When you’re struggling with the pain from trauma, you feel your wounds strongly, yet adult trauma counseling helps you find healing. Individuals experience trauma from a variety of situations in their lives. As such, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to recovery. However, adult trauma counseling is designed to work around the individual to provide them with unique care for their situation. Let’s dive deeper into what adult counseling entails and how it can help you or your loved ones recognize the traumas and resolve them.
What Is Trauma?
Trauma is the emotional response towards exposure to situations that are high-risk, frightening, life-threatening, or severely distressing. Trauma can occur at any age. Sometimes, individuals face childhood trauma that stays unresolved until it surfaces when they’re older. In this case, they might face a block that prevents them from a high quality of life. Unfortunately, trauma is a situation out of your control. Yet, you can control the way you respond to it through treatment.
People can experience trauma from a wide variety of scenarios, but there are many common trauma categories.
Types of Trauma
Although there are intricacies when it comes to trauma, there are trauma types that can be categorized based on the experience that prompts it. Additionally, there are different forms of trauma, like emotional, physical, or sexual.
Childhood Trauma
Many adults struggle with trauma that occurred to them when they were a child. Early childhood trauma refers to situations an individual faces from ages 0-6. Yet, childhood trauma includes experiences during the years until a young person reaches legal adulthood. Notably, childhood trauma can remain unresolved long into adulthood.
PTSD
Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a mental disorder that is triggered by a traumatic experience. Some people develop PTSD from their negative events, while others don’t. On average, 6% of people develop PTSD, but some individuals are more likely to, like women, certain ethnic groups, those with childhood trauma, and veterans.
Domestic Violence
Sadly, domestic violence is a major cause of trauma in both men and women, but especially in women. Individuals often feel trapped in frightening or dangerous situations because they occur inside their homes. In these cases, they need a supportive environment in therapy to work through ideas about safety, family, and fear.
Accidents
Accidents can lead to trauma partly because of the shock and surprise of them. No one can prepare for an unexpected accident, yet it can have traumatizing results that spread outwards in individuals and groups.
Natural Disasters
Natural disasters are another cause of trauma that is outside of the individual’s control. This category can include tsunamis, hurricanes, tornados, fires, floods, and earthquakes. They may cause changes to the individual’s health or sense of stability.
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Speak With Our Admissions TeamHow Does Trauma Impact Daily Life?
Trauma is an experience that falls outside of an average human experience. As such, the brain can’t always process the situation in a healthy, resolution-oriented way. Many people carry trauma with them for years because they have never healed from it. Unfortunately, trauma reactions don’t just go away on their own but instead need to be unpacked and worked through. Traumatic experiences can impact your daily life for years if they go untreated. There are both short-term and long-term effects on both the mind and body.
For example, some short-term symptoms of trauma are:
- Shock
- Denial
- Mood changes
- Anxiety
- Shame
- Feeling on-edge
- Dissociating
Some longer-term effects of trauma can include:
- Flashbacks
- Intrusive thoughts
- Worsened physical health
- Worsened mental and emotional health
- Strained relationships
- Difficulty trusting
- Depression and hopelessness
- Self-harm
What Is Adult Trauma Counseling?
Fortunately, trauma healing can be learned and taught. Adult trauma counseling is a specialized treatment program that focuses on healing from distressing situations and their lingering effects. Notably, during post-trauma counseling, individuals learn to regulate their emotions by unpacking their feelings and the habits stemming from them. They also learn how to cope with distress. Further, counselors understand how to treat symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in combination with stress triggers.
Adult Trauma Therapies
Along with trauma-based care, we provide evidence-based therapy as part of our programming. Each therapy has slightly different priorities in treatment, like acceptance, rationalization, emotional regulation, and healing through fear exposure. Exposure therapy is conducted in safe spaces where people can feel empowered to confront their fears.
CBT for Trauma
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a widely used psychotherapy that focuses on altering thought and behavior patterns. The rationale behind CBT is that by changing your negative patterns, you can change your experience in the world. Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy follows the same principles but focuses on healing negative patterns stemming from trauma.
EMDR for Trauma
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a form of trauma treatment that combines physical movement and mental exposure. To elaborate, EMDR aims to unlock trauma by having the individual access memories in a safe environment. At the same time, they engage in eye movements to reduce the intense effect of their memories.
Motivational Interviewing for Trauma
Motivational interviewing is an evidence-based counseling method that focuses on goal setting and lifestyle changes. In sum, motivational interviewing and trauma counseling aid individuals in understanding themselves, communicating their feelings and accepting their situations.
Holistic Treatment for Trauma
Along with traditional psychotherapies, we also provide holistic therapy activities and experiences for our clients. We believe true healing comes from a place of total body wellness. Thus, we offer opportunities for clients to engage in therapies that are beneficial for their physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional health. In trauma care, all clients participate in a mix of evidential and holistic healing methods.
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Check Your CoverageWhat Are the Benefits of Trauma Counseling?
Undoubtedly, trauma can create a low quality of life for individuals. This is true when it comes to both decreased physical and emotional wellness because of trauma. For instance, a traumatic accident can lead to chronic pain and an increased risk of drug addiction and overdose. Adult trauma counseling helps in a multitude of ways. Counseling for trauma helps you heal from lingering trauma, improves your quality of life, helps you set goals and meet them, and teaches coping mechanisms.
Trauma counselors are trained to help you face any adverse experiences you’ve had. They will walk you through the emotional work of unpacking your pain. In sum, when you work through counseling, trauma no longer has a place to linger in your brain and body. No matter what situation you bring with you, trauma-informed counseling can help.
Can a Treatment Center Help Me Overcome Trauma?
Whether you’ve experienced trauma recently or a long time ago, your pain is real. It may feel very fresh and debilitating. Truthfully, trauma doesn’t go away on its own, especially after prolonged exposure. It needs to be unpacked in a safe space through adult trauma counseling. At Aliya Health Group, our PTSD counseling facilities are supportive spaces. You’ll find a community of people centered around the same goal: your healing from a traumatic memory. Rehab centers are effective places to recover from trauma and mental health disorders.
Instead of letting trauma continue to be a chain that ties you to a painful past and traumatic events, let us help you find hope in healing through trauma therapy for adults. Please reach out today to learn more about the healing process. Our mental health professionals have a place for you where you’ll be able to find yourself again. It’s okay to seek professional help for stress management, trauma recovery, and healing from traumatic events. Call today.
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy (apa.org)
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) (nih.gov)
- A Review of the Literature – Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services – NCBI Bookshelf (nih.gov)
- Understanding Child Trauma – What is Childhood Trauma? | SAMHSA