Trauma Therapy
At Windward Mental Health, we offer specialized trauma therapy services in Dedham to help you manage and overcome the impacts of trauma. Our experienced trauma professionals are here to provide the support and care you need. Trauma can leave profound scars on both physical and mental health, manifesting as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other trauma-related symptoms. It’s crucial to address these issues promptly and effectively. We are dedicated to helping trauma survivors move forward through trauma-informed care. Let’s explore what trauma is, how therapy can help, and how we can assist you.
Understanding Trauma
Trauma is an emotional response to a distressing event that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope. It can result from various experiences, such as abuse, accidents, natural disasters, or witnessing violence. Trauma affects everyone differently and can lead to long-term emotional and psychological effects, including anxiety, depression, and PTSD.
Who Is Affected?
Trauma can impact individuals from all walks of life, regardless of age, gender, or background. It may arise from a single distressing event, such as a car accident, or from prolonged exposure to stressful situations, like experiencing abuse or living through a war. Trauma does not discriminate and can have severe consequences on mental health. This is why seeking help from a skilled trauma therapist, well-versed in various trauma therapies, is essential for those suffering from trauma-related mental health issues.
What Causes Trauma?
Understanding the root causes of trauma is crucial in addressing and treating this mental health issue. Trauma can arise from numerous sources and experiences, often stemming from events perceived as highly distressing by the individual. While one-time incidents like car accidents can trigger trauma, prolonged exposure to adverse conditions, such as abuse or war, can also be significant contributors.
Key causes of trauma include:
- Childhood Trauma: Experiences of neglect, abuse, or loss during formative years.
- Racial Trauma: Discrimination and systemic injustice.
- Violence: Experiencing or witnessing acts of violence.
These events can lead to intense emotional responses like fear, anxiety, and helplessness, potentially developing into post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other trauma-related conditions. Each individual’s reaction to these events is unique, emphasizing the need for personalized trauma therapy.
Symptoms Of Trauma
Trauma can significantly disrupt a person’s life, affecting both mental and physical health. Understanding these symptoms is crucial for determining the appropriate trauma therapy to aid recovery.
Mental Health Symptoms:
- Severe anxiety
- Persistent fear
- Flashbacks
- Nightmares
- Intrusive thoughts
Physical Health Symptoms:
- Fatigue
- Insomnia
- Increased heart rate
- Muscle tension
Emotional Symptoms:
- Emotional numbness
- Feelings of helplessness
- Mood swings
- Irritability
These symptoms can vary in intensity and duration. Effective trauma therapy, including trauma-informed therapy, helps patients manage and cope with these symptoms, offering a path to recovery.
Treating Trauma And Trauma Symptoms
Recognizing the need for trauma treatment is a significant step toward reclaiming your life and preventing trauma from dominating your well-being. Fortunately, there are numerous trauma therapy options available to provide the guidance, support, and understanding necessary for effective recovery. Although healing from trauma is a personal journey that varies for everyone, with the help of skilled trauma therapists, it’s possible to overcome mental health challenges. Here are some excellent trauma-focused therapy options to consider for your path to recovery.
Cognitive processing therapy (CPT), also known as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), is a widely recognized and accepted effective therapy process for trauma that helps people understand how their traumatic experiences have affected their thoughts to this day. This therapy helps people to take their trauma memory and think of it in different terms, trying to make a negative into a positive and reframing how this affects their beliefs, emotions, thoughts, feelings, and even physical health in some cases. This will often reduce symptoms and significant distress and change how trauma affects people.
Prolonged exposure therapy is another evidence-based way to reduce psychological trauma and its symptoms, as well as symptoms of those who might develop PTSD. A licensed therapist will gradually expose patients to the memories and situations they’ve been in in the past that have caused them to experience types of trauma and help them regain spiritual well-being, and address memories that hurt them.
EMDR is a unique form of trauma therapy that uses guided eye movements to process upsetting and distressing memories and emotions. This kind of trauma therapy can help by allowing people to reframe their negative experiences so that the emotional impact of the trauma is lessened so that it’s no longer such an issue.
Narrative exposure therapy focuses on helping people create a more understandable narrative regarding their trauma and traumatic experiences so that they can get things organized in their minds and memories. When they do this, they’ll be able to understand how and why things happened much better, helping them to avoid similar situations and to think of things from a different angle. In most cases, this trauma therapy will work to ensure people know that whatever happened wasn’t their fault since guilt can be a big trigger when it comes to trauma and the various types of trauma that exist.
A trauma therapist can help families work together through therapy to ensure that someone who has trauma issues has the support they need not just at a treatment center or clinic, but also at home. This is vital, as it means the patient can access help, talk things through, and generally feel more understood at all times, encouraging them to continue their treatment and get well. This kind of talk therapy is something many people find useful, whether they’re the patient or a family member.
Psychiatric Day Treatment*
There are many ways for people to undergo trauma therapy, but one that stands out – and one that we can offer with our expert trauma-informed therapy professionals, is Psychiatric Day Treatment*. Our trauma treatment center offers a higher form of care than many other options, including inpatient options and traditional outpatient trauma therapy services, with people attending therapy sessions at times that suit them and that are designed to help them in the most beneficial way, ensuring they learn trauma focused coping skills with a trauma-informed approach. Our program is up to a 10-12 weeks and designed to help you to get past your traumatic experience.
Specialized Trauma Informed Therapist To Work With
One of the many big benefits of using Psychiatric Day Treatment* to heal from a traumatic event is that you’ll have the best access to specialists in trauma therapy who can ensure you learn coping skills. These mental health professionals have a deep understanding of how complicated trauma can be, and they’re up to date on the most current ways to help people who’ve suffered from at least one trauma. They’ll know precisely what treatment to suggest, and they’ll be able to put together a treatment plan that is tailored to your own experiences.
This could include eye movement desensitization and reprocessing work, affordable online therapy, cognitive processing therapy (CPT), and various other types of trauma therapy. They’ll know just what to do to help you get past your mental health problems thanks to the many mental health resources they have access to.
Structure And Routine
Trauma can seriously disrupt the sense of safety and control someone might usually feel in their life, but the great thing about Psychiatric Day Treatment* programs is that they offer a structured environment with plenty of routine so that patients can be reassured and feel safe enough to go to traumatic event therapy. This can be exactly what someone needs when it comes to getting their lives back on track and giving them stability in their daily lives that a traumatic event might have taken away from them.
Flexibility
Although we’ve said that our outpatient program is structured, it can also be highly flexible, depending on what the patient needs, including finding a private practice or going to a national center. That’s because they allow patients to continue with their usual routines at home, no matter whether that’s going to work, studying, taking care of a family, and more. They can do all this and still receive the best help from a trauma-informed therapist, meaning they can have access to the help they need without causing any additional disruption to their lives – this in itself can be great for someone’s mental health.
Gaining Coping Skills
One of the most crucial elements of recovering from trauma is being able to develop coping skills. Psychiatric Day Treatment* programs provide a safe space to gain and practice these skills with plenty of guidance from a trauma therapist. In this way, if they’re triggered by a traumatic experience in the future, they’ll know how to deal with it much more effectively.There are many ways for people to undergo trauma therapy, but one that stands out—and one that we can offer with our expert trauma-informed therapy professionals—is Psychiatric Day Treatment*. Our trauma treatment center offers a higher level of care than many other options, including inpatient facilities and traditional outpatient trauma therapy services. Clients attend therapy sessions at times that suit them and are designed to help them in the most beneficial way, ensuring they learn trauma-focused coping skills with a trauma-informed approach. Our program lasts up to 10-12 weeks, helping you move beyond your traumatic experiences.
Do You Qualify?
If you feel that Psychiatric Day Treatment* could help you manage PTSD and other trauma-related issues, it’s crucial to contact professionals as soon as possible. While we strive to assist as many individuals as we can, especially those who have experienced trauma, it’s important to understand that Psychiatric Day Treatment* may not be suitable for every patient. Each person’s situation is unique, and determining the right treatment plan requires a thorough evaluation by our experts to ensure the best possible outcome for your mental health and recovery needs.
Get In Touch Today
If you or a loved one has been through traumatic experiences, don’t hesitate to contact us so we can help you get the guidance, support, and therapy you need to move forward. Our outpatient program in Dedham could be exactly what you need, so let’s talk – it’s a great way to get started.
