What is Trauma?

Trauma is a jarring and difficult event that changes the way you perceive your experiences. Once you experience a traumatic event, similar circumstances set off alarms in your brain, warning you of danger, even where no danger is present.

This response exaggerates the threat, induces fear, and floods stress hormones into your bloodstream, compromising your awareness. When you face a similar situation to the previous experience of trauma, your heart beats faster, your body tells you to become hypervigilant, and the sympathetic nervous system turns on the “fight, flight or freeze” mode. In short, you are in the red zone.

Nobody chooses to have traumatic or adverse experiences. It would be far simpler and easier to stay open to each experience as a unique event, subject to emotional equilibrium and awareness. Some trauma is so jarring or shocking that your brain may dissociate from the event or seek to diminish its importance. This can often lead to depression, often combined with anxiety and other potential issues.

Additionally, untreated trauma can distort the way you see the world. Exaggerated experiences can make it difficult to relax, relate to others on a neutral playing field and live in a way that feels open and vital.

Getting grounded in the truth of your experience is a way to access your resiliency, lower your reactivity, and begin to heal.

Fortunately, SF Stress clinicians can work with you to address trauma. SF Stress therapists have years of specialized training and experience to help you work through the shame, self-blame, depression and anxiety that trauma entails. When you and your therapist understand that you are ready, your therapist provides a trusted, safe haven. This allows you to open up and explore traumatic events and diminish reactivity. You begin to see the pattern that has shaped the way you perceive yourself, others, and the world itself, often through the lens of trauma.

A dialog informed by trust, confidentiality and safety provides insights. When insights originate from you, they provide a personal version of context and perspective that helps you heal. You can clarify the impact, repair some of the damage, and consciously invest in your forward-directed growth.

You can change the way you relate to the story of trauma. You can harvest the lessons you have learned and move beyond the way trauma compromises your experiences. Therapy can help you process your trauma, and decrease your anxiety and depression, so you can feel free to live your life in the present.

Schedule your consult or Intake appointment today here.