Why is Trauma Therapy so Hard?
It’s estimated that over 224 million adults have experienced at least one trauma. It’s prevalent, albeit horrifying. After trauma, your world can feel unsafe, and then anxiety makes your body feel unsafe too.
The good news? It’s treatable, and we specialize in helping you cope. Trauma therapy can help you make sense of your trauma history and feel more grounded in your life. When trauma happens, you need trauma-informed and competent therapy to support your recovery.
This month, we will be sharing blogs about trauma therapy and what that process is like. Today we are covering why trauma therapy is so difficult.
Experiencing Trauma
When we experience trauma, our bodies and minds do what is necessary for us to survive. This might be repressing our memories, compartmentalizing, numbing our emotions, or projecting our emotions onto others. Some examples of these ways of surviving include:
Trying not to think about your trauma
Trying to compartmentalize abuse from your relationship (like focusing on the good parts of a relationship and not the abusive parts)
Constantly consuming content (music, tv, podcasts, etc.) so that you’re not alone with your thoughts and feelings
Using substances to numb your feelings or blackout from your experience
Projecting emotions onto other people and situations instead of processing them (like becoming angry with a partner instead of processing how a traumatic situation made you feel)
Ways of surviving do just that- they help us survive. It is important to honor the ways that we’ve survived and not over-pathologize them. We can acknowledge that our beliefs and actions were trying to protect us even if they are not currently serving us. We can hold space for both realities!
The Impact of Trauma
You are probably familiar with how trauma impacts you emotionally and mentally, but did you know that trauma impacts your neurobiology and physical body?
Carolyn Spring does a great job of discussing how trauma affects our neurobiology.
Rubin Khoddam Ph.D. does a good job of explaining how trauma affects our bodies.
Trauma impacts every area of your life, and so does trauma therapy.
The Impact of Trauma Therapy
Last week we talked about how trauma therapy is an investment of time and money. It is also an investment of energy and actions.
Trauma therapy will ask you to examine and potentially change your relationship with your memories, yourself, your body, and others. You are reliving and processing traumatic memories. You are allowing yourself to feel emotions that might have been unsafe for you to feel. You are grieving what happened to you and the things and experiences that you should have had (like guardians who provided safety).
This process can be exhausting. You are experiencing so much. You are investing time and energy into your healing and may feel physically and mentally tired.
If you have coped by ignoring your body, trauma therapy may make you more aware of its sensations. You may notice more pain, tension, hunger, and exhaustion than you’re used to.
If you typically have emotional outbursts or projections, you might start to notice when your emotions are directed at something that isn’t the source of those feelings.
You might notice that you feel exhausted the day of or the day after your trauma therapy session. You are processing so much and investing in your healing. Be gentle with yourself. It might help to create some self-care rituals around your sessions. Notice how trauma therapy is impacting you and try to tailor your self-care to that. If you are really exhausted, maybe you could allot some time for a nap or for alone time. If you need some extra dopamine, maybe you could get yourself a treat like a coffee or baked good.
Trauma therapy is hard because you are investing resources into your healing. It can be a difficult process, but it is worth it to prioritize yourself in this way.
Think that trauma therapy might be a good fit? Sign up for a free 30-minute consultation with our therapist matchmaker to see if one of our therapists at Woven would be a good therapeutic match.
Interested in learning more about our unique approach to trauma therapy?
These blogs talk more about the basics of EMDR:
You can read more about Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy here: