Trauma
Types of Trauma
- Child Abuse
- Mass Interpersonal Violence
- Natural disasters
- Large-Scale Transportation Accidents
- Fire and Burns
- Motor Vehicle Accident
- Rape and Sexual Assault
- Stranger Physical Assault
- Intimate Partner Violence
- Sex trafficking
- Torture
- War
- Witnessing or Being Confronted with Homicide or Suicide of Another Person
- Life-threatening Medical Conditions
- Emergency Worker Exposure to Trauma
What are the long-term effects of trauma?
- Reduced capacity to regulate affective states-often feeling hyperarousal, dysphoria, becoming “triggered”, all or nothing approach, compulsive/inhibited sexuality and suicidal ideation/self injury behaviors.
- Distorts a person’s ability to remember and make sense of the world. Often this is experienced as amnesia/hyperamnesia, dissociative experiences and reliving experiences (often multisensory).
- Alters an individual’s sense of who they are, often feeling a loss of self, shame, guilt, and self-blame. In addition, to a a sense of defilement or stigma and a sense of complete difference from others.
- Changes a person’s perception of the perpetrator, causing a preoccupation with the relationship and with the perpetrator (including revenge), unrealistic attribution of total power to perpetrator, sense of special relationship, acceptance of belief system of rationalizations of perpetrator.
- Impacts an individual’s relationships with others and their ability to relate to others (interpersonal trauma), which often leads to confusion around the nature of interpersonal relationships in general. The trauma can cause general isolation and withdrawal, reduced capacity for empathy, disruption in intimate relationships, repeated search for “rescuer”, persistent distrust and diminished ability to assess interpersonal danger.
- Affects an individual biologically, when the central nervous system gets overloaded and physiological consequences include: an exaggerated startle response, startled habituation, chronic hyperarousal, physical symptoms (headaches, nausea, stomach pain, GI problems, etc.) and alexithymia.
- Alterations in an person’s system of meaning that include a loss of sustaining faith or spirituality, a sense of hopelessness or despair, reduced capacity to imagine a future and difficulty finding meaning in life.
WHAT HAPPENS WITH REPEATED TRAUMA
In sensorimotor psychotherapist it is strongly believed that repeated stressors, cause individuals to experience fragmentation. Fragmentation is an emotional age/state, in which an individual’s emotional development goes unprocessed. These fragments or ” parts” incorporate physical sensations and messaging around survival to the stressor.
Typically, as ongoing stressors surface, individuals draw on their memories and fragmentations to interpret and manage stressors. This is called blending.
STAGES OF TRAUMA - Judith Herman's Stage Approach
- Safety and Stabilization
- Coming to Terms with Traumatic Memories Integration,
- Reconnection and Moving On
HOW TO RECOVER FROM TRAUMA- According to Babette Rothchild
1. Plot Your Course With Mindfulness.
2. Begin With Your Epilogue…
3. You Made It.
4. Remembering Is Required to Stop Flashbacks.
5. Reconcile Forgiveness and Shame. First, share your shame and second, forgive your limitations.
6. Take Smaller Steps for Bigger Leaps– Most traumatized client cycle between too much (hyper) and too little (hyper) arousal. Beginning to work on the optimal zone of arousal and effective functioning is very important in therapy.
7. Develop Grounding Techniques– A set of strategies used to detach from emotional pain by bringing the focus to the outside external world and away from the self. Mental techniques can include describing objects, counting items and using humour. Physical Grounding can include running cold water over hands/face, touching objects around you, carry a grounding object in your pocket and noticing changes in your body. Lastly, soothing strategies can include saying something kind to yourself, remembering words in an inspiring song, poem etc.
8. Get Moving.
TREATMENTS FOR TRAUMA- EMDR, SENSORIMOTOR PSYCHOTHERAPY
Some of the most researched trauma-informed therapies include Sensorimotor psychotherapy and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy.
Sensorimotor psychotherapy draws on neuroscience and involves retraining the body to manage/reframe the somatic (physiological/bodily) experience of trauma.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy is often used with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder to relieve and reduce traumatic or triggering memories and experiences.