What is Trauma Counseling and How Can It Help You?

Trauma-centered therapy is a specific approach to therapy that recognizes and emphasizes understanding how the traumatic experience affects a person's mental, behavioral, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. Approximately 70% of adults will experience some type of traumatic experience at least once in their lives. For years, doctors have been looking for better and more effective ways to treat trauma. Because people experience and process traumatic events differently, it can be difficult to pinpoint a method of therapy that is more effective.

Counseling centers and therapists use several different types of trauma therapy to help people in their most vulnerable moments. Also known as talk therapy, psychotherapy provides patients with an opportunity to talk about their trauma and advance the healing process. Doctors help their patients talk about problems they have on a regular basis. The patient and the doctor form a bond of trust so that they can open up and share.Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of behavioral therapy.

Patients learn new skills to help them cope with their trauma and often use these new skills in their daily lives.Like CBT, cognitive processing therapy (CPT) helps teach patients new and more positive ways to address trauma-related beliefs and emotions. Like other types of trauma therapy, dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) aims to better regulate emotions. This form of therapy has been effective in helping those who have thoughts of suicide. This method has been effective for several mental health disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

It helps to instill new skills to help people change unhealthy behaviors.

Therapeutic counseling

can help you or a loved one control and control the enduring fear that may persist after a traumatic event. A mental health professional can discuss what type of therapy or combination of therapies can best meet the needs in question. Strategies include individual therapy, group therapy, or both.Group therapy can offer a way to connect with others who are going through similar experiences. As Janina Fisher explains in her successful book, Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors, the neurobiological point of view indicates that the legacy of trauma responses indicates an “attempt at adaptation”.

This type of therapy aims to help surviving children, adolescents, and adult survivors recover from the effects of trauma. Traumatic experiences can affect a person's life and relationships, as well as cause difficulties in work, school, and social environments.

Trauma therapy

can help you process trauma, face your fears, and equip you with coping skills so you can cope with it and live a meaningful life. Usually, a trauma therapist has additional training in trauma and will use skills and strategies designed to help people overcome the effects of traumatic events without re-traumatizing them. These are some common forms of trauma that therapy can address; however, it's important to note that trauma can include any event or experience that causes emotional or psychological harm.

Trauma can instill fear and cause you to avoid people, places, or things that remind you of the traumatic experience, which can make it difficult for you to function.The basis of this type of therapy combines neurodevelopmental research and the sensory qualities of the arts as a method of intervention in childhood trauma. Therapy can help challenge problematic thought patterns you may have developed about yourself and the world around you, to help you understand why the traumatic event occurred, Workman says. The diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder often occurs when people have experienced chronic trauma, such as first responders, or when they have a history of trauma. According to Workman, one advantage of CPT is that it can be done with or without a description of the actual trauma, which can be useful if you don't remember the trauma or don't want to talk about it.The primary goals of this therapy are to learn how the mind and body react to traumatic events, recognize symptoms as adaptive coping strategies, prioritize cultural sensitivity, and empower trauma survivors to thrive in their daily lives.

Within psychotherapy, there are additional subsets that will work better with certain types of trauma or problems than with others. However, if you can't cope with the symptoms you're experiencing or if they interfere with your ability to function on a daily basis, trauma therapy may help. Being in a safe and supportive environment, group members feel more comfortable sharing their stories and helping others overcome trauma. Each person's trauma is unique, with its own set of biological, physiological, neurological and psychological needs and reactions.