Traumatic events leave their negative marks on the mind and central nervous system, where they lie in wait for a trigger to wake them up again. Being a trauma survivor means living with feelings of fear, flight or fight, and general anxiety when least wanted. This condition, known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is the result of going through an extended period of trauma or witnessing a traumatic event.
It is possible to live life without being overcome by these symptoms with the help of a trauma therapist in Philadelphia. A therapist can help you examine your feelings, create a safe space to talk about your experiences, and legitimize what you went through. Here's how therapy can help you live the life you once dreamed about.
Making the Source of the Trauma Less Impactful
One of the goals of trauma therapy in Montgomery County, PA., is learning how to minimize the effects trauma has on your thought processes and physical responses to pressure. External pressures can cause you to go into a physical state of fear and impact your ability to think clearly. The situation causing the pressure may not be a serious one, but it's sending you back to a time when you suffered greatly under what you perceive to be similar circumstances.
Therapy helps you look at the traumatic event, shows you the moment where it changed your life, and how you can separate it from your current reality. This separation helps you live in the moment without the traumatic event influencing your reaction.
Understanding How Triggers Get Activated
Oftentimes, trauma survivors react poorly to pressures that are similar to the ones they experienced during their traumatization. Usually, they're not aware of why they're reacting like they are, and all they know is that they feel like they need to run, hide, or get angry in response to the pressure. The pressure becomes a trigger that sets off the fight, flight, freeze or fawn reaction, making it difficult to act rationally.
The trigger can come from anything or anyone. What's key is that the trigger has a feeling about it that reminds you of the moment you were traumatized. Examining the trigger with a therapist helps you learn why you react, why you do, then how to avoid reacting like that in the future. The more you work on your triggers, the better you get, and you eventually leave the trigger behind.
Gain the Tools You Need to Keep Trauma From Ruling Your Life
It is possible to live your life without trauma overriding your sense of peace and stability, but getting to that point is a process. How long the process takes depends on how severely you were traumatized, along with how functional you are at the time you begin therapy.
Part of therapy consists of helping you make your emotional container bigger, making it easy to handle a stressful event. As your emotional container grows, you start learning how to use new tools for coping with the effects of stress. Along the way, you keep these tools handy and combine them with your expanded emotional capacity to respond and react to stress without losing yourself in a traumatic reaction.
Get Started on Living a Life Free From Traumatic Stress
At the Truth Center for Health & Healing, we provide mental health services to help you understand your traumatic experience and show you how to become free from its influence. Our therapists have extensive experience treating people who have suffered varying types of traumatic events and are ready to help you start healing. Contact us today to set up an appointment for evaluation, have your questions answered, and begin your journey to better mental health.
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