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What is trauma?

Trauma can be a single event or a series of traumatic events that are repeated over time causing a person to become overwhelmed with painful, frightening or loathing emotions. They may have felt overwhelmed, fearful, helpless, or in grave danger. They may have even felt humiliated, embarrassed, ashamed, or powerless.

Their are 3 types of trauma.

Acute trauma: This results from a single stressful or dangerous event.

Chronic trauma: This results from repeated and prolonged exposure to highly stressful events. Examples include cases of child abuse, bullying, or domestic violence.

Complex trauma: This results from a single stressful or dangerous event.

Trauma survivors often have difficulty in relationships and in dealing with emotional challenges, as well as low self-esteem due to the traumatic experience and feelings associated with the trauma. They may be haunted by negative memories that feel completely real and still very present for them. Reactions to a stressful event can cause long-term dysregulation in our nervous system survivors may find that once the situation is over, it is hard to “get over it” or “calm down.” They may continue to feel uneasy, emotional, or “on edge,” as the stress continues to affect our nervous system and body.

Long Term Effects of Trauma

If the trauma is left untreated , one can experience nightmares, insomnia, anxiety, depression, phobias, substance abuse, panic attacks, anger, irritability, or hopelessness. The individual might also begin to have physical symptoms such as gastrointestinal distress, rapid heartbeat, or extreme fatigue

Trauma survivors who have experienced emotional childhood trauma in the form of an abusive parent or loved one. can show up in adulthood and can affect thoughts, choices and behaviors. These early wounds can affect our future self-esteem, social awareness, ability to learn and physical health.

Two people may not experience an event in the same way, as a result no two people react to challenges in the same way. Each individual differs widely in their ability to handle various kinds of traumatic situations. Their are many factors to consider including genetics, early environmental challenges, and personal/social histories.

While one person may find the ability to cope with a traumatic event, another may be unable to deal with the trauma alone. When a person is unable to process chronic stress and traumatic events, they may often feel alone and struggle with recurring feelings of worry, fear and worthlessness.

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ACE Study

The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study) is a research study conducted by Kaiser Permanente. Over 17,000 participants were recruited to the study and interviewed about their personal history and health.

From those interviews, physicians discovered a strong link between childhood adversity, traumatic events and health and social-emotional well-being throughout the lifespan. This video of Dr Nadine Burke Harris’ TEDTalk explains ACES study further.

Watch the video to learn more.

Want more information on ACE?

Click the link below to learn more about ACE study or take the test and get your
ACE and resiliency score.
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Trauma Support & Healing

We Believe

Our method integrates mind, body, emotion, intention, and spirituality, using a holistic psychotherapy approach that combines CBT and mindfulness, coupled with trauma modalities such as EMDR, NARM, and somatic therapy. We work with individuals as well as couples and offer the convenience of Tele-Therapy for those who have difficulty making it to our office.

Symptoms such as anxiety and depression do not have to control you. You can feel secure and confident in facing any challenge that life throws at you while also building and maintaining strong, long-lasting relationships.

We Believe

We are trauma specialists… Our work focuses to heal complex trauma, PTSD, developmental trauma, intergenerational trauma, racial trauma, medical trauma, sexual abuse, physical abuse, dissociation and more.

For more information on how we can help you, click the link below to schedule your FREE consultation.

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Our goal is to create a safe space for you to learn and adapt. With the right help, trauma does not have to be a life long sentence.

Somatic therapy looks specifically at what is occurring in the body and encourages somatic self-awareness. By taking note of our self-protective physical responses and processing emotions, memories, and traumatic events that have been stored in the body, we can increase our own tolerance and ability to deal with unpleasant body sensations.

Therapy sessions include tracking sensations in the body related to trauma and releasing the physical tension. The goal is to connect body and mind, taking ourselves off auto-pilot and becoming more attuned to our internal experiences.

The mind-body approach embraces mindfulness, the mastery of being fully present. Practicing mindfulness allows us to be more cognizant of our surroundings as well as attentive in our interactions and relationships. It can also help us be more relaxed by engaging the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for our stress responses.

The mind-body approach helps to alleviate:

  • Chronic pain.
  • Anxiety, stress, depression, and trauma.
  • Cancer and chronic disease.
  • Sleeping disorders and eating disturbances.

With the mind-body approach, you will learn to divert attention away from thoughts lingering on the past and be more attentive to what is happening in the present.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT, works off the belief that situations prompt automatic thoughts, which in turn trigger emotions, physiological responses, and behaviors. The CBT model necessitates that we look closely at our thoughts, challenge them, and begin to reframe and reshape them. There is a relationship between what we think, feel, and behave and understanding how our core beliefs were established early on, will also let us manipulate and change our behavior.

Experiencing trauma can block or jam the mechanism in the hippocampus that works with unprocessed memory. Consequently, memories are unable to fully process, causing re-traumatization.

EMDR, which stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, uses bilateral stimulation such as eye movements or tapping, to bring out past memories and triggers. Once brought out, we are able to correctly process the memory.

Trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) is an evidence-based form of CBT aimed at addressing trauma in children and adolescents. TF-CBT seeks to provide both children and their caregivers with psycho-education to help them explore and cope with their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Therapy usually includes sessions with children and caregivers together, alongside individual sessions.