Online Trauma Therapy in Texas
Are you experiencing trauma?
You walk around tense, so damn tense that when you lay down at night it feels like you ran a marathon. Your body feels tight and you are sore.
It is difficult for you to fully trust others. Yet, when someone asks you for help, you often say yes. This leaves you feel resentful & burnt out. You feel like you are constantly giving and giving but no one does the same for you.
The voice in your head is often mean and cruel. The words you speak to yourself, you would never say out loud to another human being.
You desperately want to leave your past in the past. But images, feelings, sensations, and memories pop up in your head at the worst times. They always throw you for a loop.
You have been trying to put your past behind you but it just keeps coming up again and again. No matter how much you try to forget about it, it always resurfaces.
Maybe you haven’t connected the dots yet on how your past is encroaching on your present.
You just know you have never felt safe in any relationship. You struggle to feel any emotions and walk around numb.
It’s like you are watching your life happen and not actually living it.
To learn more about the lasting impacts trauma can have, visit this site!
Let’s dispel some of the trauma myths. Trauma is not only about having intense flashbacks and nightmares. Also, trauma isn’t only for war veterans. Trauma is not ONE size fits all and is individualized. Two people can have the exact same experience and react completely different to it.
Dr. Bruce Perry is a renowned child psychiatrist in the world of trauma. He says that trauma isn’t a negative experience or event but rather the response to that experience or event.
Maybe when you think about traumatic experiences you think of sexual assault, abuse, or witnessing something horrific. While these are traumatic, there are so many more experiences that can be characterized as traumatic for a person.
What is Trauma?
What can Trauma look like?
The following events CAN lead to trauma but, again, it is more about the response to these events and the support or lack of support you had around you to help buffer the stress.
This is not an exhaustive list:
Emotional neglect: never really feeling seen or heard by parents or adults around you
Growing up in poverty
Having a parent who denies your reality
Having a parent who unconsciously “molds” or “shapes” you from a place of their own unhealed trauma
Witnessing domestic violence
Having a parent who struggled with mental illness, substance abuse or chronic illness
Having a parent with a lack of boundaries who overshares with you (ex. issues in their marriage, ect)
Moving a lot -especially abruptly and with little to no prep or communication or allowing of feelings to be had
Toxic co-parenting
Having a parent who focus heavily on physical appearance
Having a parent who often gives you the silent treatment when you did something they didn’t approve of
Parentification (being a little adult)
None of us escape childhood without some scars.
This is because parents are human and likely passed on patterns from their childhood. You have a few choices now.
First, you can deny these scars. Or, you could mask them with perfectionism and surpass your goals at work. You also have the option of staying busy. Another option is numbing with your “drug” of choice.
Or, you can choose to acknowledge those scars and choose to do things differently. If you are feeling stuck, my job is to sit with you in that “stuckness.” I’ll help walk with you towards hope & towards a different path.
In my humble opinion, “survivor” doesn’t quite cut it for me as a good word to describe someone who has experienced trauma. I prefer the term WARRIORS.
“Whether that war was your childhood, later on in life, or now. You have survived but at what cost.”
Online Trauma Therapy can help
I am not going to lie to you, trauma therapy is tough. Healing hurts.
You know the saying there is no way around, only through. This is the work of trauma treatment.
We have to focus on the past to help you start living in the present. I can completely understand why people are hesitant and resistant to open Pandora’s box.
I hear things like “that is in the past, why would I want to go back there” or “the past is in the past, let’s just keep it there” or my personal favorite, “so my parents were a little mean, none of that affects me now”.
It may affect you more than you know. Know that not everyone has to go back into their past in order to move forward. The only focus to focus on the past is if it is intruding on how you live your life in the present.
If you are unsure if this is you, feel free to set up an initial consultation with me. We can talk things through and figure it out together.
Before we really delve into working through your past trauma, I want to make sure you are safe to proceed. I will never ever throw you into the deep end without a life jacket.
This doesn’t mean it won’t be hard to talk about the trauma or feel uncomfortable. But I want to make sure you can safely stay in the room with me mentally. I also want you to be able to tolerate the strong emotions of thinking about and talking about your trauma without feeling retraumatized. This is my number one priority.
If you are not able to do that (which most aren’t at first) we will focus on building up that lifejacket first.
Be at peace and enjoy their life. You will be able to sleep, be in healthy relationships, and cope with stress in a way that feels good to you.
No longer be afraid to be vulnerable. Do you love it? No. Me neither. But you know it is the path of all good things in life: love, joy, connection. You are vulnerable knowing there isn’t any guarantees in life but knowing you can handle all things that come your way.
Understand their nervous system, learn their triggers, know which survival strategies (freeze, flight, flight, fawn) they are most likely to use based on the situation.
Learn how to work through strong emotions without feeling like an ass afterwards because you yelled at the Starbuck barista when you were really angry at your partner.
Be able to notice your warning signs of when you are being triggered and learn how to tell the brain “it’s okay, I am safe, there is no need to run, fight, or freeze.”
Get in touch with your body and feel connected to it. Very woohoo, I know but so important. You will be able to notice the first inkling when something is off because your body is telling you and you are paying attention and know and understand your body’s messages.
Begin to trust others. That you have choices and you can set healthy boundaries with others and choose whom you trust.
Learn how to reason with your thoughts and not take them as absolute truth 100% of the time.
I help GenZ & Millennials:
Maybe all seems lost except for one single word. Hope.
Somehow, someway you have held on to this, clung to it even. You know how I know this because you are still here.
You can heal and shift those patterns that no longer serve you.
Imagine living a life where you feel safe in your own body and eventually in relationships. Where you enjoy the happy moments in your life instead of being hijacked by this sense of fear that it won’t last. Where you actually feel love and embrace being loved.
You sleep nightmare free. You are able to look yourself in the mirror and see someone who is worthy of love and belonging. Your inner voice is kind and something you can depend on. You are living not just surviving.
A life with hopes, dreams, happiness, trust, vulnerability, bravery, courage, and compassion.