perhaps you get irrationally angry when your toddler hits you or when your child talks back.  Maybe you find you are utterly unable to assert yourself at work.

You swore you wouldn’t be like that parent, but now you hear echoes of their voice and reactions in your own behavior.

Whatever your reaction, these are often linked to ongoing relational traumas that need healing in order to free you up to behave as you would like.

Regardless of the type of trauma response, you know it’s got to stop.

The huge reactions to what ought to be safe situations. You need to find a sense of safety and stability once again.

But no matter your intention, no matter how much time passes, you keep reacting, you stay hypervigilant, you look for danger everywhere.

When you’re unable to move on from the past, unable to stop managing feelings and reactions that you think should have long disappeared, it is easy to become despondent, overwhelmed and exhausted.

This doesn’t feel okay – not anymore. 

You’re willing to embrace the challenge, because however hard it will be, there is a light beckoning you out of the darkness – the chance to take back control, to live the life you want. 

EMDR – What is it?

When a traumatic event – or series of traumatic events – occur in your life, these memories get stuck in the amygdala-hippocampal complex of the brain rather than being stored in long-term memory.

It is effectively as if the memory ends up living in a pile on your desk instead of being accurately stored in a filing cabinet. 

Because of this, whenever something happening today reminds you of the original traumatic event(s), you react not only to what is happening right now, but also as if the original trauma is occurring simultaneously.

The paper on your desk starts multiplying and taking over – and you can’t make it stop.  As a result, reactions can be intensified – usually manifesting in either fight, flight or freeze.

You are reacting not just to what is happening in the present, but also to what happened in the past.

EMDR is a technique that processes and relocates those old, traumatic memories into your brain’s long term storage. Effectively, this means that the traumatic experiences are not so easily accessed and activated in your day-to-day life.

Through EMDR, you can experience a profound feeling of freedom – both from uncomfortable symptoms and unhealthy patterns that you may have been unable to change utilizing other therapy approaches.

Trauma Therapy

Therapy works at your pace, to bring light to areas of darkness through the exploration and processing of your trauma.

It will be challenging – no doubt about that.

So finding a therapist who can support this particular type of sensitive work is vital to having a successful experience – to getting your life back.

In addition to concrete skills to help you manage the dysregulation you’re experiencing – to help tolerate and move through the painful emotions in a functional and healthy way, we will use EMDR to reprocess the trauma and help your brain store it squarely in the past.

At the same time, therapy provides the space to explore the impact of your emotional pain on your relationships and a chance to heal whatever rifts have occurred.

It’s hard to imagine from here, but difficult experiences and their painful aftermath can lead to tremendous growth and change – the possibility of leading an even more fulfilling life once they have been right-sized in your daily experience. 

The capacity to look backward without fear and forward with optimism – to know that you chart your own course and determine your own fate.

When you are ready to take the next step, call or email to schedule.