TRAUMA & RESILIENCE

YOU ARE NOT YOUR TRAUMA

The experience of trauma is so intense that everything may appear broken for ever. That is not the case.

Trauma can lead to feelings of intense exposure and vulnerability. You may be captured in a loop of re-experiencing the trauma as if it were recurring in the present. You may feel entirely removed from life and unable to relate and connect to the people around you. You may feel that life is shut down. Your feelings may become explosive. This experience may have come to dominate your life. It can leave you feeling fractured, alone, and isolated. But you are not powerless.

Treating trauma is not about “getting over it” or “being with it” but rather about having the resources to regulate your experience and create a safe space to recover and build resilience. You will be able to regulate the embodied experience that you had in the past and avoid reliving the trauma.

Working with a counselor specialized in trauma therapy will help you to feel less exposed to uncontrollable thoughts and emotions. You are not powerless and trauma-informed psychotherapy will support you in your process of recovery. Together we will develop the tools and techniques that you need to regain your sense of safety, integrity, and agency. We will work towards recovering your self-esteem and self- confidence. You will be able to reconnect with yourself and the people around you, feel stronger, and focus on how you want to move forward in life.

There will be moments where you will have to protect yourself, to face your experience, to express it and to advocate for yourself. Afterwards, you will be able to acknowledge that the traumatic event occurred, but that it is something that is distinct from yourself and that you are no longer “attached” to the trauma. You will have developed your inner strengths and resources so that when there is a trigger you will not feel weak or overwhelmed, nor will you exhaust yourself fighting against it or find yourself trapped in a vicious, turbulent black hole of experiences.

You have the power to change your relation to trauma.