How trauma therapy can help you?
What is Trauma?
Trauma is a stress response. When we perceive an event as life-threatening or overwhelming, our body-mind activates an inherent survival instinct and responds in a way to keep us safe and protected. As an aftermath and natural response to the event, we can experience anxiety, depression, numbness, flashbacks, guilt and shame. These feelings tend to go away naturally in a short period of time. However, the emotional charge can get stuck in the body-mind and lead to the development of trauma and PTSD even if the event happened a long time.
Often, trauma does not need to be experienced in a major catastrophe, such as a car accident or combat in war. We can also experience trauma in daily situations - loss of a job, bereavement, end of relationships, or in situations in our childhood where our emotional needs were not met. Your body-mind did the best at that time to deal with the stressful situation and in so doing created adaptative survival responses to keep you alive and safe. These survival responses often unconsciously affect our relationships and choices in our adult life. Acting out on these responses can make us frequently wonder our reactions to events: “Why didn’t I say something or stand up for myself instead of freezing?” or “Why did I get so anxious and triggered in that situation?” following up often by a feeling of shame.
When facing a stressful episode, our body-mind needs to use all its energy to deal with the situation so some of our body mechanisms are interrupted, which includes our immune system. When the trauma is not addressed and the emotional charge is not released, our body can send regular stress responses even when there is not an imminent threat. Nausea, tension and headaches can be one of the signals. In the long-term, they can become chronic health conditions when not released.
Releasing and healing emotional trauma is like opening a communication channel to your body.
My approach to trauma considers its neurological, biological and energetic aspect.
I offer you a safe space and a gentle and integrative approach to tune in and listen to your body and to interpret the message that the trauma is sending out.
In our sessions, we will work using a tailored approach to help your body to return to its natural balance.This will be offered through psycho-education, psychological therapy focused on trauma work which also includes talk therapy, body scanning, breathing techniques and gentle trauma-body exercises.