Best Life Therapy Blogs - Grief, Anxiety, Stress & More
- posted: Jan. 23, 2025
How can therapy help someone overcome and cope with trauma? Finding a therapist who you can connect with is the first step. Having a positive relationship with a therapist trained in trauma is important. The therapeutic relationship is a huge factor that can impact our success when we are working on trauma recovery. Sometimes clients worry that they will be flooded with emotions when doing trauma work and they often postpone therapy for years due to the fear of facing these emotions. Your therapist is there to help keep you safe. Processing your trauma may take time. Knowing what to expect when doing trauma work can help. Many therapists use the following framework:
1. Safety, Strengths and Skills
Establishing safety is the first step in trauma recovery. To do this, we need to work on getting to know our therapist. Feeling comfortable enough to process your trauma may take time. In the early stages of trauma therapy, clients often need to work on understanding what they have experienced, learning that it was not their fault and explore how the symptoms have impacted them. Focusing on our strengths and the fact that we have survived something traumatic is important.
Therapy can help you learn to be gentle with yourself as you acknowledge the fact that you've experienced something incredibly difficult. Your therapist might work with you to help you learn self-regulation skills such as deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation techniques during this phase of work. It is essential for clients to feel safe before processing the trauma. The phase of establishing safety can take time.
2. Trauma Processing
Learning to make sense of and integrate a traumatic experience in our life requires us to acknowledge our emotions. We need to explore the thoughts we have about the experience and discuss the conclusions we have made to make senses of it thus far. In this phase, we work on renegotiating how that trauma lives in us and we work on being able to write a new ending. Writing new ending has been happening in literature with old nursey rhymes. There is an excellent children's book that features Humpty Dumpty called "After the Fall, How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up." It's a wonderful children's book that teaches about resiliency. Just because we "fall" does not mean that we can't get back up. Once we do bounce back, we can still create the kind of life we want to have. This trauma processing phase may look different depending upon the modality your therapist uses. Your therapist may recommend grief journals, drawing, letter writing, journaling or art to help you process the trauma.
3. Integration
This is the phase when we look toward the future. This is when we are making meaning of the loss and figure out a way to carry the things we'd rather not have experienced. Being able to identify how we have grown and how that trauma has transformed us can help us move toward something that is known as post-traumatic growth. Trauma can transform us in positive ways. We can learn to have a new appreciation for life, a new sense of personal strength, a new sense of importance in interpersonal relationships and enhanced relationships with others.
Trauma work can take time. Be patient and gentle with yourself and know that Best Life Therapy is here to help. To begin working on your trauma, contact Best Life Therapy! We are here to support YOU!
- posted: Jan. 23, 2025
How can therapy help someone overcome and cope with trauma? Finding a therapist who you can connect with is the first step. Having a positive relationship with a therapist trained in trauma is important. The therapeutic relationship is a huge factor that can impact our success when we are working on trauma recovery. Sometimes clients worry that they will be flooded with emotions when doing trauma work and they often postpone therapy for years due to the fear of facing these emotions. Your therapist is there to help keep you safe. Processing your trauma may take time. Knowing what to expect when doing trauma work can help. Many therapists use the following framework:
1. Safety, Strengths and Skills
Establishing safety is the first step in trauma recovery. To do this, we need to work on getting to know our therapist. Feeling comfortable enough to process your trauma may take time. In the early stages of trauma therapy, clients often need to work on understanding what they have experienced, learning that it was not their fault and explore how the symptoms have impacted them. Focusing on our strengths and the fact that we have survived something traumatic is important.
Therapy can help you learn to be gentle with yourself as you acknowledge the fact that you've experienced something incredibly difficult. Your therapist might work with you to help you learn self-regulation skills such as deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation techniques during this phase of work. It is essential for clients to feel safe before processing the trauma. The phase of establishing safety can take time.
2. Trauma Processing
Learning to make sense of and integrate a traumatic experience in our life requires us to acknowledge our emotions. We need to explore the thoughts we have about the experience and discuss the conclusions we have made to make senses of it thus far. In this phase, we work on renegotiating how that trauma lives in us and we work on being able to write a new ending. Writing new ending has been happening in literature with old nursey rhymes. There is an excellent children's book that features Humpty Dumpty called "After the Fall, How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up." It's a wonderful children's book that teaches about resiliency. Just because we "fall" does not mean that we can't get back up. Once we do bounce back, we can still create the kind of life we want to have. This trauma processing phase may look different depending upon the modality your therapist uses. Your therapist may recommend grief journals, drawing, letter writing, journaling or art to help you process the trauma.
3. Integration
This is the phase when we look toward the future. This is when we are making meaning of the loss and figure out a way to carry the things we'd rather not have experienced. Being able to identify how we have grown and how that trauma has transformed us can help us move toward something that is known as post-traumatic growth. Trauma can transform us in positive ways. We can learn to have a new appreciation for life, a new sense of personal strength, a new sense of importance in interpersonal relationships and enhanced relationships with others.
Trauma work can take time. Be patient and gentle with yourself and know that Best Life Therapy is here to help. To begin working on your trauma, contact Best Life Therapy! We are here to support YOU!
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- Photo taken at Flushing County Park, Michigan