When Simple Solutions Can’t Fix Complex Problems
The Misconception That We Cannot Overcome Our Trauma
Working in the field of mental health, you expect to work with clients who have experienced trauma at some point in their life, it’s part of the job. We were taught in graduate school that issues clients brought into session may bring to mind your own trauma or create an emotional experience from our firsthand experiences with trauma and the place we were in at the time we experienced it. All too often, when someone enters my office for Trauma Therapy and we discuss why they’re seeking treatment, they share their story with a certain tint of acceptance that where they are cannot be changed. Unaware that this acceptance confines them to a perceived reality that they are somehow inherently flawed, or even worse there is a belief that this is their identity, as opposed to an experience with long-lasting effects. They typically fail to see it as a symptom of a deeper, underlying issue that has been largely unaddressed at its core. This belief has changed their perspective of not only themselves but the world around them. They see themselves as a problem, as opposed to a person with a problem. This acceptance brings a certain awareness about the condition and how often misunderstood it is within our society.
Social Media and Trauma: Understanding the Limitations of Self-Help
The increased popularity and use of social media content in the area of mental health have over-simplified finding the true causation of a mood disorder, personality disorder, or other diagnoses that affect a growing percentage of the population. While being largely beneficial to the destigmatization of the topic of mental health, it has come at the expense of seeking professional insight, instead opting for the quick-fix of self-diagnosis, often leading to some form of self-medicating in an attempt to relieve symptoms. YouTube, Tik-Tok, Instagram, and others have become the opioid crisis for emotional pain in the mental health space (but that’s a topic for another blog post.) Initial conversations with clients often focus on the more obvious events and experiences, using buzzwords like “triggered” or “toxic” to describe their emotions and relationships. This has been the training they receive scrolling through their phones every day. However, after the initial identifying of the symptoms, the ride ends, quickly jumping to reels of puppies wrestling in the snow or some other ten-second clip, dashing the mind from further investigating a potentially deeper understanding of why they feel the ways they do, opting for the dismissive “it is what it is” mentality. Trauma, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder aren’t able to be fully fleshed out on the one-way street of watching a screen and frequently require the help of a Trauma Therapist.
So What is Trauma?
Trauma is generally defined as a deeply distressing or disturbing experience that can have lasting effects on the individual’s physical, mental, and emotional well-being, lasting briefly for some and a lifetime for others. Within the past decade, disorder-producing trauma has typically been categorized by mental health professionals as either Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or Complex-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD). Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is typically thought of as a single, painful event such as physical violence, sexual assault, an automobile accident, natural disaster, or war. Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is defined as chronic, long-term painful experiences that are a result of a repetitive pattern of offenses or a prolonged feeling of fear such as childhood abuse, witnessing the abuse of a parent, sexual assault, or near-death experiences.
Overlapping Symptomology
The difficulty with clearly defining and diagnosing C-PTSD is due to the large overlapping symptomology. Symptoms of both categories may include flashbacks, difficulty regulating emotions, hyperarousal, difficulty concentrating, low self-esteem, dissociative reactions, intrusive thoughts, and sleep disturbance. However, with C-PTSD, in addition to these symptoms, individuals may experience distorted perceptions of themselves and others causing difficulty establishing and maintaining relationships, low self-worth, feeling extreme guilt or shame, or a persistent sense of danger or threat.
C-PTSD Changes Our View of Ourselves and the World Around Us
What’s not realized or connected is how C-PTSD and its ongoing effects through the prolonged experience of these symptoms have changed how a person fundamentally views themselves and the world around them. In the confusion of repeated negative experiences, associated negative emotions, and knowing how to respond, the world becomes a tangled web of question marks and messy thought patterns, creating a chicken-and-egg-like debate inside the mind. “Did who I am cause this to happen or did these experiences make me who I am?” The answer is sometimes yes to both. The repeated experiential and response pattern can create a cycle that perpetuates “D. All of the above.” It takes time to find a place to start to be able to break the cycle and create new patterns that lead us to become someone more like we envisioned, happy, healthy, worthy, and hopeful. Trauma Therapy offers a safe space to accomplish the goal of breaking free from trauma.
Connect with a Trauma Therapist in North Richland Hills, TX Today and Begin Healing with Trauma Therapy Today
If you’ve made it this far, it’s obvious I’m not a Tik-Tocker or a YouTube star. Hopefully, it’s also clear that these disorders aren’t things that can be cured by a quick click on a screen or a trip to your local physician for a prescription and a pill to cure your troubles. These issues are rooted deeply within us, and bringing light and healing to them requires time and work to get to them. Then, we can make the plan to work through them to begin to see the person we really are, the person we want to become, and how these experiences can be used to make that person stronger and more fulfilled going forward. At Luxx Therapy, our Trauma Therapists work with you during your Trauma Therapy journey to do just that, bring light to your life! Follow the steps below to get started.
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OTHER MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES AVAILABLE AT LUXX THERAPY
In addition to Trauma Therapy, we offer a wide range of services at Luxx Therapy geared towards meeting you where you are in your mental health journey. We will walk the path to understanding and healing with you whether you are in need of Individual Counseling, Couples Counseling, or Family Therapy! Reach out to us today.