TRAUMA PSYCHOTHERAPY


Home

Contact Us

Links

ABOUT US


Elizabeth Greason, LCSW
About My Work: Elizabeth Greason
Beth Cassel, MFT
About My Work: Beth Cassel


Video Interview with Beth

TRAUMA ARTICLES

EMDR and Trauma Work
Resources and Trauma Healing

Working with Addiction: A Somatic Approach
What is Trauma?

Somatic Experiencing & Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

How to Manage Anxiety
What is Attachment? What Does it Have to do with You?
AEDP: Accelerated Emotional Dynamic Psychotherapy
 
POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION


PPD for Moms

PPD Self Assessment

Perinatal Resources




 





                                                  What Is Trauma?


Psychological trauma occurs when a person witnesses or is involved in a situation which is experienced as life threatening. Intense fear, helplessness, loss of control, and fear of annihilation occur when normal defenses to fight or flee are overwhelmed or ineffective. Trauma shatters the very foundation of one's being, bringing into question previously held assumptions regarding safety, trust, identity, relationships with others and religious or spiritual beliefs.

Research has shown that the shock of trauma creates changes in the brain and nervous system, leaving trauma survivors with loss of flexibility in responding to life situations. Trauma survivors commonly experience intense emotion without clear memory of traumatic events, or conversely, recall details of traumatic events but without emotion. They may alternate between feeling numb and reliving past traumatic events in present time. Chronic activation of the nervous system can result, making relaxation extremely difficult. Instead, the nervous system remains primed and alert for danger.
Here is a summary of responses to trauma:


  1. Inability to regulate nervous system activation
    • Hypervigilance, heightened startle response, difficulty relaxing, panic attacks, rage attacks, and chronic anxiety
    • May continue to respond to ordinary events as if traumatic or dangerous
  1. Intrusion of traumatic elements
    • Traumatic memories intrude on daily life as isolated fragments, sensory impressions, intense emotions, body sensations, and flashes of images that match the intensity of the original traumatic event
    • Flashbacks, nightmares, panic and rage attacks, paralysis, immobility, somatic symptoms, and behavioral enactments

 

  1. Unexplained physical symptoms
    • Dissociated aspects of the original trauma may be experienced on a somatic or physical level
    • Examples might include feeling someone's hands around one's throat, or a scream that seems to want to come involuntarily from deep within, with no apparent trigger
    • Possible over or under activation of the immune system, leaving one more vulnerable to physical illness
  1. Reenactment of parts of the traumatic experience
    • Unconsciously repeating destructive patterns of relating to the world or to oneself, which are often destructive
    • Examples may include repeated victimization or taking on the role of the abuser

 

  1. Numbing and avoidance of anything related to the trauma
    • Tendency to withdraw and to isolate from ordinary life
    • Using drugs and alcohol to keep certain experiences from conscious awareness
    • Narrowing of interpersonal relationships
  1. Dissociation
    • Normal connections between thoughts, feelings, sensations, behaviors, and images are broken
    • Development of distinct identities within one person
    • Out-of-body experiences--seeing what is happening to oneself as if from a distance

 

  1. Loss of flexibility in responding to life situations
    • Responding reflexively and impulsively as though the current situation contains the same danger as past traumatic experiences
    • Inability to entertain alternative responses
    • Immediately going into a survival course of action when it is unnecessary
  1. Relationship difficulties
    • Avoiding intimacy and difficulty trusting others
    • Entering into relationships that are re-traumatizing
    • Perpetuating the abuse onto others

 

  1. Immobility
    • Not knowing what to do or being unable to act in a situation
    • Inability to follow through or move forward in life
    • May feel frozen or lack of energy
    • May be experienced as lack of motivation
  1. Change in one's personal identity and view of the world
    • The world may be experienced as unsafe
    • Difficulty experiencing the world as safe and humans as basically good and just
    • Loss of passion for life or willingness to live

 

  1. A deep sense of shame at having let oneself or others down
    • Sense of being weak or helpless
    • Feeling incapable of protecting or defending oneself or others
  1. The creation of a posttraumatic identity involving rigid defenses
    • Image of self previous to trauma is replaced with identity that revolves around survival or "holding it all together"
    • May become withdrawn, isolated and lead a constricted life
    • May experience self as overextended, overwhelmed, and overactivated

 

 

 
 
   








Copyright 2003-2005 traumapsychotherapy.com

Home  |  Contact Us  |  Links  |  Beth Cassel, MFT  | About My Work by Beth Cassel | Video Interview with Beth
Elizabeth Greason, LCSW
| About My Work: Elizabeth GreasonEMDR and Trauma Work  | Resources and Trauma Healing
Working with Addiction: A Somatic Approach | What Is Trauma?
 | Somatic Experiencing & Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
How to Manage Anxiety | What Is Attachement? What Does it Have to do with You | AEDP: Accelerated Emotional Dynamic Psychotherapy
  PPD for Moms
 |  PPD Self Assessment  |  Perinatal Resources



Sign In