Trauma comes in many forms. It can be caused by different types of experiences, such as an assault or a natural disaster.
Trauma can also be the result of an emotionally distressing experience, such as a break up or divorce. Losing a loved one can also be traumatic. Life is filled with a wide range of disturbing experiences. Everyone has their own unique response to a deeply distressing or disturbing experience.
If you have lived through or witnessed something like this, no wonder you have been shaken and have lasting effects. Your life may have been at risk. The experience you had may have impacted your personal image. You may have negative feelings about yourself or perhaps feelings of shame.
Online trauma therapy can help you process your traumatic experience and get back to living your life.
Online trauma therapy can help you recover from a natural disaster.
Causes of Trauma
Sometimes things happen that put life into a tailspin. Trauma can result from many different experiences, from combat, violence, medical trauma, or abuse to grief and loss. It can come from a single experience or a series of events that happen over time.
Some different causes of trauma include:
- Sexual Assault
- Physical or Verbal abuse
- Early, repeated trauma
- Early childhood loss
- Childhood adversity
- Raised by a parent with a trauma history
- Having a parent with mental illness
- Growing up with substance abuse in the home
- Medical abuse or Neglect
- Emotional or Physical abuse
- Ableist Culture
- Chronic illness
- Intimate Partner Violence or Domestic Violence
- Difficult divorce
- Childhood Abuse, Neglect or Incest
- Witnessing Violence
- Combat
- Severe injury
- Natural Disasters
- Traumatic Grief
- Religious trauma
- Life and situational difficulties like:
- Financial Uncertainty
- Food Insecurity
- Homelessness
If you have experienced one or more of these and your life has been disrupted, you could benefit from online trauma treatment. Solution Focused trauma therapy can help.
What are Symptoms of Trauma?
Trauma comes in many shapes and forms. They all have a common theme -- a deeply distressing or disturbing experience. You experienced something and you were harmed in some way. A big part of trauma is overwhelm that makes coping difficult.
Trauma has an impact on all parts of your life. It infiltrates your cognitive abilities, your emotional state, your social interactions, your ability to do things and your thoughts about life. Unresolved trauma can make living your life difficult. Learning how to resolve trauma can help you get your life back on track.
Trauma is a normal response to a shocking event. Your desire to stay safe makes perfect sense. Your thoughts and reactions around safety naturally become heightened after you experience something traumatic. When people ask me, "What are symptoms of trauma?" I usually start by telling them everyone's experience is unique, but there are some common symptoms.
Some symptoms of trauma are:
- Constant fear
- Anxiety
- Sadness
- Panic attacks
- Difficulty sleeping
- Nightmares
- Being triggered by things that others see as safe
- Depression
- Shock
- Suicidal thoughts
- Reactive behavior
- Emotional outbursts
- Overwhelming emotions
- Lethargy
- Fatigue
- Difficulty making decisions
- Impulsivity
- perfectionism
- Feeling on edge
- Hopelessness
- Exhaustion
- Denial
- Anger
- Lack of trust
- people-pleasing
- Difficulty thinking and concentrating
- Nervousness
- Mood changes
- Shame, guilt, and self-blame
- overthinking
- Low self-esteem
- Hypervigilance - always being on guard and hyper-aware and startling easily
- Social isolation and relational issues
- Feeling numb or going outside your body
- Difficulty managing stress
These symptoms of trauma are often debilitating and can be addressed when you begin trauma treatment online.
What Is Medical Trauma?
Medical trauma is the emotional and psychological distress that follows a difficult medical experience. It can stem from a range of situations, including surgery, chronic illness, abuse in a medical setting, emergency treatments, or even routine procedures gone wrong. When your body undergoes intense physical stress, your mind often carries the emotional weight long after the event.
Medical trauma doesn’t just affect those who have had life-threatening experiences. Even less severe medical events can cause feelings of helplessness, fear, and anxiety. For some, it’s a bad reaction to anesthesia. For others, it’s the memory of an unexpected complication during childbirth. Others have a difficult time with medical providers who don’t believe them or don’t understand their chronic illnesses.
Regardless of the cause, medical trauma can have a lasting impact on your mental health. Medical trauma therapy can help you cope and find healthy ways to care for yourself. A medical trauma therapist understands what it's like to live with medical issues and can offer insights into the medical system.
The symptoms of medical trauma often overlap with those of PTSD. Flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance, and anxiety around medical settings are common. You may find yourself avoiding doctors, hospitals, or even conversations about health care. Some people get so fed up that they want to quit trying to get medical care. These reactions are your mind’s way of protecting you from reliving a bad experience, but they can also prevent healing.
Addressing medical trauma is crucial. Without proper therapy and support, the emotional wounds can deepen, and your physical health can suffer. Sharing experiences of medical trauma can help you feel like your not alone. Medical trauma therapy provides a safe place for you to work through these feelings, make a plan to keep moving forward, and take your first steps to feel better.
Trauma therapy can get you back to being you. You can enjoy life again.
Solution Focused Trauma Therapy California
How Trauma Therapy Works: Counseling for Trauma
I specialize in helping people who are suffering from trauma. I have worked with clients who suffer from the impact of violence, sexual assault, verbal abuse, childhood trauma/sexual trauma, complex trauma, natural disasters and combat.
If you are suffering from trauma, a normal human response is to experience anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and difficulty setting boundaries. It’s not uncommon to have difficulty coping effectively with life’s everyday challenges. Some symptoms of trauma are hard to shake.
Online trauma therapy works by trusting that, at the deepest level, you are still you no matter what you have been through. You know what’s best for you and what best fits in your life. You have the ability to bring joy and healing back into your life. You just need some support from someone trained in what you are dealing with. Counseling for trauma helps you get in touch with parts of yourself that have faded to the background.
Some clients wonder if the therapeutic process is only focused on delving into childhood issues and blaming parents for problems and difficulty coping. You may also wonder about processing trauma and talking about your experience over and over.
In fact, recounting your trauma isn’t always useful. Protecting you from additional harm is important to me. I am very careful to avoid retraumatization. If you find it helpful to go over your trauma story or parental relationships, we will. If not, we won’t. For some, symptoms of trauma are can increase when the traumatic event is revisited. We will not do anything you do not want to do. We will only look at things that will lead to your healing. Your trauma treatment online experience will always put your safety first.
Solution Focused trauma therapy is different. Each therapy session is yours and you will decide what we consider. My role is to be supportive and ask questions that help you move forward, help you see possibilities and help you find solutions that are right for you.
In the first session, most therapists will do an assessment and ask a list of questions about your life. I work differently. Most of that information is covered in the paperwork. So we can get right down to talking about what will be helpful to you.
I want you to feel safe and comfortable without being forced into anything. We will start with what you want to get out of therapy and will begin to focus on that right away. At the end of the session, you will decide when or if you want to return for a second session. You can decide to come in once a week, every two weeks or when you feel the time is right as you process through our first conversation. Most clients start with weekly sessions and move to every other week as they feel comfortable. Some clients prefer to start with every other week. Trust your instincts at the end of the session. You can always change your mind. Online trauma treatment is flexible.
You may wonder if you should make a list of things to talk about or if I assign homework between sessions. While I might make suggestions, you are not required to do things like that. Some clients like to come with lists and if that’s your style, great. If not, that’s great too. I customize all of your sessions to you. Your Solution Focused trauma therapy is about you and how you want to live your life.
Are you struggling to get back to being yourself after a traumatic experience? You can feel better. Therapy can help. I can help you learn to manage your traumatic memories, recover and live the healthy and fulfilling life you want. The therapeutic relationship is important to your healing process. Reach out today for your complimentary consultation to see if working with me is a good fit for you.
Trauma and Mental Health
Trauma often leads to an emotional response that can impact your mental health. Commonly, people have an immediate response and then a delayed response to trauma. Both have their own, unique to you, mental, emotional, and physical symptoms. Some symptoms may hang on for quite a while. They may lead to anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, suicidal thoughts (suicidal ideation), post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental health conditions.
If you’ve had a traumatic experience that is causing you ongoing distress and having an impact on your daily life, please seriously consider asking for help. Symptoms of trauma are often difficult. Figuring out how to resolve trauma is easier with professional support.
Trauma and mental health issues tend to go hand in hand. They can get in the way of you living a productive and fulfilling life. I can help you manage your traumatic memories and get on with living a healthy, fulfilling life. Together, we can explore how you made it through your trauma and how you want to rebuild your life. If you’re living with the shadow of trauma, no matter the traumatic event you experienced, you can recover.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that can occur after you experience or witness a traumatic event. Symptoms can include flashbacks, nightmares, severe anxiety, and uncontrollable, recurring thoughts about the event. PTSD can make it difficult to function in everyday life and can lead to self-harming behaviors or suicide. There is no one cause of PTSD. It can affect anyone regardless of age, gender, or race. Online trauma treatment with Solution Focused trauma therapy can help lessen symptoms and improve quality of life.
How does online trauma treatment work?
Online therapy, teletherapy, or e-therapy, is a relatively new field of mental health treatment that is growing in popularity. It involves using technology to provide counseling services via video conferencing or phone. You meet with your therapist using a HIPAA-compliant platform instead of traveling to meet in an office. You only need an internet connection or a phone to access trauma-related mental health care.
Online therapy has many benefits, including convenience and a greater selection of qualified trauma-informed therapists. It can also be an excellent option for people who live in rural areas, have busy schedules, or have trouble accessing mental health services.
Solution Focused trauma therapy is well suited for trauma treatment online. Virtual counseling is a natural environment for solution focused questions. It provides a safe place for you to contemplate several different ways to look at your experience in your own environment.
What are the benefits of online trauma therapy?
There are many benefits of online therapy for trauma. One is that it provides a sense of anonymity and privacy when you are seeking help. It can be difficult to open up about traumatic experiences to a complete stranger in person. Online therapy removes that barrier and makes getting the help you need more accessible. Additionally, online treatment saves you time and energy, which can be a barrier to seeing a therapist in person.
Online trauma therapy is effective. Research shows that online trauma treatment is just as successful as traditional therapy. Some studies show it is more effective than meeting in person because the client gets to choose their therapy environment. This leads to higher feelings of safety making it more comfortable to learn how to resolve trauma.
Online trauma therapy is a flexible way to get the trauma treatment you need. You can meet where it is most convenient or somewhere you are comfortable. If you're having a difficult time or just don't want to go out, you can join your virtual session without leaving home. You don't need to add more stress to your life by rushing to get to another appointment on time. Just log in and begin.
Is online therapy for trauma right for me?
This is a question many people are asking in the wake of tragedies like mass shootings. Trauma can be caused by many things, from accidents to abuse, and it can leave lasting scars. Mass shootings reported in the news impact everyone, even if the incident does not directly affect you. While traditional therapy can be helpful for some people, others may find it not right for them. That’s where online therapy comes in.
Online therapy is growing in popularity. It offers several advantages over traditional therapy, including convenience and access. It also allows people to connect with therapists anywhere in California who may have different perspectives and expertise working with trauma than those available locally. Increasing your search to include your entire state will return more results with trained trauma therapists.
What can I expect from trauma treatment online?
Online sessions can provide a sense of relief if you feel uncomfortable discussing your experiences in person. Sessions are typically conducted through video chat so you can share your thoughts and feelings in a safe and confidential setting. Online therapy can be an effective way to address the effects trauma is having on your life. The symptoms of trauma are different for everyone. Your sessions will focus on your experience and what you need to heal.
I will work with you with empathy and respect. You can expect to be listened to and validated no matter what. I will never judge you. I will never push you to share anything. We will go at your pace. I will be gentle and understanding and help you manage disturbing thoughts and emotions better. We will work toward the outcome you want. My goal is to provide solution-focused, change-oriented, compassionate, and insightful therapy to support your recovery.
Online trauma treatment can help you get back to being yourself.
Getting Help to Heal from Your Trauma with Trauma Treatment Online
If you or a loved one is struggling to recover from a traumatic experience, online trauma therapy can help. Knowing when to ask for help and where to turn can be difficult. If you are experiencing prolonged suffering after trauma and it impacts your daily life, counseling can help you get back on track. When trauma impairs your ability to cope, working with a trauma therapist can help youincrease your emotional, behavioral and physical well-being. You can get back to being yourself.