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Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Trauma is a physiological state that people experience when something life-threatening happens to them. For most, the feeling passes when the experience is over, but about 20% of people continue to stay in this body state days, months, even years afterward. Sometimes, people feel fine for a long time, then a current event triggers the trauma state and they feel as if it is happening all over again. This is known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Trauma occurs as a result of accidents, natural disasters, sexual or physical assault, abuse in childhood, and even from experiences as a child in the womb when the mother is traumatized.

Some symptoms of PTSD are:

• Feeling scared all the time and not knowing why
• Nightmares and insomnia
• Startling easily at everyday things
• Re-enacting the trauma situation in current relationships
• Feeling anxious about certain smells, tastes, sensations, or types of lighting without knowing why.
• Fear of being in public or going to certain places
• Flashbacks and intrusive, disturbing thoughts and memories

In therapy, we re-establish the body as a safe place to be and a resource. We work to process the trauma in a contained, realistic way that does not overwhelm the client. We then put the traumatic events into context, i.e., this happened in my past, but it does not define who I am.