Trauma can make you feel as if you are stuck on high alert and unable to feel an inner sense of peace. You may experience flashbacks, panic attacks, intrusive thoughts, or nightmares. These negative effects can often seep into all aspects of your daily living, impacting your sleep, productivity, and ability to stay present at work and with your loved ones.
You may notice physical symptoms such as headaches, body pains, loss of appetite, or nausea emerge as a way of the body and mind coping with the traumatic experience. You may find yourself feeling physically detached or numb from both yourself and others. Despite your best efforts, staying present at work, in your relationships, or daily life can be an uphill battle. We understand that living through both the physical and emotional aspects of trauma can leave you feeling trapped and unable to freely move forward.
You do not need to continue feeling overwhelmed and stuck. A better quality of life is possible. Trauma therapy will help you regain control of your life. The Therapy Team will help you reconnect to yourself and your relationships so that you can feel present again, experience more joy, peace, and safety. Our trauma-trained therapists will help you to better understand trauma and its impact, while helping you develop the skills you need to thrive and not just survive.
Trauma exists on a spectrum and affects everyone differently. You may have experienced a single-incident event, a combination of events, or a series of cumulative experiences that lead you to feeling unsafe and/or out of control. Common traumas include (but are certainly not limited to):
It’s estimated that 70 percent of adults are trauma survivors, with many experiencing it first in childhood. Not everyone will develop negative symptoms but for those who do, the onset may occur years after the event. These symptoms may bring the full impact of the past colliding with the present, halting any feelings of inner peace.
With a deeper understanding of how trauma impacts the body and mind, it is now accepted that healing from trauma is possible. Effective, lasting treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other trauma-related issues is now within your reach. Therapy and counselling are considered among the most effective trauma treatments.
Your brain is meant to protect you in times of distress and danger. When a life threat presents itself, the autonomic nervous system becomes heightened to keep you safe and alert. Once a traumatic experience has occurred, if not processed properly, your body holds onto the trauma, keeping you in a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response even long after the stressful experience. As Bessel Van de Kolk, leading trauma psychiatrist explains, “For real change to take place, the body needs to learn that the danger has passed and to live in the reality of the present.”
Common mental health symptoms are the body’s way of signalling unprocessed emotional experiences. Symptoms of anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges are closely related to traumatic experiences.
Trauma can often occur in the context of a relationship. If you were hurt, betrayed, or abandoned by someone you trusted, it is a reasonable response to avoid becoming vulnerable with others. You may find yourself withdrawing from those around you—and you might even blame yourself for what happened, making you feel unworthy of acceptance, love, and relief.
At The Therapy Team, our trauma therapists have specialized training in treating trauma and are invested in your healing. Working to change your mind and body’s stress response, we can help you regulate your emotions and ability to function while creating new opportunities for growth and healing.
Experiencing trauma rewires the brain and body to continue living in survival mode. Our therapists will offer you a calm and nonjudgmental counselling space where you can safely process your trauma, creating more possibilities for joy, gratitude, trust, creativity, and pleasure in your life.
As skilled trauma-trained therapists, we welcome teens and adults to treatment who are experiencing any adverse mental health effects resulting from trauma at any stage in their lives. We understand the difficulties and challenges you may have in disclosing your experience and emotions in therapy and will ensure every effort in holding a safe and consistent place for you to process and meet your unique goals.
At the start of therapy, we work with you to understand the emotional, mental, and physical symptoms that are impacting your everyday living. We strongly believe in working with you to make the connections and gain insight through educating how trauma impacts the brain and body’s systems. Throughout therapy we will offer you coping techniques and strategies to help you identify your symptoms, reduce your stress levels, and process your trauma.
Our methods of practice range from evidence-based mind-body approaches that offer relief at every level. Some of our treatment methods include:
We know that traumatic experiences have left you feeling stuck and unable to move forward. Our therapists are dedicated to helping you get back to feeling like your most authentic self—free from the symptoms that trauma brings. We’ll work with you to identify how trauma is manifesting in the body, what you need to manage it, and how to process your experiences in a way that allows you to thrive. Our therapists will work with you to gain control over your life and work towards living life with more ease.
When we experience trauma, especially if that trauma is minimized by the people around us, it’s easy to feel unheard and unworthy of trauma treatment. These feelings of shame and unworthiness are some of the residual effects of trauma.
Our therapists are here to support you and offer new pathways for healing. Through therapy and counselling for trauma, you will be able to feel capable, empowered, and ready to take steps towards the life you’ve always wanted to live.
Time spent in therapy depends on a wide range of factors, including childhood and family history, severity of trauma-related symptoms, and the complexity of your experiences. Nevertheless, emotion regulation skills are an essential part of treatment, and we will begin teaching you these skills early in the process.
As you increase your coping and resilience in therapy, you are likely to notice a reduction in trauma-related symptoms.
Our therapists draw from a range of gentle counselling approaches that do not include exposure therapy or making you relive the trauma. Instead, we take a mind-body approach that heals trauma at the core. We understand the tremendous amount of courage and trust it takes to engage in the therapeutic process, and we will always follow your lead to set the pace in a way that is collaborative while keeping you emotionally regulated.
There is no reason why your life has to remain hijacked by events which impact you to the extent of developing frightening, uncontrollable symptoms. Unresolved trauma and symptoms of PTSD can be healed.
Our therapists at The Therapy Team will help you move through and past whatever is holding you back so you can begin to live your life with ease. Contact us to schedule an appointment or to learn more. We look forward to hearing from you!
The phrase “out of sight, out of mind,” sounds great in theory. If you aren’t thinking about something, then it can’t cause you distress, right? We wish this were true. Unfortunately, even when you push something out of your mind (or try to) it can still impact you.
The Therapy Team are a group of passionate registered social workers and psychotherapists delivering leading edge evidence-based therapies and accessible mental health care to help you live your best life.
