In the aftermath of certain traumas, you may feel a decreased sense of safety. Having been a victim of violence or abuse can rob you of your feelings of security. Not feeling safe and secure can lead to disruption of social activity and acting within social norms, even with those you have previously been acquainted with. These types of trauma can trigger feelings of loneliness.
No matter how well you can repress your memories, they will find a way to work themselves out and interfere in some fashion. Over time, they can increase your likelihood of developing various illnesses and struggles. You may have to come face-to-face with those memories that you’ve repressed, but healing is on the other side.
This dichotomy shows up in our adult relationships in several ways. Often we can feel the strong desire and need for relating while still carrying the need for keeping oneself safe. It can be extremely confusing to ourselves and others. We want to draw close but push others away or create space and safety sometimes without even knowing it. Serving Boulder, Longmont, Denver.
If you’ve been watching the scenes coming out of Turkey and Syria you’ve probably been affected. Maybe you are even experiencing vicarious trauma. Vicarious trauma happens when you feel emotional pain, terror, fear and helplessness from exposure to others peoples’ trauma. For instance, imagining what it’s like to be stuck under rubble from the earthquake, losing your entire family or becoming homeless.
When it comes to trauma, no single person is immune. However, women are twice as likely to experience some type of traumatic event than men. With medical trauma, that scale can be tipped even a little further. Medical trauma is considered a physiological or psychological response to some negative, likely traumatic, experience within a medical setting.
The way EMDR and many other therapies now conceptualize trauma is with a much broader scope than traditionally thought. It isn’t just limited veterans who have seen combat or people who were abused as children - though those experiences certainly qualify as trauma and often result in a PTSD diagnosis.
Do you believe that we are all made of different parts? After all, not everyone is all bad or all good. Human beings have a combination of helpful and harmful amounts of themselves. Unfortunately, trauma has a way of bringing out the worst in us. INTERNAL FAMILY SYSTEMS (IFS) is a type of therapy that helps you discover who you are and bring all of these parts together. The three main parts include: Exiles, Managers and Firefighters.
Unfortunately, when two people have a traumatic history in a relationship, it can create something called “trauma bonding.” It can even happen in your relationships with family members or friends. It’s easy for abusers to shift the perspective of their victims, often using gaslighting techniques. They can get you to change the way you view what happened, or what continues to happen. Instead of recognizing that you’re the victim, they can end up making you feel like you’re the one to blame.
The emotional scars that you are carrying from relationship trauma can be hard to heal from. If you have been betrayed once, you are also expecting future betrayals. You may run away from relationships with people who care about you for fear of getting hurt again. But it is important to know that you can heal no matter how long it takes. That not everyone in the world is bad for you.
Can trauma occur if something terrible has happened to someone else? This is called vicarious trauma. If you see or hear stories of people going through tragedies it can cause a different perspective of the world you once thought was safe. You feel various emotions, from anxiety to guilt, hopelessness, or numbness. Serving Boulder, Longmont, Denver.
