What is Trauma?
Can CBT Hypnotherapy help?
We have all heard the word ‘trauma’ used to describe terrifying events. This includes surviving a plane crash or something like the loss of a pet (which is not minor at all to us). People have their own unique experiences and perceptions. The list of things that can cause trauma responses is infinite. But, as a trauma informed therapist, I strive to create an easy way to define trauma in order to begin recovering from trauma with the help of cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy.
Paraphrasing Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, an internationally known trauma expert and author of the bestselling book, “The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma,” trauma can be defined simply as any experience which overwhelms the Central Nervous System’s ability to process and recall memories. It is not exclusively an emotional experience. However, it is one that affects our sensory perception, cognitions (thoughts), our sense of identity, our bodies, the way we see our lives and the world. It can even interfere with our connection to fellow humans, other living beings, nature, and also with our sense of spirituality.
Trauma is like a wound inside of us, like something has happened to us that has been too big for our mind to comprehend its overwhelming and the consequences of that is, we get stuck, unwanted thoughts keep coming back and we keep getting overwhelmed again, your mind, your whole being, your nervous system and you can find the easiest of tasks so difficult to cope with, you feel stuck, powerless, numb and empty.
So the event is NOT the trauma, it’s how you deal and respond to the event, especially when our emotions and sensations we feel are overwhelming and we feel inadequately able to process and they become trapped in the body and the nervous system.
By having some hypnosis and using some resilience building techniques to work through these traumatic memories, you can reframe, rewrite even and allow some self-protective tools to assist you to help you feel some sense of safety and even resolution.
As always having a strong therapeutic alliance with your therapist is of the upmost importance, for you to feel safe and secure, so you are able to bear your untold story, as holding it inside you can be agony.
Learning to do some breathe work and practising mindfulness, applying tension release breathing throughout the body, this can help to release stress, anxiety and the physical and emotional effects of trauma. Be flexible, you could suggest to meet outside the therapy room, go on a walk and talk in nature somewhere peaceful.
Understanding our nervous system and how it responds to trauma, in a split-second unconscious process is designed to choose the best option for keeping you safe.
So you are under threat you may try to escape ‘flee’ get away far away from the threat and this could mean avoid interacting with it entirely.
Or
Empower it, we ‘fight’ the threat before it attacks us, we might be able to weaken it and possibly keep it from attacking us in the future.
Or
Can I make it loose interest, our body closes up, we ‘freeze’, becomes rigid, and won’t move, we might be able to keep the threat from noticing or becoming interested in us.
We could however collapse in our mind/brain disconnects from our body, like dissociating, or in some cases by fainting, we might be able to avoid feeling as much of the pain.
In the face of threat, there isn’t time to try every approach. Actually in fact, your nervous system has to make those choices almost instantaneously. So while you may not understand the choice, or agree with it afterwards, it is so important to know that your body is taking CARE of you the best it knows how to.
When you feel disassociated its important to install some grounding techniques through the trauma resilience model (TRM) this could involve counting the steps this is: -
- Please tell me 5 things you can see around you
- Notice 4 things you can hear or identify there source
- Focus on 3 things you can feel by touch and pick up maybe
- Recognise 2 things you can smell
- If there 1 thing you can taste
Another idea you can do something simple just like pushing yourself against a hard wall, this helps you focus on doing something other than your distress and it helps to decrease stress in the nervous system.
Ask the client to talk about a person/animal/activity /place/memory/belief personal strength that brings them joy. This grounding technique could involve holding a soft cushion, toy as the comfort and it can have a profound effect.
Just to reiterate that ‘dissociation’ is a survival strategy used by somebody who has been through a stressful situation.
To end, you may feel that your brain has been taken as
‘A hostage’ – its now time here in this present day for you to take control of it again J
If trauma has impacted your life and you’re considering therapy I am here to help.
hello@carriejaynetherapy.com
carriejaynetherapy.com
Lets start your journey to healing together