This is my specialist area and I have helped people to live their life to its full potential once again.
Trauma origins are buried in memorable experiences such as:
- Childhood abuse, neglect and a lack of basic safety.
- Critical events, crime, accidents, death, relationship conflict, moving or other significant change,etc…
They become hidden after-effects that are just debilitating. So we use powerful techniques to help create powerful changes – transformational techniques that incorporate Counselling, Cognitive behavioural therapy, NLP and Hypnosis techniques. This approach is completely natural and has huge health benefits.
Traumatic events can have powerful mental and emotional consequences:
- Safety: Traumatic events can alter your assumptions and beliefs about how safe the world really is.
- Trust: When a traumatic event is man-made, it can undermine the basic sense of trust you have in other people.
- Control: Traumatic events can shatter your ideas and ideals about how much control you really have over your life and choices.
- Esteem and value: Traumatic events can disrupt your sense of self-worth, self-esteem, and inherent value.
- Intimacy: Impaired trust following traumatic events can make intimacy with other people difficult.
Through trauma therapy I hope to achieve:
Sense of Self
- an awareness of what is important in one’s life
- an ability to stand up for one’s values, and back them up with action
- confidence in one’s durability in the process of living
Perspective
- a calmer attitude toward feelings of pain
- an ability to respond to the moment without over-reacting or under-reacting
- a stance of curiosity rather than of judgmental criticism toward oneself and others
- an increased focus on the present rather than the past or future
Communication
- an ability to communicate meaningfully
- a sense of communion with others
Direction
- release from self-defeating behaviours
- a clearer view of one’s hopes
- a clearer view of opportunities
Post traumatic stress
PTSD is diagnosed if the person experiences the following for more than one month.
- The traumatic event is persistently re-experienced in one or more of the following ways:
- recurrent and intrusive memories, images, thoughts, perceptions
- recurrent distressing dreams
- acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring ( illusions, hallucinations, flashbacks)
- intense psychological distress when exposed to internal or external cues that remind one of the traumatic incident. For example, someone taps you on the back reminds you of being robbed at knifepoint and you freeze, scream or cry.
- Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of responsiveness as indicated by three or more of the following:
- efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
- efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of the trauma
- inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma
- markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities
- feeling of detachment or estrangement from others
- sense of a future that will not last long
- Persistent symptoms of increased arousal ( not present before the trauma) as indicated by two or more of the following:
- difficulty falling or staying asleep
- irritability or outbursts of anger
- difficulty concentrating
- hypervigilence
- exaggerated startle response
- The disturbance causes significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning.
PTSD is acute if symptoms last less than 3 months, chronic if they last more than 3 months. PTSD can be of delayed onset if symptoms begin at least 6 months after the event.
Most of the time, beliefs about the way the world works change slowly and gradually. “With trauma, however, basic beliefs can change quickly and dramatically, the way an earthquake can suddenly shift the course of a river. A belief may intensify, become absolute, reverse itself, or collapse altogether” (Rosenbloom & Williams, 1999, p.67). These sudden challenges to your beliefs and sense of meaning and order in the world can be very frightening and upsetting.
If you have experienced a trauma in your life that is having serious negative effects then it is important to talk to someone so you can get your life back on track. Dealing with this is a specialism of mine so please don’t hesitate to contact me now to start the process of your recovery.
