Trauma can feel like an open wound, but invisible to those around you. It never seems like it can heal. It’s a never-ending feeling of uneasiness. Having a flashback of a distressing event can happen anytime. The fear of remembering intrudes on your daily life, making doing many things difficult like accomplishing work or enjoying social interactions. Peace and relaxation aren’t experiences you have ever if at all.

Most of the time your body is experiencing trauma too. Tightness in your chest, raised shoulders, muscle tension, stiffness, etc. are common. You likely have frequent headaches or digestive problems too. Feeling numbed out or always on edge, ready to fight for survival are normal. You go and go and go until you just pass out from fatigue and wake-up with insomnia and can’t ever seem to rest. Your body remembers your trauma as your mind tries to push it away and forget.

Your emotions are all over the place, unpredictable, and can change rapidly in a split second. Numbness, anger, sadness, and fear are your most common feelings. They come and go without warning and you feel out of control. Their craziness makes you wonder if you’re crazy. It’s difficult to concentrate, make plans, and trust it will be safe to go do something. Withdrawing from others or keeping everything at a distance is all that feels safe.

Intrusive thoughts and unwanted memories are recurring experiences for you. They may be general feelings of dread and anxiety or you may have vivid flashbacks. Your sleep is often disrupted by nightmares and flashing into a vivid memory pulls you out of the moment and reality. You may feel as though you’re living in a dream where everything feels distant and a bit unreal. 

If any of this resonates with you, know that you are not alone. Trauma is unfortunately a common human experience. Seeking help is a courageous step toward healing. We’re here to support you through your journey to recovery.

Trauma is a complex response to a distressing event or series of events that overwhelms your entire system. You could think of it like having one or more clear injuries or death by a thousand paper clips. The result is the same - your mind, body, and spirit are injured with open wounds and your life feels like it’s draining out of you. 

To survive, your system fractures and splits into parts to try and keep you safe. There are regular kinds of breaking up that happen in response to traumatic events and situations. 

Different Kinds of Trauma Responses

Fight Mode or the Fight Response is much like what it sounds. You go into an aggressive, defensive mode sometimes attacking to gain control of a situation before it has a chance to come apart. Hypervigilance goes hand in hand with this - always ready to stand your ground and defend yourself and others. It’s a natural instinct to combat a threat directly. 

The Flight Response is when you look to get the fuck out as fast as you can. Something in a situation triggers fear for your safety and fleeing as quickly as possible is the primary objective. It may happen at any time in any situation, making participating in activities, especially with others difficult. Many times overworking to avoid these fears as a distraction is a way some people attempt to cope.

Freeze Mode or the Freeze Response is when despite what’s going on, you just shut down and can’t act or respond to anything going on. It’s as if someone flipped a switch and you just turned off in place. You’re literally frozen mentally, emotionally, and often physically as well. 

The Fawn Response is people-pleasing to avoid conflict with others. By trying to make the cause of your fear happy, you hope to avoid further harm by submitting and approval seeking. You become a doormat and servant to others to avoid any chance of upset.

Learning which of these responses you have is a first step in helping you heal. Each of these has their own challenges and need different coping skills to address them. Trauma-informed therapy is a good place to start.

Trauma shows up different ways for different people and affects your mind, body, and spirit. Some of the common signs of trauma include:

• Physical Symptoms: The body remembers your trauma and stores it. Sleep is difficult with insomnia, nightmares, or problems staying asleep leaving you fatigued but on alert much of the time. You may also experience chronic discomfort like muscle tension and aches, stomach and digestive problems, or regular spells of heart palpitations and dizziness. 

• Behavioral Changes: You probably notice you avoid a lot of things - people, places, activities and isolate a lot. When you do participate, you’re probably on edge at all times in case something happens. You may also have some self-destructive tendencies like substance use, sel-fharm, or other high risk behaviors as a way to numb out or feel something.

• Emotional Responses: You probably swing between moods often - from sadness to anger to maybe happy for a moment before swinging back to feeling upset. You also likely alternate between degrees of numbness and really intense emotions. Feeling guilty, shameful, or helpless is common.

• Cognitive Distortions: Mentally you likely have many negative beliefs like I am worthless and The world is unsafe. Staying focused is difficult and being distracted by potential threats happens often. You also may have intrusive thoughts like memories, flashbacks, paranoia, or fear much of the time.

If you’re experiencing more than one of the signs above, you may be experiencing a trauma response. Talking to a professional could be helpful.

Our team is trauma-informed and our work with individuals is sensitive to your experience - both what is shared and what is not. We aim to create a safe space for you to engage in your healing process through a personalized approach. Our work together will help you understand trauma, how it manifests for you, and help you heal from your wounds. We use several approaches including:

• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

• Polyvagal Theory (PVT)

• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

• Mindfulness Based Therapy

We teach practical skills that you can use in your everyday life to manage trauma-related symptoms. We will help you develop skills for stress-management, de-escalation and relaxation, and regulating your emotions. This combination of coping skills coupled with therapy can help you return to a more balanced, healthy self.

As our name indicates, mindfulness is a cornerstone to our approach to trauma therapy. Mindfulness involves directing your attention to the present moment and observing your thoughts and feelings without judgment. By practicing mindfulness, you create a space between your experiences and your reactions to them. To clarify, mindfulness and meditation are not the same and practicing mindfulness does not require you to start a meditation practice.

Some of the mindfulness techniques we use include breathing exercises, body scan practices, and somatic (body based) exercises. Knowing that sitting still can feel unsafe, we do our best to help introduce mindfulness to you in a way that does feel safe and beneficial for you. Also, if mindfulness is not your thing, that’s okay too … we can work with you in ways that aren’t rooted in mindfulness. Our goal is to help you heal in ways that best work for you.