Trauma can come in different forms. Sometimes, it can even cause post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition where someone has intense and disturbing thoughts related to the traumatic experience. These thoughts can be so debilitating that they require professional help so that you can process and move forward.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is one of the most widely used therapies for trauma. It is a practical and goal-oriented approach.
After someone experiences trauma, it’s common to develop unhelpful thinking patterns that can fuel depression and anxiety. When you’re consumed with these negative thoughts, moving forward can be very difficult.
During CBT, you’ll learn how to break the cycle of negative thoughts. This therapy works by helping you recognise negative or distorted thinking patterns. Your therapist will then help challenge those thoughts and replace them with more balanced beliefs. As a result, you’ll be able to develop healthier coping strategies and problem-solving skills that create a space for you to respond more calmly.
CBT also helps you build awareness. It digs deeper into your situation so you can better understand how your trauma has shaped your reactions. This kind of therapy allows you to have more control so that you don’t just act on impulse or react based on ingrained trauma responses but instead make conscious and informed choices.
Additionally, CBT can teach you practical skills that you can use outside of therapy. It’s a form of therapy that can help you manage triggers and set personal boundaries for a more stable life.
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) is a specialised form of talk therapy that can help you make sense of traumatic experiences and reduce their negative impact on your well-being. It helps people struggling with PTSD and other types of trauma because it’s based on the idea that trauma can shake your beliefs.
The shaken beliefs that stem from trauma create “stuck points.” These painful thoughts can take over your mind and make you feel guilty or shameful about the trauma that’s not even your fault. As such, CPT therapists will help you understand what happened and rebuild healthier beliefs about yourself and the world.
One of the main benefits of CPT is reduced PTSD symptoms. You can expect fewer distressing thoughts associated with your traumatic experience. This kind of therapy also decreases self-blame and helps improve self-worth. As a result, you can feel more grounded in daily life.
While CBT and CPT share some similarities, the main difference is that CPT is more focused on trauma. This therapy focuses more on the impact of your trauma on your core beliefs about yourself, others, and the world. On the other hand, CBT is a more widely used type of therapy for other mental health disorders, such as anxiety and depression.
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR)
While it’s helpful to talk about a traumatic event to process it, some may find doing so a little too distressing. It can make others feel like they’re reliving the event and the trauma. In this situation, it might be helpful to explore EMDR as an option. EMDR was originally developed in the late 1980s, but it’s now used worldwide to help people recover from different kinds of trauma.
This type of therapy stands out from traditional talk therapies because it doesn’t require you to describe your trauma in detail. Instead, EMDR uses bilateral stimulation to stimulate both sides of the brain. Eye movements are the most common type of bilateral stimulation used during EMDR, but therapists also use taps and sounds.
Each EMDR session will follow a structured 8-phase approach that includes:
- History-taking and treatment planning
- Preparation and grounding techniques
- Assessment of the traumatic memory
- Desensitisation using bilateral stimulation
- Installation of positive beliefs
- Body scan for residual tension or distress
- Closure and self-soothing
- Re-evaluation in later sessions
In addition to not having to go into every detail of the traumatic event, another benefit of EMDR is that it may offer faster results. Some clients notice major progress in just a few sessions with EMDR.
Somatic Therapy
Somatic therapy is a body-centred therapy that helps you tune in to what your body is trying to say. Past trauma can oftentimes get stored in the body, but somatic therapy helps increase awareness of physical sensations and responses. For trauma, these symptoms may often include a tight chest, a racing heart, or clenched jaws.
This type of therapy can help you identify where trauma is held in the body. Somatic therapy doesn’t only focus on what happened during your trauma. It also asks what happens in your body when you think about the experience.
Somatic therapy uses different approaches to help you feel more in tune with your body. One of these approaches is grounding exercises. Feeling your feet on the floor or noticing your breath can help you stay present. You may also do some body scans, where you’ll be asked to identify or notice where you’re holding tension when you think about a traumatic memory.
A benefit of using somatic therapy for trauma is the greater connection to your body. Since many trauma survivors feel disconnected from their bodies, somatic work can help rebuild the mind-body connection in a safe and supportive setting. The symptoms of PTSD can also feel less overwhelming after doing somatic work.
Exposure Therapy
People who have experienced trauma often avoid any places, people, or sensations that remind them of the event. While this behaviour provides instant relief, it can often make things worse. With exposure therapy, you’ll slowly face the threats to reclaim your sense of safety.
Exposure therapy is based on the thought that gradually facing your fear without avoiding it helps your brain learn that those triggers are no longer dangerous. However, it’s important to remember that this therapy should be done gradually and respectfully. This helps make facing your fears less overwhelming.
This kind of therapy involves different types of exposure:
- Imaginal Exposure: Mentally revisiting the traumatic memory to help reduce its emotional intensity.
- In Vivo Exposure: Directly facing real-life situations that you’ve been avoiding.
- Interoceptive Exposure: Targets physical situations, such as a racing heart or dizziness, that may trigger panic.
Exposure therapy brings a lot of advantages for those who struggle with PTSD. For instance, it reduces avoidance behaviours related to trauma. This can help you reconnect with aspects of your life that you’ve probably steered clear of before. These small steps towards facing your fears also instil strength and confidence, which help you feel more in control of your life.
Prolonged Exposure Therapy
Another therapy that can help those dealing with trauma is prolonged exposure therapy. While exposure therapy works for a broad scope of fears and anxieties, prolonged exposure therapy focuses explicitly on trauma-related memories, feelings, and situations. As such, many therapists use this therapy for PTSD symptoms.
Prolonged exposure therapy helps you desensitise your fear responses through a step-by-step process. Like exposure therapy, this process happens gradually and must be done with the support of a trained therapist. It helps you regain a sense of control and improve emotional processing.
This kind of therapy follows a certain structure. First, you learn about trauma and how prolonged exposure therapy works. Then, you engage in different types of exposure, and you may even practise outside sessions. The final sessions consist of reviewing your progress and what’s changed during the treatment.
Psychodynamic Therapy
Sometimes, trauma victims don’t exhibit the usual symptoms associated with trauma, such as vivid flashbacks or nightmares. Instead, the impact becomes less obvious. Trauma symptoms may show up as chronic self-doubt, trouble forming relationships, or repeating unhealthy patterns. One therapy to address these less obvious symptoms is psychodynamic therapy.
During psychodynamic therapy, you can freely discuss your thoughts, memories, relationships, feelings, and more. By talking about these different facets, your therapist can slowly explore the underlying emotional patterns and internal conflicts that may be rooted in past trauma.
Since psychodynamic therapy doesn’t automatically “reveal” the traumatic memory, it’s a much slower process than other types of therapy used for trauma. However, the slow unfolding of these root causes can help develop self-awareness and emotional growth. It’s also an approach that supports long-term change, not just symptom relief.
Group Therapy
Many people who experience trauma feel like nobody understands what they’re going through, which can make the experience more isolating. Constantly experiencing isolation due to trauma can lead to feelings of depression and even cause other mental health issues to develop.
Group therapy can help address the isolation that usually comes with experiencing trauma. During group therapy, a small group of people meet with a trained therapist to work through trauma-related experiences together. The therapist will facilitate the therapy session to help ensure emotional safety and structure.
Participating in group therapy can help you feel more supported and understood. Since everyone in the group has experienced some form of trauma, it makes you feel less isolated about your experience. Hearing others describe similar experiences can help you realise your feelings and reactions are valid.
Through group therapy, you also create a sense of connection and belonging. Regular participation in group therapy also helps you learn from others. You gain insight from listening to others navigate their emotions and healing processes.
Family Therapy
Trauma can also affect your loved ones, especially your family. How you deal with trauma can have an impact on others, and this is where family therapy comes in. It’s a way to come together and heal because instead of focusing only on the individual, this therapy looks at the family as a system.
When members of the family experience trauma, it can lead to frequent disagreements and emotional disconnection. Oftentimes, it also becomes difficult to discuss the trauma because of its emotional weight.
During family therapy for trauma, family members will have a neutral space for everyone to share their experiences and feelings. It’s a therapy that teaches how to reduce blame and resentment since it encourages members to understand each other’s perspectives.
Play Therapy
Play therapy is an approach used for children who experience trauma. Unlike adolescents and adults, children don’t have the verbal capacity to express their pain and fears. This makes treatment a little bit more complex. However, play therapy gives children a safe space to process their experiences.
Children can explore and make sense of difficult emotions during play therapy by using play as their language. Rather than talking about the trauma, therapists use toys, figurines, art materials, imaginative games, and more to communicate.
This kind of therapy meets children where they are, emotionally and developmentally. A child therapist will let the child lead and allow certain themes to emerge naturally while the child plays with different toys. They will also observe play patterns to understand the child’s inner world better.
Art Therapy
Children aren’t the only ones who may have a difficult time verbally expressing their trauma. Adults can also encounter the same problem, making it even more difficult to receive treatment. With art therapy, however, people struggling with trauma can engage in a gentle and creative approach to express their thoughts.
Art therapy is a form of psychotherapy that uses creative expressions to explore trauma emotionally. A qualified art therapist will guide you throughout the process in a safe environment. It’s also important to remember that no art skills are needed for this therapy since the main focus is on what you’re expressing.
This therapy helps with trauma because it accesses non-verbal memories. For instance, traumatic memories from childhood or deeply repressed traumatic memories might be impossible to explain in words. Art therapy and other kinds of holistic therapy help create a bridge between these inaccessible memories and conscious awareness for healing.
What Type of Trauma Therapy Is Right for Me?
With so many kinds of trauma therapies out there, it can be overwhelming to decide on one that will truly work for you. However, by asking the right questions, you can narrow your options to decide which will help you heal and recover.
For instance, asking yourself whether you’re ready to talk about trauma can help you make the decision. Reflecting on the types of therapy you’ve had before, along with which ones worked and which didn’t, can help you better explore your options.
If you’re still unsure which approach is best for your situation, talking to a mental health professional will always help. They can assess your needs and overall situation and recommend the most suitable options.
Do I Need Trauma Treatment?
Oftentimes, if you’re asking yourself whether or not you need trauma treatment, it is already a sign that you need some form of intervention. It shows that some part of you already feels like something isn’t right.
Here are some common signs that may indicate whether or not you need trauma therapy:
- Avoiding people, places, or situations that remind you of trauma.
- Engaging in risky behaviours or substance abuse to cope with trauma.
- Withdrawing or isolating yourself from friends or family.
- Struggling to form relationships.
- Constantly feeling anxious or on edge
- Sudden mood swings.
- Easily feeling emotionally triggered.
- Chronic tension and unexplained pain.
- Feeling disconnected from your body (dissociation).
- Difficulty trusting others.
It doesn’t matter how “small” you feel your trauma is. At the end of the day, if something hurts you or leaves you feeling unsafe, it’s worth addressing.
Heal Your Trauma with The Orchid
Trauma can often change how you approach life and how you build relationships with others. It’s important to find the right treatment that addresses your situation. This way, you can slowly heal from what’s holding you back.
At Orchid, we have a team of experts who can help you approach and heal your trauma. Our team uses different kinds of trauma-focused treatments to help you recover and live a more meaningful life. Reach out to us today to learn more.
