As an Atlanta trauma therapist, I have worked with many clients struggling to recover from childhood trauma. Sometimes people come to see me when their functioning begins to decline. Sometimes clients will come for something else, and that is later explained as a symptom of their trauma.
There are many different approaches for working with trauma from childhood, and there are a number of ways therapy can help.
- Trauma Is a Past Event that Is Experienced in the Present
When something traumatic happens, especially as a child without language to verbalize it, the trauma can fragment. When trauma happens the verbal and memory making part of the brain can shut down. Sensory details recorded by the non-verbal part of the brain have no time context and feel present.
Because the trauma is being recorded in this way, your brain hasn’t filed it with the “past events.” Your brain and body respond as though you are still at risk for those events, or as if the past is happening ‘right now’.
Trauma therapy can help your brain and body learn to experience the childhood trauma as a past event instead of a constant and present threat.
2. Therapy Can Give You Tools To Manage Triggers
Through different approaches, you may learn to identify what your trauma responses are and what is triggering them. With trauma, there are internal and external triggers.
Internal triggers can be feelings, emotions, or memories. External triggers include holidays, smells, sounds, anniversaries, and many others.
Identifying your triggers and learning skills and tools to cope with them can be instrumental in increasing your functioning and quality of life.
3. Therapy Helps Identify Present-Day Situations Impacted By The Past
In addition to identifying triggers, therapy can help you identify relational patterns that are impacted by your trauma. An Atlanta trauma therapist can help you unlearn any unhealthy relational patterns and learn new ways of being.
Your therapist can also help you make sense of any unhealthy coping strategies you developed when you had fewer resources. This makes space for viewing yourself with compassion and creating healthy adaptive measures.
Sometimes people think that they have to retell and relive all of their childhood trauma when working with an Atlanta trauma therapist. However, not all trauma approaches focus on the details of the past. If this is a concern, ask your Atlanta trauma therapist how they approach your counseling needs.
Many people wait much longer than they have to in order to get help. If you’ve been experiencing anxiety, depression, nightmares, flashbacks, or avoiding certain people, places, or things because of your triggers, please don’t wait any longer to start your healing process. Schedule your appointment today.
