Trauma Counseling Services

Trauma Counseling Services, and information about PTSD

You may be wondering about whether you have PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and have been reading about symptoms, treatment, and healing.  The thing is, the way each of us responds to potentially traumatic situations can be very different.

What one person may consider to be traumatic can have little impact on another.  There is always a reason for when a person is traumatized.  You are having a normal reaction, to an abnormal situation.

Trauma counseling can help you know why a traumatic experience has been so difficult for you.  It also helps you break the hold that trauma has on you forever.

Some of the complicated emotions and reactions you may experience: 

• Crying for “no reason”
• Being easily startled, or you have a bigger reaction than others usually do when startled
• Memories of a difficult or traumatic event come to you suddenly and overwhelm you, and it might even feel like it is happening right in that moment (flashbacks)
• Nightmares
• Too much sleep, or not enough sleep
• Losing weight, or gaining weight
• Trouble concentrating
• Short term memory problems
• Sudden panic, or anger – sometimes you can tell what triggered it and sometimes you aren’t sure

These can be concerning!  However, you can change this.  We can help.

Another difficult thing can be how people respond to you when you talk about what happened to you.   You might hear things like, “You should be over it by now,” or similar statements.  People may not understand why you react so strongly to situations that trigger awful memories.  We do, and we can help you make those reactions stop.

Sometimes, people minimize things that have happened to them, feeling very much that “it doesn’t affect me.”  It may not, that’s for sure.  We understand that there are factors such as resilience and strong support systems that leave a person with less negative effects from a difficult experience.  But sometimes, suppressing how much an event affected you can cause unexplained emotional effects such as depression, anxiety, inability to manage stress, obsessive-compulsive traits, and even physical ailments as well.  

If you think it is possible that some traumatic experiences from your past are having a negative impact on you now, please get in touch with us.  We are happy to talk about what is going on and help you figure out the best way to go forward.  You can reach us at the telephone number or email address above, or use the website to contact us. 

In trauma counseling, to heal from a traumatic experience (or several traumatic experiences), you are likely to work on:

• Building healthy and effective coping skills to manage day-to-day anxiety, depression, stress, and triggers that bring on intense emotions associated with the trauma
• Understanding the nature of trauma, and trauma healing, to better understand your own experience
• Understanding how your own beliefs relate to your experience and your healing
• Gaining insight into how the trauma has affected you and the meaning it carries for you
• Understanding the different ways that PTSD might affect you and how to overcome it, if this diagnosis fits your situation

There are a few authors you may check into who have written helpful material on trauma healing.  They are Peter Levine, and Bessel van der Kolk.  In particular, Peter Levine has a CD set for healing trauma that has been extremely helpful to many.  

Counseling for trauma can help you to restore peace and balance in your life, and reduce the lingering effects of a past traumatic experience.

You may be helped by traditional talk therapy, and you may also be interested in utilizing EMDR (Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy for this as well. Three of our counselors are trained in EMDR and can help you with this fast and effective method of treatment, if you choose to try it. 

At our Littleton/Ken Caryl location, Jodi Hardesty and Kelly Coté both work with healing trauma, and are trained in different types of trauma counseling, including EMDR therapy.  This location is also close to Ken Caryl, Lakewood, Columbine Valley, Morrison, Roxborough, and Highlands Ranch.