How trauma manifests is vastly different based on the event, the individual response, and the time elapsed. The two things it always has in common are: no one deserves it, and it can have widespread negative effects on your life.
“Trauma creates changes you don’t choose. Healing is about creating change you do choose.” – Michelle Rosenthal
When trauma starts affecting your job, sleep, social life, and so much more, it can feel like healing is impossible. This is a real, valid feeling, but that doesn’t make it true. The pain, anger, anxiety, depression, and everything else you may be feeling is very much real. But they don’t have to be forever. Healing is possible.
Thriveworks Columbus trauma therapy understands that it takes strength just to read this and reach out. Healing can be an exhausting, uphill battle. But you have already proven you have the strength to get back to the peaceful, fulfilling life you deserve.
What Are Some Symptoms of Trauma?
The brain can process millions of pieces of information every second. It is sensitive enough to form the picture of the world as we know it: full of emotions, memories, and sensation. But that beauty is also what makes trauma so harmful.
Traumatic events can destroy connections in the brain and build new ones, reprograming us. After a trauma, people might find themselves acting like they’re always in danger even when they aren’t. It can feel like your own mind can’t be trusted!
With such a sensitive brain, can we even hope in healing? Absolutely! If trauma can mold the brain, we can mold it back. The brain’s ability to heal has been coined neuroplasticity by researchers. It turns out our brain is more of a moldable plastic than hard stone.
There’s not a twenty-question test or brain scan to diagnosis a trauma. Thriveworks Columbus meets you where you’re at, so no matter your levels of impairment or traumatic event, we would love to meet you and talk with you through next steps.
Some common symptoms of people struggling with a trauma include:
- Recurrent, painful dreams
- Flashbacks
- Emotional numbness
- Jittery/always on edge
- Difficulty concentrating
- Hesitancy to open up to other people, even those you trusted before the trauma
- Persistent fear, horror, anger, guilt, or shame
- Diminished interest in activities you previously enjoy
- Difficulty feeling positive emotions
- A general feeling of detachment from the world or yourself
- Continuous feeling of discomfort in stomach and gut
What compounds the pain of a trauma is how isolating it can feel. Even the people who experienced the same exact event will respond differently. It can feel like you’re the only person in the world who feels like you do. That’s probably true, but it doesn’t mean you have to heal alone. Thriveworks Columbus is here to walk with you and guide you toward health and growth.
How Can We Help?
Thriveworks Columbus has spent years exploring the human psyche and learning the best techniques to stimulate growth and healing, but your individuality will always be the foremost factor in our sessions. Our grief counselors strive to walk beside you as you heal, not tell you what to do. Only you command yourself, we just might point some light at the darker areas of your life.
In a Thriveworks Columbus counseling session, we might use:
- Education on the symptoms of trauma.
- Effective coping skills when symptoms do flare up (things like relaxation exercises, anger-management techniques and guided imagery).
- Guidance on how to better manage sleep, exercise and diet—which may have been severely impacted by the traumatic event and are vital in the healing process.
- Identify and address any guilt, self-blame or other negative emotions surrounding what happened. The trauma is not your fault.
- Walk through the lingering fear and anxiety. It can be painful, but the unaddressed emotions play a large part in the negative aftermath of a trauma.
- Address any comorbid struggles such as anxiety or depression.
Coping with a trauma has a lot of pieces, and it can be time consuming and exhausting. You are strong enough to get back to that life you had before and create the one you always dreamed of. Your present does not have to belong to your past.
LGBTQIA+, Coping Skills, Self Esteem, Stress, Women’s Issues, +8 more 
