Trauma—Physical—Emotional—Sexual

Many people enter the therapy with minimal awareness or an intellectual understanding of their trauma history. Trauma or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a result of abuse physical, emotional or sexual, either in the past or present. When a trauma survivor remembers and minimizes the short term and long term emotional effects they can go through their life wondering why they are not happy and satisfied. They are unable to identify the reasons for their physical and emotional symptoms and patterns. When the trauma survivors are dissociative, they have the ability to block out (repression) an awareness of their trauma. They may know that their family had problems, or that their family was dysfunctional, etc, but they may believe they were never abused/traumatized.

Denial and disassociating means that the person simply is refusing to acknowledge or accept on an emotional level, the fact that their experience was traumatic. They are pretending they were not hurt, when they were actually hurt very badly.

Even if the memories of abuse are hidden from the survivor’s awareness, blocked trauma / unresolved trauma creates very noticeable and obvious symptoms that can be easily seen in every day life.

People will enter therapy aware of some of the following symptoms, but they may not realize these complications are effects of unresolved trauma issues:

• Black and white thinking, all or nothing thinking, good and bad thinking, both towards themselves and others (self contempt, self loathing).
• Chronic and repeated suicidal thoughts and feelings and behaviors and repeated attempts, (hopelessness and helplessness.)
• Disorganized attachment patterns – having a variety of short but intense relationships, avoiding any relationships, dysfunctional relationships, frequent love/hate relationships.
• Addictive behaviors – excessively turning to drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, gambling as a way to push difficult emotions and upsetting trauma content further away.
• An inability to tolerate conflicts with others – having a fear of conflicts, running from conflicts, avoiding conflicts, maintaining distorted perceptions of conflict.
• An inability to tolerate intense feelings, especially vulnerable ones, (hurt, pain) preferring to avoid feeling by any number of ways (shopping, binging/purging, drinking, drugs etc…)
• An innate belief that you are bad, worthless and without value or importance and experience others treating you this way.
• Dissociation, spacing out, losing time, missing time, feeling like you are two completely different people or the lights are on but no one is home.
• Excessive sense of self-blame – taking on inappropriate responsibility as if everything is your fault and making excessive apologies
• Inappropriate attachments to mother figures or father figures, with dysfunctional or unhealthy people, or continually finding unhealthy people and establishing relationships.
• Chronic intense anxiety and repeated panic attacks
• Intrusive thoughts, upsetting visual images, flashbacks, body memories / unexplained chronic body pain, or persistent distressing nightmares
• Ongoing, chronic depression, sad, angry, fatigue, poor concentration, difficulty sleeping, gaining or losing weight, no pleasure in activities that were once pleasurable.
• Self-harm, self-mutilation, self-injury, self-destructio

If you are experiencing a number of the symptoms listed above, ask yourself if you are truly ready to address your issues, or if you find it more comfortable to continue living with these ongoing struggles?

Avoiding and denying your history will not make these thoughts and feelings go away.  They will typically get worse as time passes and during that time you will be in pain or attempting to avoid your pain through external sources.  What quality of life do you want for yourself?

It’s your future and your choice!

Trauma – Recovery

We are hard wired for connection, wired to desire closeness and to fear abandonment.
Hard Wired For Connection
Our hearts, mind and bodies are designed by nature to want to be in many different kinds of relationships.  Our impulses to relate and read each other are sometimes subtle and not so subtle signals are imbedded into us on a mind/body level.

Without this wiring for closeness and love and the feelings of need, fear, pain and protectiveness, we would not survive. The survival of our species depends on our ability to form and maintain sustaining relationships.  Is it then any wonder that the feelings associated with these relationships are very intense and powerful, and why we will go to extreme lengths to keep these relationships intact.  Our sense of self is woven together with our sense of relationship at a very fundamental level. That is why losing someone we love can feel like we are losing a part of ourselves and should our family fragment, we can feel fragmented.
Trauma can occur because we feel deeply connected and care deeply about those we love. When the people we grow up with and love, leave us prematurely, hurt us physically, sexually violate and emotionally terrorize us; they peel away our dignity, self esteem and distort our perception of reality.

Because we experience and hold emotions in our body, relationship trauma impacts both the mind and our emotional or limbic system in ways that can last for many years after the initial stressors have been removed.  Working through the unresolved pain, hurt, resentment and anger can stop the vicious cycle of relationship trauma.  What happened to us as children doesn't have to be repeated in your current relationships with those you love.