Trauma Informed Care
Healing the Root Cause of Your Symptoms
Trauma-informed psychotherapy involves keeping in mind the possible ‘root cause’ of any symptoms and distress that a person may be struggling with. While a mental health diagnosis can help us make sense of and treat, especially medically, a group of symptoms, if we disregard the life story and experiences that have likely had an impact, we are only treating the symptoms and not enabling that individual to make sense of how their past is impacting them in the present.
Using a neurobiological approach to understand these traumatic experiences and current symptoms, I help my clients see that many of their responses in the past, and their symptoms in the present, were at one time ‘adaptive’ coping mechanisms that helped them get through challenging times to the best of their ability. I help people become aware that their symptoms are not their body betraying them, but rather were their brain and nervous system’s best chance at preserving their safety, integrity, and ability to make sense of a senseless and chaotic experience. Current symptoms such as emotional dysregulation and difficulties in relationships are simply the brain continuing to use these same coping strategies, which worked in the past for a different situation, but which no longer serve the individual in positive ways.
Healing occurs when we are able to move through emotions and thoughts, with a ‘safe other person,’ that we may never have allowed ourselves to experience before, due to simply surviving and coping. Using brain-based, trauma informed modalities increases the chances for people to operate from a whole, integrated brain that uses the emotional and memory information of the past to create positive change in the present. These changes then happen with less effort as one grows in their sense of self and the brain and nervous system spend more time in a place of ease, rather than hyper vigilance.
