Overcoming Trauma With Therapy Interventions

Trauma (whether it is “little t” or “big T” trauma) may occur at any time, age, culture, place, in any relationship, or with any gender. Consequently, post-trauma recovery takes many forms. These forms may be therapy, exercise, family, friends, and an immediate circle of friends, which all reduce the intensity of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) responses. This is because social support is associated with a reduced risk for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Therapy for Overcoming Trauma

In individual or family therapy, you will learn that post-traumatic stress (PTS) has an impact on the victim of the traumatic experience and the victim’s family members. Therapy acknowledges that emotional healing occurs within a family of cohesiveness, resilience, flexibility, and healthy communication, which will support the healing and recovery of all family members.

Therefore, therapy focuses on the strengths and addresses new as well as old family concerns while helping all members to develop healthy communication and positive coping skills to help overcome any challenges.

However, in therapy, the treatment plan is not a one-size-fits-all, as every client is unique. The sessions or the theoretical approach used will be intertwined with many different modalities like Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR), Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ARC), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), or Narrative Therapy. For the sake of time and simplicity, we will focus on CBT as all the other modalities build upon it.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a great approach because it teaches clients how thinking patterns might be the cause of their difficulties by giving them a distorted picture and making them feel anxious, depressed, or angry. I believe using the cognitive behavioral therapy approach is effective because clients with trauma have another chance to take an experience and gain a new perspective about it by rethinking the way they think, act, learn, and perceive.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy seeks to enhance an individual’s awareness of their cognitive misperceptions (i.e., distortions) and the behavioral patterns that reinforce and are reinforced by these distortions. This is why the cognitive-behavioral therapy approach will be used to help you, the client, overcome excessive inhibition and help you better cope with the experience and your present-day life.

As mentioned earlier, there are several different interventions used for post-traumatic stress treatment. These interventions can decrease the need to control negative emotions associated with those memories and increase skills for coping with anxiety (such as breath retraining or biofeedback.

Psychoeducation regarding these interventions will also help you understand that your reactions to traumatic memories or events are normal, and there are logical reasons why the symptoms persist.

In doing so, there is an element of a micro approach to treating the trauma by addressing the symptoms of shame and dissociation. Shame tries to dictate the trajectory of healing if it’s not confronted or challenged, which can lead to dissociation.

Overcoming Trauma Symptoms

Addressing the symptoms of dissociation may occur by way of including an awareness of what happens in the body while talking about the trauma because traumatizing memories are mostly somatosensory, and the nonverbal experiences of the trauma live in the body. Furthermore, the same would be applied to shame because trauma victims will not be able to fully recover unless they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies.

Being present in the room and in the body is crucial in overcoming any shame or dissociative tendencies. It is important that you, the client, be given a revelation or understanding of your traumatic experience, and how the trauma has influenced your life, as well as possibly your family’s or close community.

If there is stored trauma associated with shame, the chances of dissociating increase, and friends or community become a reflection of that trauma since there is no conscious awareness of being in the present moment or awareness of the belief systems that perpetuate the trauma. Being present and attuned to your body will be monumental in exploring the way you think, and it will allow you to examine any fixed belief systems you have about yourself and the world.

A lot of connections may come up that help you realize that there has been resentment and bitterness around the trauma. Therefore, tackling blame and forgiveness in trauma treatment will be a focus of discussion in order to reach an understanding of normalizing any trauma-related responses. This will help the client perceive that any blame or needed forgiveness or lack thereof is a normal process of trauma that can be confronted.

Cognitive restructuring gives you a chance to discuss the treacherous aspects of the traumatic experience that may consist of blame and unforgiveness. These aspects can deflate a sense of self or one’s intrinsic worth as a person, because it simply does not feel good to revisit or experience negative feelings toward someone else or oneself in relation to that trauma.

By practicing cognitive restructuring, we will identify any shameful beliefs, in order to experience a realization that these unarticulated or unconscious self-beliefs are a source of the traumatic experience and not of who you are as a whole or most of your life experiences.

Talking About Trauma

You need to be comfortable enough to explain how the trauma made you feel or makes you feel today, so the process is not rushed or pushed. Because if you feel forced to rush through it, there won’t be enough compassion and patience for you to give to whatever arises from the processing of the trauma.

Therefore, when talking about the trauma, if you use a negative description or one that elicits a negative characteristic about yourself, I can use metaphors or reframing tools for cognitive restructuring. This is important because metaphors change imagination, and imagination changes the way we see ourselves and the world.

This is why it is important that you see your personal perception or use of words. This shift has the potential to reduce stress. Furthermore, using metaphors like “voice of a warrior,” “victor,” or “overcomer” can help you reframe the way you see yourself.

Discussing negative and positive coping resources strengthens adaptive coping responses under conditions of distress. The interventions that can be used are managing anger, preparing for stress reactions, and handling future trauma symptoms. To manage anger, reduce stress, and handle future trauma symptoms, techniques such as role playing, learning about different prayers/ scriptures, meditation, and applying them will be demonstrated.

Discussions of how disgrace, extreme sensitivity, detachments, and post-traumatic stress disorder affect survivors in their everyday lives and the development of a supportive community that truly understands one another can also increase the healing process.

In addition, these interventions will be used to confront thought distortions that usually follow exposure to trauma, and relaxation training and guided imagery. Sometimes talking it out with others and listening to the way you see your past self and present self can be the best step toward overcoming past trauma.

Next Steps for Overcoming Trauma

In conclusion, trauma is one of the highest-rated mental health issues and needs all the support it can get to help individuals like you, who have survived it. In addition, the overall goal of the sessions is to teach you that the overwhelming fear you may experience is normal.

By normalizing it, this may reassure you that typical human reactions to traumatic experiences are physical and behavioral, which can further help you identify your own specific reactions and break them down into a list. This may also help you build your own rationale for confronting fear-inducing stimuli and memories, and sowing them into a new thought pattern. With help from therapy, you can overcome trauma and not only strive but thrive.