Has A Traumatic Event Or Experience Disrupted Your Sense Of Peace?

Do intrusive ideas and images often invade your thoughts? Have you experienced ongoing dissociation or disconnection from your feelings, surroundings, and memories? Perhaps you struggle with flashbacks of a disturbing event or situation. Or maybe you find yourself being easily triggered, overreacting to the people around you. You may feel like you can’t trust people or experience anxieties that prevent you from living up to your life’s full potential. 

Traumatic experiences affect everybody differently. You may experience health issues that are “medically unexplained”. Or you might feel restless and panicky, as if you are constantly in a fight-or-flight mode. Over time, these symptoms can create problems at work, at home, and in your relationships. There may be a nagging feeling that no one understands your pain or trauma, and as a result, you may begin to withdraw and feel defeated by your feelings of anger, sadness, fear and/or isolation. 

While symptoms of PTSD can be incredibly alienating, treatment and counseling are effective ways to overcome the upsets and negative feelings associated with past trauma. 

Trauma Can Affect Anybody And Manifests Differently Among Individuals

Unfortunately, trauma is very common and, at some point in our lives, we all will experience it. However, it can look and feel different for each of us because trauma symptoms can vary in how they affect us. In high-achieving communities like ours, there is so much pressure to succeed and be “okay” even if a past experience still bothers us. It’s easy to disqualify our pain in comparison with others and we can think “well that didn’t happen to me,” so we continue to suffer in silence.

While various types of abuse are common forms of trauma, they are not the only source of traumatic experiences. Trauma can come in the form of neglect or an unhealthy emotional climate. If we experienced a lack of acceptance from our parents as we were growing up, for example, or if our profession has placed us in difficult or disturbing situations, we may be traumatized without even knowing it. External dynamics create internal triggers, and without our conscious awareness, we can have emotional and visceral reactions to people and/or our surroundings.  

It is also incredibly common to have an inner critic, who judges everything we do, constantly making us feel less than, not good enough, or like something is wrong with us. Feelings of guilt or shame either from the constant disparaging of self or that stem directly from trauma might keep us from seeking help.

However, like any injury, if you are suffering from trauma symptoms, you may not possess the tools to treat your pain. And therefore, it becomes increasingly important to seek the guidance of a professional to help you begin or to deepen your healing process. 

Treatment For Trauma/PTSD Offers An Opportunity For Transformative Healing

When it comes to your trauma, it is important to recognize that there are two presentations of post-traumatic stress disorder. The first, simply known as PTSD, is based on a single event or a series of events that usually occur outside the home. This is the form of catastrophic trauma we often associate with lingering feelings of distress, like a car accident, sudden or repeated instances of violence, a natural disaster, etc. that has upended a semblance of normalcy in our lives.

The second presentation, known as Complex PTSD (or C-PTSD), is what can occur if we experienced toxic stress events (aka Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs) within our family and/or on the home front and includes, but is not limited to, instances of physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse. The groundbreaking ACE study, done in the mid-1990s, showed a definitive correlation between toxic stress events in childhood and physical as well as mental health problems experienced years, even decades, later in adulthood. While each type of post-traumatic stress presents differently, they can both be healed using effective PTSD treatment. 

At The Body Mind Center, we know that facing your trauma can feel impossible, especially when “going there” brings it all back. But we also know you have the capacity within you to heal, as well as to experience meaningful growth and change.

Using neuroscientific, evidence-based approaches, along with body-based perspectives, our goal is to help you process and clear what is left behind in your body and brain by the trauma and toxic stress you have experienced in your life. Although we can’t change the things that happened to you, by using EMDR therapy and trauma-informed psychotherapy, we can change how the memory is stored in your brain, body, and emotions. Instead of your nervous system living in a constant fight-or-flight state, we can help you more regularly achieve a rest and relaxation state. By the end of your treatment, you will have the tools as well as the techniques to keep your self-harmony and inner peace.

Perhaps there are additional questions you have as you consider seeking treatment for your trauma or PTSD...

I’m concerned about the cost of PTSD/Trauma therapy.

It’s a valid concern, but given what two decades of research consistently say about the effects of trauma and ACEs on our physical and mental health, therapy and counseling is a short-term investment with a big long term payoff. By taking action now to clear the “congestion” that trauma has left behind in your system, you can save yourself from the potential costs and burdens of future physical and mental health problems. Like rehabbing any injury, PTSD treatment is designed for temporary investment to help you find lasting relief.

I am afraid to dredge up the past. 

This is also a valid concern, however, the reality is your trauma is already living and breathing inside of you, as evidenced by the fact that triggers will often result in you feeling emotionally hijacked and sometimes betrayed by your body. This occurs because you are experiencing what feel like uncontrollable body sensations, like a panic attack, the symptoms of which can mimic a heart attack. The aim of PTSD and trauma therapy is to help your brain rewire and store your traumatic memories differently, so that, over time, the painful memory doesn’t affect you like it once did. 

How long will it take to complete treatment for my PTSD?

Great question! The answer depends on many factors though, like: Do you have PTSD as a result of a singular event? Or do you have C-PTSD, which is more complicated? Both will require different techniques and tools, and both will take you variable amounts of time. How severely are your trauma symptoms impacting your life? The less severe, the less time it may take and the more severe, the longer it may take. The truth is that everyone responds differently to trauma, and thus each individual will have a unique response to their treatment process for PTSD. There is no one single timeline for this work, but regardless, its effectiveness is backed by science and evidentiary support.

You Can Do More Than Just Survive—You Can Thrive! 

If PTSD/C-PTSD has prevented you from finding happiness, peace, and joy in your life, treatment and therapy at The Body Mind Center can offer you a refreshed perspective and relief from your trauma. For a free, 15-minute consultation, please call 410-530-9538 or go to our contact page to learn more about our team and what we can do for you. 

Please note that due to COVID-19, we are conducting all sessions online for the time being. 

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