An emotionally painful past event - that impacts your present #
Trauma can come from adverse childhood events or more recent events. It can be from something horrific and life threatening. Or trauma can come from more day to day experiences like a car accident, bullying or humiliation, or a horrible medical intervention (or watching a loved one being very unwell). Such traumas, if not resolved, can have far-reaching personal consequences.
Trauma can be defined as an experience that is negative and upsetting. This can be from the break up of a relationship, bullying at work, a car accident… anything really that is aversive to you.
Traumatic experiences are often deeply distressing and memories can haunt a traumatised person, whether in unexpected intrusive memories or dreams.
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is when a person’s alarm system stays switched on after the trauma has passed. The person feels on edge all the time and struggles to function due to the physical side effects. This can have long-standing cognitive, emotional and physical consequences.
Not everyone who has traumatic experiences have PTSD, yet such experiences can still underpin emotional well-being. For example, experiencing bullying at work can be traumatic. It can undermine resilience, knock self esteem and create a fear cycle of people and work itself. This would be considered a trauma and can be treated successfully with therapy by helping you move past this event and take away the emotional pain associated with it.
Therapy has been shown to be extremely effective in helping people heal from trauma.
In our service, we specialise in treating trauma of all kinds. We work with major trauma and PTSD. We also work with more commonplace traumas such as bullying, divorce, death, family breakdown, relationship hurts, abuse, neglect, trauma arising from medical treatment etc.
Some of our team are also trained in EMDR which is extremely helpful in overcoming minor and major trauma.
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing. It is a psychotherapy that has been around since 1987 and has received an abundance of supportive research. It has been shown to be extremely effective in treating trauma (PTSD) and trauma related conditions such as specific fears, anxieties and depression; that are traced back to early painful memories.
It is recommended by the UK’s National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and is offered across the country in NHS mental health services.
Eye movements, similar to those during REM sleep, will be recreated by asking you to watch the therapist’s finger moving backwards and forwards across your visual field, while you recall the painful memory. This utilises the bodies natural ability to process painful memories, mimicking the natural healing process of REM sleep. The same effect can also be achieved with hand tappers.
For more information please see our EMDR page
