Shalini Singh, LMHC-D, NCC, C-DBT

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What is Trauma?

Trauma has been defined as any event that trigger the onset of feeling intensely fearful affecting a person’s emotional, cognitive and behavioral well-being.

Trauma is not to be taken lightly. It can be experienced either directly or by indirect means such as vicarious trauma. Vicarious trauma can be experienced when you are empathically engaging with another who narrate their own experiences of trauma to you. Your continuous empathic engagement with the survivor of trauma can have an unwanted effect on your own emotional well-being. People who often experience vicarious trauma include, loved ones supporting someone who experienced a traumatic event or healthcare providers such as nurses, physicians, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists. Seeking help to process the trauma and learning how to cope is essential for the well-being of your overall health.

When someone experience trauma, it can stir up a variety of devastating feelings such as despair, anger, rage, deep sadness, intense anxiety, feeling intensely overwhelmed, or leave a person extremely confused. Trauma can have a profound unwanted impact on a person’s ability to living a balanced and fruitful life since most people surrender to avoiding triggers.

The avoidance coping method makes sense. Who wants to continuously be triggered to experience unwanted feelings and thoughts? No one. Avoidance is a natural method that people resort to coping with traumatic events whether we avoid the external or internal reminders. Surrendering to avoidance is painful because people feel trapped, overwhelmed, disheartened and disconnected.

There are no big or small traumatic events since any event can evoke the same type of traumatic response. Dealing with trauma can be overwhelming, especially when done alone. Having support in your environment helps to ease the process. Psychotherapy can help you live a life that is more rewarding by reducing the feeling of being trapped.  

What are some contributing factors to Trauma?

Trauma can be triggered by abuse (emotional, physical, and sexual), domestic violence, neglect, accidents, having to get a surgery, a medical illness, death of a loved one, bullying, break-ups or separation from ones we love, exposed in or to war, or natural disastrous events.

What are the signs/symptoms associated with experiencing trauma?

Everyone experiences trauma in different ways. You may find yourself having all of the signs/symptoms or just a few. Your responses are not considered as correct or incorrect ways of experiencing trauma. The feelings, thoughts, and actions you are experiencing are common responses to uncharacteristic events you have faced in your life.

Common signs/symptoms of Trauma:

• Intense fear or anxiety
• Anger, irritable, or mood swings
• Feeling deep sadness or hopeless
• Feeling numb inside
• Withdrawing from others
• Inability to feel joy or happiness
• Experiencing shock or disbelief
• Having guilt or blaming oneself
• Feeling embarrassed
• Sleep and appetite disturbances
• Flashbacks
• Intrusive thoughts associated with the traumatic event
• Nightmares
• Increased heart rate around triggers
• Difficulties with concentration
• Feeling on edge or restless
• Hypervigilance toward triggers
• Easily startled
• Noticing your tendency to avoid certain situations or people
• Having trouble with doing your work at school/job
• Difficulty with relationships
• Reduced interest in doing activities you once enjoyed

Some of the trauma associated mental health disorders include:

• Adjustment Disorder
• Acute Stress Disorder
• Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

These mental health conditions share most of the signs/symptoms mentioned above. Call today if you are finding yourself experiencing any of the above.

Treatment approaches

Based on the current/past evidenced-based research data, both Psychodynamic and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy have shown promising effectiveness for trauma healing. There is no one size fit all approach. Psychodynamic or DBT may or may not be beneficial when working through and healing from trauma.

It is important that you work with an experienced trauma therapist to begin your healing, so that your healing can be done in an empathic, safe, warm, and non-judgmental space whilst you learn to effectively cope with trauma. Call 929-368-2642 to book a free consultation to ascertain if our approach could be useful to your healing process.

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