Experiencing or witnessing an extremely stressful event or situation, such as neglect, abuse, accident, or disaster, can result in psychological trauma. A traumatic event can impact ones’ biological, psychological, and emotional functioning. People who experience trauma are often stuck in their trauma response and live in a constant state of fight or flight. Some symptoms of trauma include anger, irritability, fear, shame, guilt, avoidance, confusion, numbness, flashbacks, nightmares, difficulty concentrating, fatigue, increased heart rate, being easily startled and more. Several of these symptoms can cause significant distress and disrupt one’s functioning and activities of daily living.
Trauma-informed Therapy can enable individuals to regain aspects of their functioning and move past the traumatic event using healthy and safe mechanisms. Some common therapeutic practices used to deal with trauma include:
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT): Focuses on unhealthy patterns of thoughts and emotions; and enables one to learn healthy coping skills to better handle and cope with traumatic memories and symptoms and have a positive influence on their emotions and behaviour.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR): This is a commonly used form of therapy that is used to deal with trauma, which allows the client to relive and properly process the traumatic events in a safe environment which allows them to reintegrate traumatic emotions and move on from it.
Somatic Therapies: This form of therapy helps the mind and the body to process trauma in a safe space, and bring equilibrium between their mind and body. It helps release any pent-up tension held in the body that can improve over-functioning. Some techniques used in this process are breathing exercises, mindfulness, and creative arts therapy such as art therapy, dance therapy or music therapy that might allow clients to express experiences or emotions that may be difficult to verbalize.
Medication: In addition to therapy, medication can be used to treat the symptoms of trauma in some cases.
Each person experiences and processes traumatic events in a different way. Being able to understand and work with survivors of trauma, without re-traumatising them, requires professional expertise. Trauma-informed Therapy can be conducted both online and offline. Some research indicates that online or virtual therapy can be more efficient to deal with trauma since the client can easily establish a safe space with the therapist when they are already in a location of comfort, and it can also help them regain a sense of control and identity during the procession of the sessions.