Trauma Therapy

Do You Ever Wish You Could Forget Your Past?

Has a traumatic experience from your past left you with painful memories that you just can’t shake, no matter how hard you try? And maybe you’ve developed anxiety or depression as a result. In order to squelch these memories, you may self-medicate with harmful substances or engage in reckless behaviors. Or perhaps you’ve withdrawn from others and find it hard to have intimate relationships because you fear they will retraumatize you.

When you’re dealing with unresolved trauma, you may experience sleep difficulties, lack of appetite, and weight gain or weight loss. Trauma can also impact your social life, causing anxiety or panic attacks whenever you go out in public. You may feel unable to trust others, having no one to talk to about your trauma. What’s more, you may fear talking about your trauma because you think it will retraumatize you and bring back unwanted memories.

Perhaps you simply wish you could blot out the past entirely and forget that anything bad ever happened to you. If this is the case, we understand. At Wilmington Psychotherapy, our goal is to equip you with calming strategies and coping skills for reducing tension in the short term and finding healing in the long term.

Most People Don’t Want to Admit They Have Trauma In Their Lives

Roughly 70 percent of Americans have experienced a traumatic event in their lives, and 90 percent of those receiving mental health services have undergone some form of trauma. Although women tend to report cases of trauma and abuse more frequently, men are just as vulnerable to such experiences. In our society, however, a lot of men—and to a lesser extent, women—feel that mental health struggles are a sign of weakness or deficiency of character. This keeps many of them from coming forward about their past and sharing their pain with others.

Additionally, in general, people aren’t aware of the full range of experiences that count as traumatic. Trauma doesn’t always happen in single instances; sometimes it happens over long stretches of time—as is often the case with child neglect, systemic oppression, or chronic pain. Without knowing this, however, they may not even realize they’re living with trauma.

In counseling, we analyze ten types of Adverse Childhood Experiences (often referred to as ACES) that qualify as traumatic: physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect, mental illness within the household, a mother being treated violently, household divorce, an incarcerated relative within the household, and substance abuse within the household. With an ACE score of 4 or more, the risk of attempted suicide rises by 1200%. In other words, the more ACES of childhood trauma you’ve experienced, the greater your chances of being at risk for self-harm or suicidal behaviors.

This is why it’s so important to seek professional help. If you feel anxious about sharing your trauma, rest assured that our practice does not seek to make you confront your painful memories right away. With us, you are free to skim the surface of your ailments before exploring your trauma history. To begin with, we want to provide you with coping skills and calming techniques to help you in the present.

Trauma Therapy Ensures You Don’t Have To Carry The Burden Of Your Past Alone

Trauma is a tough subject for most survivors to talk about, and that’s why we want to be as sensitive to your struggles as possible.

overview of forest with fog lifting away

At Wilmington Psychotherapy, we provide a safe space where you can share your experiences with the knowledge that they will be held sacred and confidential. If you’ve never told anyone in your life about your trauma, rest assured that you can do so safely with us. Sharing your experience is part of the recovery process itself since it helps you relinquish the burden of having to deal with your pain alone.

Trauma therapy is always uniquely tailored to your individual needs. At the beginning, there will be a biopsychosocial assessment to evaluate your trauma history and uncover any ACES you may have experienced. The assessment will also explore any protective patterns or behaviors you may have developed in response to trauma. From there, we’ll look deeply into the symptoms currently bothering you and see if they can be traced back to trauma. We’ll also examine how trauma has affected your relationships since protective patterns can often hinder your ability to connect with others.

While we want to help you identify the sources of your pain, we focus equally on practical solutions for experiencing relief. With our guidance, you can learn healthy ways to re-process your experiences so that they no longer impede your ability to live with purpose and enjoy meaningful relationships. Instead of merely “getting rid of” your traumatic stress, we can help you live a full, peaceful, and more wholesome life. Teaching you breathing techniques, coping skills, and various calming exercises for attaining emotional and physical tranquility are some of the first steps.

There are a wide variety of approaches we draw from to help you accomplish this. Central to our practice is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a form of counseling that allows you to share your trauma history in a mindfulness-based atmosphere. At its core, ACT aims to help you make peace with the things you can’t control and commit to changing the things you can. Moreover, this approach will help you realize trauma is part of your history, but not part of you. And thus, you don’t have to be defined by it.

Living with unresolved trauma is hard—there’s no need to sugarcoat it. At the same time, there’s no limit to the benefits of having a loving, supportive environment in which to share your pain. Working together, we can help you learn how to de-stress, form genuine relationships, and love yourself in a new way.

You may still have some concerns about trauma counseling…

I’m worried that talking about my trauma will make me relive it.

First of all, be assured that no re-experience of trauma is as powerful as the original experience. What’s more, we are trained to practice trauma therapy in a way that doesn’t activate your stress responses or re-traumatize you. Most clients find that the further they get into the therapeutic process, the easier it becomes to talk about their trauma. Even so, we won’t ask you to open up about your traumatic experiences right away; we’ll gladly go at whatever pace is comfortable for you.

My traumatic experience is too intense to heal from.

Because traumatic memories are so destabilizing and overwhelming, it often feels like they’re impossible to overcome. The good news is: they’re not. By learning calming techniques and breathing strategies, you can find short-term relief from your trauma symptoms and dispel the power that painful memories hold over you in the here and now. And by working to correct negative thought patterns and self-beliefs, you can eventually find long-term healing as well. Our approach to trauma therapy does both—addressing the mind and the body together—so that your thoughts, feelings, and bodily awareness are interwoven in the healing process.

I dissociate whenever I talk about my trauma.

Dissociation occurs when the mind perceives that to further explore trauma would be dangerous. If you begin to dissociate, we will gently steer the conversation away from trauma and talk about other facets of your life. We can even utilize guided meditation or deep breathing to help you center yourself. No matter your fears, our staff is trained to handle dissociating clients and has a bevy of practical tools and resources for doing so.

Let Us Help You Shake Off The Pain Of The Past And Find Joy In The Present

If you’re ready to let bygones be bygones and embrace tomorrow with confidence and empowerment, we would love to help. To speak with a trauma counselor, you can call 910-777-1189 for a free, 15-minute phone consultation. You can also send us an email or use the online intake system to book an appointment.

At the moment, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we offer a mix of both telehealth and in-person therapy for trauma treatment. We will use whichever option you’re most comfortable with!

1 - https://www.thenationalcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Trauma-infographic.pdf?daf=375ateTbd56

2 - https://www.sprc.org/news/adverse-childhood-experiences-suicide-attempts

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