Trauma Focused Therapy: How It Can Help

What Is Trauma Therapy?

Experiencing traumatic events causes emotional responses. To cope with the reactions, many people seek trauma therapy. This is a technique that focuses on helping people process the trauma, cope with it properly, and heal.

Trauma therapy integrates cognitive, behavioral, and emotional strategies to help someone overcome their experiences. It has three main goals.

1. Healing and Building Resilience

Experiencing trauma can leave lasting adverse effects on your physical and psychological health if you do not receive proper treatment. Untreated trauma, for example, can alter the nervous system, which can become dysregulated.

You may notice you are easily frightened or aroused, have chronic stress, experience anxiety disorders or depression, or are hypervigilant.

Trauma therapy can help you heal from the pain the trauma caused by resetting the nervous system. This prevents you from staying stuck in remembering the trauma, feeling pain, coping with the pain with ineffective tools, and then repeating the cycle.

Therapists have many techniques to help you learn new skills to cope with the effects of trauma, heal, and build resilience so that you can cope with any future obstacles.

2. Establishing a Safe Therapeutic Environment

A safe therapeutic environment helps you build a therapeutic relationship with your therapist. Key factors that must be present include:

Confidentiality
Patient-centered care
Collaboration
Cultural competence
Consistency
Continuity
Communication

Building trust and establishing ethical boundaries are also key to creating a safe therapeutic environment. Also, a nonjudgmental and empathetic counselor can help you feel like you can open up in therapy.

3. Providing Trauma-Informed Care

Trauma-informed therapy focuses on the reason you experience adverse symptoms rather than making you feel like you are the problem.

Therapists offer encouragement, understanding, and empowerment to help you overcome the effects of a traumatic event. They use many therapeutic techniques to heal the whole person, not just one area.

Trauma-informed therapy focuses on thoughts, emotions, and behaviors as they relate to trauma and as they impact how a person functions personally, professionally, or socially. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, trauma-informed therapy involves the “4 Rs”:

Realizing how trauma impacts people and what is needed for recovery
Recognizing the signs and symptoms of trauma in individuals, their families, and others
Responding by integrating their knowledge of trauma into policies, procedures, and practices
Resisting re-traumatization

To properly enforce the “4 Rs,” therapists must have a solid understanding of the various types of traumas and their effects. Then, they must know which psychotherapies will benefit each person’s unique situation.

What Is Trauma?

Trauma refers to the effects of being exposed to an event or situation that is highly distressing, is violent, or has devastating outcomes. Trauma can occur directly or indirectly by witnessing events that happen to someone else. Trauma can be emotional, physical, and psychological.

Emotional Trauma

Emotional trauma is marked by specific reactions to distressing events, including emotions such as sadness, anger, fear, or feeling frozen or numb. The trauma may make it hard to regulate emotions, and in some cases, you may have inappropriate emotional responses to situations.

Physical Trauma

Physical trauma refers to the bodily injuries or damage caused by a distressing event. Bruises, broken bones, loss of limbs, brain injuries, and fractures are examples of physical trauma. They are visible reminders of a traumatic event, which may contribute to emotional or psychological symptoms.

Psychological Trauma

Psychological trauma goes beyond emotional effects and contributes to mental health disorders. Symptoms of psychological trauma include sleep disturbances, panic attacks, flashbacks, major depressive disorder, and substance use disorders, if someone uses drugs or alcohol to cope with their symptoms.

Types of Traumas

What may be traumatic for one person may not always be traumatic for another. Some people have different coping skills and can process the event and move on faster than others. Common types of traumas include the following3:

Natural disasters
Major accidents
Physical, sexual, or emotional violence
Physical, sexual, verbal, or emotional abuse
Sudden death of a loved one
Homelessness or housing instability
Financial distress
Major conflicts such as war, terrorism, or relief work
Chronic illness
Chronic stress
Neglect or abandonment

Witnessing any of the above examples is also a type of trauma that can lead to emotional and psychological distress. In the United States, 90% of adults report exposure to at least one traumatic event. That doesn’t mean everyone develops post-traumatic stress and needs trauma therapy, however.

Types of Sub-Traumas

While trauma is an event or situation that occurs to you, two sub-traumas can develop within an original traumatic relationship. Some occur in unhealthy romantic relationships, where one person uses authority, love, and other rewards or punishments to control you.

Others appear in families with trauma that gets handed down from generation to generation. Over time, you may not even realize the trauma is abnormal or unhealthy because it is so ingrained in the relationships.

Trauma Bonding

Trauma bonding is the attachment you develop with a person in your life who is abusing or misusing you. Even though the relationship is harmful, some people may develop a close bond and feel sympathy for their abuser. It does not mean that two people bond by sharing a traumatic experience.

Trauma bonding may become a cycle in which someone engages in abusive behaviors, then apologizes and begs for forgiveness, promising never to harm the victim again.

The victim feels sympathy for the abuser and chooses to believe them and stay with them, even though deep down they know the abuse will continue. This is one reason people do not leave abusive relationships.

Generational Trauma

Generational or intergenerational trauma is also a cycle of trauma, but one that is handed down through families. Someone can inherit generational trauma, and it can be psychological, environmental, biological, or social. Examples of generational trauma may include racism, oppression, poverty, sexual abuse, addiction, and poor health.

Mental health disorders are often seen throughout generations within families, including depression, anxiety, bipolar and schizophrenia.

Generational trauma shapes how people parent and interact as a family and with society. It influences their living environments and continues to occur in each new generation until someone breaks the cycle.

Types of Trauma Therapy Approaches

While many trauma therapies exist today, some are more effective than others. The most common types of trauma therapy approaches include the following.

Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT)

TF-CBT, or trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy, is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy that has been adapted for people with post-traumatic stress.

The first goal is stabilization, followed by processing and learning coping skills to deal with the symptoms associated with a trauma. It improves mental health issues like depression and anxiety by changing cognitive and behavioral patterns.

Changing how you think about trauma will change how you feel about it and how you react to it. Taking power away from the traumatic event allows you to cope with it and move away from it.

EMDR Trauma Therapy

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) involves eight stages that help you deal with past traumatic memories, current disturbances and future actions. The stages are:

History and treatment planning
Preparation
Activating the traumatic memory
Memory desensitization
Installation of a new way to think about the event
Body scan
Closure
Reevaluation

EMDR trauma therapy is a quick process; you will notice a big difference after a few sessions. With each session, the intensity of the traumatic memory will decrease.

Somatic Trauma Therapy

Somatic trauma therapy is a body-based therapy that focuses on how the body processes trauma. You become aware of bodily sensations, and it helps you feel safe as you explore memories and thoughts. Some somatic trauma therapy techniques includebody awareness, pendulation, titration, and resourcing.

Examples of somatic trauma therapy techniques include:

Sensorimotor psychotherapy
The Hakomi method
Bioenergetic therapy
Biodynamic psychotherapy
Brainspotting

EMDR is a form of somatic trauma therapy. However, it differs because it uses eye movements to process traumatic memories.

Trauma Systems Therapy

Trauma systems therapy focuses on children and their environment. Some find it beneficial for those ages four through 21 and their families.

The three phases of trauma systems therapy start with the time before treatment begins, when assessment and treatment planning occur. This phase focuses on the child’s safety and ability to regulate emotions.

The second phase involves teaching children how to regulate their emotions and teaching parents or caregivers how to support regulation. The third phase teaches cognitive and behavioral skills, how to process trauma, and how to develop a trauma narrative.

FAQs

What is Trauma Therapy, and How Does it Work?

Trauma therapy is a psychotherapeutic technique to help you learn how to cope with adverse symptoms related to a traumatic event.

Recognizing the symptoms, understanding how they affect you physically and psychologically, and developing a comprehensive plan to treat the symptoms are the main goals of therapy.

What is Trauma Bonding?

Trauma bonding refers to the relationship between an abuser and their victim. Usually, after an abusive episode, abusers will apologize and try to get their victims to stay with them.

Their victim may feel sympathy for them or justify why the abuse occurred and continue to stay with them even though they know the abuse will happen again.

What is Generational Trauma?

Generational trauma refers to unhealthy patterns of behavior that can be traumatic and are handed down from one generation to the next.

The traumas become part of the family’s history, so much so that they may not realize they are experiencing trouble and, instead, feel like their family’s behaviors are normal.

Is EMDR Therapy Effective for All Types of Traumas?

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR, is effective in treating anyone who has experienced a single traumatic event, a series of traumas, or decades of neglect or witnessed trauma. It is effective for anyone who develops post-traumatic stress disorder, generational trauma, and trauma bonding.

Benefits of Trauma Therapy

Trauma therapy offers many benefits for people who have experienced traumatic events. Trauma therapy can help you in the following ways:

Reducing post-traumatic stress symptoms
Improving emotional regulation
Enhancing relationships
Improving daily functioning
Promoting long-term healing and empowerment

After trauma therapy, you will have the confidence and the coping skills to deal with future obstacles that may appear. You will also have a support system and plan for getting help if needed. Finally, you will be in control of your emotions, allowing you to make decisions that lead to success.

Finding Trauma Therapy Near You

When seeking “trauma therapy near me,” first check with local treatment centers that pop up in your online search. Also, contact your county’s behavioral health program for referrals. Another way to find local help is to use the following resources:

Therapy.com directory tools and therapist finders
PTSD Smartphone App by the Department of Veterans Affairs
The American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress
Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies
Association of Traumatic Stress Specialists
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

You can talk to professionals who practice therapy for trauma online with telehealth services, or you can make an appointment to meet in person with a local therapist. When choosing a trauma therapist, ensure they have the following:

Credentials, including a master’s degree in counseling or a related field
Special training for delivering trauma therapy techniques
Positive reviews and references from former trauma-related clients
Licensure or certification that is in good standing with the state where they practice
Experience working with trauma victims

Ask for a brief consultation online or by phone before making an initial appointment. In the consultation, ask questions regarding costs, hours, and experience.

You will be able to get an idea about whether your personalities match. If they don’t, that’s okay. Contact a different professional until you find the right one.