Trauma Recovery

Trauma has many causes.

Trauma occurs in all shapes and sizes and affects every individual differently.

Sometimes, one terrible event can occur, and you feel like it has changed you forever. Other times, you may experience a life of abuse, neglect, belittling remarks or bullying, and those experiences stay with you years after happening.

Life-threatening accidents, experiencing war up close or losing a close friend or family member are sometimes hard to process.

You’ve never felt good enough.

You never even knew what you experienced might be considered “trauma” until someone gave you that funny look signifying the same thing didn’t happen to them and what you experienced wasn’t “normal.”

Maybe you had a parent who abused substances or struggled with their mental health – they were a great parent some days but completely absent others.

Perhaps, you are back from Afghanistan or are a First Responder. You’ve seen things you wish you could forget. There are flashbacks and nightmares. You are looking over your shoulder constantly for the next shoe to drop.

Relationships are so hard. You can’t trust anyone or anything.

Beth’s mask hid the pain.

Each morning, Beth* puts on her makeup as a mask to hide the deep pain underneath her skin. She shows up to work and runs the show. She graduated top of her class and landed her dream job by the time she was 28.

You would never know she’s struggling.

Underneath that mask is the truth. Beth is a survivor of childhood trauma, and she learned to check out when things got hard at a young age. Her mom didn’t protect her.

Beth says it feels like she is looking down at herself from above.

The trauma started early.

Beth focused all her energy on being the very best so no one would know what was happening at home. Every day when Beth got home from school, her alcoholic father would get so drunk that Beth would hide upstairs with her little brother to avoid him and the things he did to them.

No matter how well she did in school, it was never enough to hear her parents say, “Good Job!”

Beth fantasizes about a solid night’s rest without the nightmares and tries to imagine a healthy marriage where she can finally let down her guard. She visualizes being financially secure and not worrying about how to make ends meet.

Fear keeps her looking over her shoulder, and she wants to cease worrying about what is to come or how to avoid places that make her anxiety unbearable.

Traumatic experiences can linger for years.

The body carries the legacy of trauma from the way our body feels, our movement, posture and throughout the nervous system.

Traumatic experiences and the fear they produce can keep us stuck in the past and prevents true healing.

Therapy can help you move past that experience.

Through therapy, you can work through the cycles and patterns that bring discomfort and bring awareness to how it affects your body.

Guidance to healing starts with listening to your body.

Sometimes, words are not enough to help us heal, and we must target what discomfort lives within our bodies. We’ll use the body as our guide and notice where it got stuck and how it might want to move now that it is free. You’ll get to know all the parts that make up your whole Self.

Through guided imagery and visualizations, you’ll meet your inner child and nurture the younger version of yourself to find healing.

Recovery from trauma is possible, and we are here to walk with you on your journey. Each clinician at Bee Well has excellent training in trauma therapy. We use several methods, including Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), sensorimotor psychotherapy, parts work, inner child work, somatic experiencing, mindfulness and Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.

We can help you find the peace you seek by utilizing an eclectic combination of these modalities. Overcome your trauma and make your dreams come true. We can help!

Let’s do the work.

Together, we will dig into the patterns and cycles that create discomfort. You will learn to read your body and recognize the subtle changes before the discomfort becomes unbearable.

You’ll practice the techniques to stretch the window between comfort and dysregulation, allowing you to process the trauma when it comes. This process assists you in getting to know your body well enough that you wholeheartedly know you can find a true sense of safety.

Our memories are like a giant spider web.

One more recent memory may connect to many others.

With Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), we will identify the most profound or earliest memory and utilize eye movement to make the pain easier to bear and less impactful on your daily life.

Don’t let the past keep you from enjoying the present. Contact us today and discuss how EMDR can help you overcome past traumatic events in your life.

*Name changed to protect client confidentiality.