You've done everything you can to move past the trauma and nothing has worked yet. The days progressively feel harder and it's becoming difficult to regulate your feelings. Though you avoid things that remind you of what happened, the nightmares don't let you forget. The hope of feeling normal is fading and a little voice in the back of your head is starting to think I'll never be the same again.
Therapy won't help you become the old you but it can help you to become a new you. A more authentic, powerful and badass version of you.
Traumatic events produce exhaustion on many levels, emotionally, physiologically, and cognitively. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can occur when one has a difficult time recovering after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event. Triggers can bring back memories of the event, accompanied by intense emotional and physical reactions.
Anxiety is characterized by persistent and excessive worry around a number of different things. While it's normal to feel anxious from time to time, excessive, ongoing anxiety is much more difficult to live with. Such anxiety and worry is difficult to control and can interfere with one's day to day activities.
Also known as compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma affects a broad range of health care providers and first responders. Vicarious trauma can occur when one is continually exposed to extreme emotional circumstances, either directly or indirectly, in an attempt to treat or support one who has experienced trauma.
I've created this section with the intention of helping you determine if I'm the right fit for you and your journey. Therapy is deeply personal and for you to get the most out therapy you must feel confident in your therapist choice and how they practice.
I work from a mind-body approach. When you read the word lemon, I want you to notice what comes to mind. Perhaps you’re visualizing a lemon or recalling a time you tasted a lemon. As you think about the lemon, notice your bodily response. Maybe your face is grimacing or your mouth salivating. You have just experienced the relationship between your mind and body. Our mind and body are in constant communication. When we begin to listen we begin to heal.
"Your presence is your power. Be mindful of how your thoughts, words, and energy disconnect you from the Universe. And know the difference between what it feels like to be connected to the presence of your power versus what it feels like when you’re not."
-Gabrielle Bernstein, The Universe Has Your Back: Transform Fear to Faith
"Being human is not hard because you're doing it wrong. It's hard because you're doing it right. You will never change the fact that being human is hard, so you must change your idea that it was every supposed to be easy."
-Glennon Doyle, Untamed
"Guess what? When it comes right down to it, wherever you go, there you are. Whatever you wind up doing, that’s what you’ve wound up doing. Whatever you are thinking right now, that’s what’s on your mind. Whatever has happened to you, it has already happened.
The important question is, how are you going to handle it? In other words, 'Now what?'"
-Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are