Do I Need Trauma Counseling?
If you have been through a difficult experience, you may feel shaken up. But it may be difficult to know whether you require treatment for it or not. In this blog, we explore which symptoms to look for to know that you need trauma counseling.
If you would like confirmation on whether you require trauma counseling, contact Yatra Centre on +66 96 916 3287.
Unexplained Physical Symptoms
Experiencing trauma doesn’t just cause mental issues, it can also cause problems with the functioning of the body. When we go through a traumatic experience, energy can effectively become “stuck” in the body. Frequent physical symptoms from trauma include:
Problems with digestion
Trauma can leave the nervous system stuck in “sympathetic” – also known as “fight or flight.” When the nervous systems get stuck in this pattern, the body diverts blood through from the stomach to other parts of the body. Levels of stomach acid can also be reduced.
Trauma can even affect our gut microbiome, causing reduced microbiome diversity. This affects the body in a multitude of ways. You may feel constantly bloated, or like the inside of your stomach is “sticky.”
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Until recently, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) was little understood. Doctors were unable to explain why previously healthy people were suddenly struck down with this illness.
In recent years, we have gained more understanding of this condition. Clinicians such as Gabor Mate and Bessel Van Der Kolk have hypothesized that CFS is caused by trauma affecting the way energy travels within the body.
This is fantastic news for people suffering with CFS, as it means that there is hope for returning to a normal life after years or sometimes decades of being fatigued. This solution, according to many trauma experts, is doing the work to release trauma from the body.
Pain
Many people also suffer from pain caused by trauma. At Yatra Centre, we notice that our clients with chronic pain are often unburdened of this pain when they have gone through trauma counseling with us.
Flashbacks
Post traumatic stress disorder can cause people to experience disturbing flashbacks of the traumatic incident. If you are having these, it is a sign that you need trauma counseling.
Mental Health Problems
People who have experienced trauma often have problems with depression, anxiety and panic attacks. If you have experienced trauma, you may also feel intensely angry or incredibly sad much of the time. You may even have mood swings where you alternate between the two. Often, when trauma is resolved, these mental health problems are lessened.
Numbness
While some people with trauma experience strong emotions, it is equally common to feel very little. If at some point you became overwhelmed with fear or another emotion, the mind can create barriers so you do not feel these intense emotions any more.
While this can stop you feeling emotions which were too much for you to handle, this action of the psyche effectively means that you do not feel anything. This numbness also extends to positive emotions, so it becomes difficult or impossible to feel happiness or joy within your life.
Difficulty Forming or Maintaining Relationships
All of the above issues can create problems with relationships. And trauma can also cause additional issues with starting or keeping relationships. If you encountered trauma where you felt violated or betrayed, you may feel that people are unsafe, and not want to be around them.
It is one of the tragedies of trauma that one of the most important things for healing trauma – being in relationship with other people – is the thing which many with trauma avoid. Isolating is very common in trauma sufferers.
At Yatra we understand that coming out of trauma means coming out of isolation, and we recognize the incredible importance the trauma counseling relationship often plays in this.
Substance Abuse or Other Addictive Behaviors
We believe that substance abuse or other addictive behaviors are often caused by trauma. The trauma inflicted on a person causes sensations they will do anything to get away from, and this includes using alcohol or drugs compulsively.
Other common addictive behaviors which may have been caused by trauma include gambling addiction, porn addiction and sex addiction.
At Yatra Centre, we do not treat people who are in active substance addiction, but we do work with people who have already stopped drinking or using. We find that often when people address their trauma with trauma counseling it can play a significant role in helping their substance abuse cease.
Self-Harm or Suicidal Thoughts
Just as people may use substances or addictive behaviors to stop themselves feeling pain caused by trauma, others cut themselves or injure themselves in other ways to temporarily relieve the emotional pain they are feeling.
People with trauma may also have thoughts of suicide. It is tragic that some people with trauma go through with this, when there are solutions available for the pain they experience.
Other Changes in Behavior
Sometimes we are the last ones to recognize a change in how we inhabit the world. Trauma can cause subtle changes in the way we interact with the world which we may not notice. But those close to you may.
If your friends or family tell you that you are acting differently, this could be another sign you have experienced trauma and would benefit from getting trauma counseling.
Yatra Centre – Trauma Counseling and Treatment
The phrase “trauma counseling” often invokes images of talk therapy, where a therapist and a client go over what happened in the trauma in a cognitive way.
And while this is part of what we do at Yatra Centre, we also do much more than this. We believe that trauma is stored in the body, so accessing it effectively involves moving into the body.
We use a range of holistic trauma treatments for this, and find that the combination of these somatic therapies coupled with more traditional trauma counseling is the best approach to treat trauma.
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