Have you been feeling edgy, disturbed, or simply unlike yourself since encountering a traumatic event?

Does your mind haunt you with memories and thoughts of what you endured?
Is your sleep disturbed because you cannot stop re-playing it in your mind?
Do you have recurring nightmares or flashbacks?
Do you avoid certain places, people or other reminders of the traumatic event?

If you can relate to these psychological experiences mentioned above, you may be a trauma survivor. Furthermore, these symptoms may mark just the beginning of other experiences that also come as a result of living in an extremely high state of anxiety and fear since being traumatized. For example, you may be easily startled when you hear certain sounds that remind you of the trauma. Your mind lives in a constant state of mental preparedness because you do not feel safe. Instead, you may feel scared, worried, irritable, and mistrustful. It is as if your mind falsely detects a threat when in reality there is actually know threat at all. Or, you might experience emotional detachment. Foreign to previous experience in life, you cannot feel anything.

If you have lived with PTSD for an extended time due to a series of traumatic events in your life, you may resort to drinking excessively or abusing other drugs to seek relief from the intensity of the anxiety. You find that the substances successfully numb you. You do not feel the deeper negative feelings such as rage, anger, sorrow nor are you able to re-play disturbing memories when under the influence. Sadly, you may fear yourself because you question if you can even manage your emotions or thoughts. So, you continue the cycle of substance abuse as a way to manage yourself in the way you know best.

The bottom line is that you do not know how to seek relief from the post-traumatic stress you experience. You want to get away from the high anxiety, and you do not want to hurt yourself. You simply want to feel like yourself and live a normal life.

PTSD significantly changes trauma survivors’ experience of the world.

Most people living with PTSD find that their world as they knew it has been shattered and changed forever. The safety, security and innocence that once was is no longer. A traumatic event carries such a high shock value that it may take time for it to register that what you went through was as traumatic as it actually was. Childhood abuse, emotional abandonment, tragic loss of a loved one, infidelity, sexual or violent assault, military combat or natural disaster are just a few examples.

It is important to keep in mind that if you’re trauma emotionally shocked to the point of no longer feeling, thinking or acting like yourself chances are there is some element of PTSD going on. The key to dealing with the shock value of the trauma you experienced is essential to recovering from it.

Therefore, telling your story to a professional psychotherapist is instrumental to helping you work through your trauma so that it does not continue to have such power over your day to day life.

Telling your story in psychotherapy helps to free your spirit

Most trauma survivors frequently find that telling their story helps to release the toxic secrets kept inside that has caused mental suffering. When working with a survivor of PTSD, I see you as an individual who has lived your life in the very best way. While you may carry shame or guilt for what you encountered, I see that merely as a common reaction to the trauma as opposed to an indicator about who you are as a person. I understand that trauma plays tricks on your mind making you believe that the horrific event you encountered may somehow be your fault. Actually, the PTSD you suffer from does not define you. Your story is your experience and you deserve nothing but compassion, patience and empathy as you tell it.

In the initial consultation, the first step is for you and I to meet and sit together and talk face to face. This is a crucial step especially when you are wanting to talk about traumatic events in your life that significantly impacted you. The process of our first meeting will inform us both what it may be like working together. You may also be noting if my presence indicates if I am sensitive and compassionate enough for you.

To support the building of our relationship, I will ask you to share the highlights of your past. Additionally, I will want to know what symptoms you are experiencing, and how they affect your daily functioning. If you feel that you have a pattern of destructive behaviors you developed as a way to manage your PTSD symptoms, then it may be important to spend time on helping you develop more beneficial and useful coping skills you can draw from when high anxiety, stress or even depression surface up during your course of therapy.

As a depth psychologist, I work from a psycho-dynamic approach. As a psycho-dynamic practicing psychologist, I see trauma as an experience(s) that shapes how we relate to ourselves and to the outside world. Teaching basic coping skills is just the tip of the iceberg when working with trauma, I believe. The real work comes from helping you to develop a stronger mind that allows you the ability to reflect and become more self-aware when you are faced with old triggers that elicit a high anxiety response. The more self-aware, then the more in control you will feel of yourself.

As we work together, I pose questions that help you to get more in touch with your mind in efforts to become more aware of what is happening to you inside. Also, we work together helping you to become more aware of your perceptions of the outside environment. Gently, I will challenge your perceptions to help you consider how your anxiety or high stress may prevent you from seeing your world in a less threatening way. The idea is that when awareness and reflection improve especially in the moment of high stress, then anxiety is more regulated by you. The level of anxiety comes down and symptoms feel more bearable and possible to manage without resorting to more self-destructive ones. As you get better at this over time, then discussing more effective coping skills becomes more possible and useful to you.

Over the course of therapy we will work together alongside one another exploring your issues carefully and thoughtfully to ensure that you feel safe, secure, and understood. In the end, my hope is that you are eventually able to put the trauma in your life in perspective without it taking you over emotionally and psychologically so you can return to living a healthy and happy life.

So far this sounds good, but does psychotherapy really work for me?

How do I know if you are the right therapist for me in helping me work through my past trauma?

Naturally, you ask this question when you are very serious about wanting to put the trauma you endured to rest. When we meet, I will remind you that we will take a few sessions to determine if my background meets your needs.

In my practice, please note that I work hard to understand you and will ask critical questions to help facilitate your process. If something does not feel right, I invite you and hope that you will bring your questions forward.

What if psychotherapy makes me feel worse?

We will move carefully and slowly, at your pace as you choose to open up and share your story. If it becomes evident in the beginning that it is starting to feel like too much too fast we will address this and talk more at depth about what you are experiencing from our sessions thus far. I will work carefully with you to best understand what steps make the most sense for your care at that time.

You can free yourself from trauma and live a new meaningful and good life again

If you are interested in my approach I invite you to call 520-365-0058.