Trauma and PTSD
EMDR and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
When things go beyond depression and anxiety to the depths, you may be living with trauma. To be accurate, you may be living with a trauma response. I’ll tell you what I mean.
At some point in your life, you may have had an experience that caused you to believe your life or your well-being was in grave danger. And it may well have been. I am so sorry that happened to you! No one should ever experience that level of fear and distress.
What Is Trauma?
When that level of threat occurs, your brain kicks into gear to protect you. This is called the Trauma Response. It’s an immediate response that you do not have control over: your brain is protecting you. Here’s what happens.
The Trauma Response
Your rational, thinking brain parts are taken off-line immediately. There is no time for you to think things through so your brain prevents you from doing so (weird, I know). Your emotional and physical centres take control and set you up for survival. There are currently six trauma responses discussed in the literature, but we’ll deal with the most common here: fight and flight.
Your brain also opens the tap on some powerful hormones. Adrenaline and cortisol are dumped into your bloodstream which increases your heart rate, elevates your blood pressure, boosts your energy supplies, increases glucose levels, readies your brain for efficient use of glucose, and prepares your body to repair itself quickly. It’s an incredible response that gives you the ability to fight back an attacker or to run away from danger.
What’s Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?
One of the protective measures that your brain uses is this: until you are able to process the experience as a memory, your brain will continue to think of the danger as being in the present. You’ll be on alert when you don’t need to be. You’ll be jumpy. You may have flashbacks of the dangerous event, and nightmares. That’s your brain behaving as if that very danger from your past is still in your present. It’s protecting you still.
Think of it as an open tab on your computer. Whenever anything happens in your life remotely resembling that danger, your brain switches to that tab and you respond accordingly: being hyper-aware, jumpy, etc.
Why doesn’t it just get filed appropriately as a memory? Because that big hormone dump also interrupts the memory-making process. To make a memory, you need two things: sensory stimuli, and the ability to encode (or file) that information. When you’ve had a trauma response, you’ve got the sensory stimuli but your ability to encode it is impaired. Your brain won’t let you remember it because it’s not yet a properly coded and stored set of data. Instead, it’s staying in your nervous system which means, you’re responding as if the danger is in the present.
What helps with PTSD and Trauma?
So how do we get this information stored as a memory? There are a few modalities used to treat trauma. I have been trained in EMDR and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. These somatic therapies are designed to help your nervous system learn that the danger is in the past so that the sensory data you’ve been carrying can be filed in your memories. Once those memories are created and properly filed, you should no longer be prone to experiencing the trauma response when there is no danger.
Domestic Violence
I also work with individuals who have experienced Domestic Violence.
Please note that if you have a domestic violence case before the courts, you may be eligible for free counselling through your local Victim Services. Since 2019, I’ve worked with Victim Services clients. Please contact your local Victim Services for details.
EMDR is the primary modality I use for Domestic Violence.
