Trauma changes us.

• You experienced injustice, and now you just can’t get seem to get over it.

• You had a panic attack, and now you are frightened of chest pressure.

• You had a nightmare, and now you don’t want nighttime to come.

• You don’t feel love when you look at your partner or children, and now you avoid them.

• You feel sad when you should feel happy. You are more reactive and edgy. You feel panicky and anxious all the time but also depressed and exhausted.

• Your body is betraying you. You can’t control what it is thinking or feeling. The reactions are extreme or misplaced. You don’t fit in anymore. You can’t do what you used to anymore. People are noticing.

What is happening? How do we make it stop?

Traumas overwhelm our coping skills, shatters our previous beliefs, and alter our lives. During or after the trauma, you might have done or experienced things that don’t make sense, you feel shitty about, or that continue to haunt you. 

Maybe you screamed. Or fought back. Maybe you ran. Maybe you didn’t, or couldn't. Maybe you were scared, cried, paralyzed. Your body responded in a way that now embarrasses or even disgusts you. Maybe you don’t remember at all. Maybe you're enraged.

Nightmares, hypervigilance, intrusive memories, sleep disruption, social detachment, and panic/arousal sensations are just an example of symptoms that can develop afterward. There are more, and they can cluster into different presentations. Yours may not look and feel like someone else’s, and it may change over time.

You are stuck in a body that won’t move forward and a mind that won’t let you forget. Extraordinary events lead to extraordinary reactions, and extraordinary reactions lead to extraordinary perceptions.

You are damaged. A burden. Unlovable. Worthless. Why can’t you just get over it? What is wrong with you? You’re a magnet for abuse. You’re better off alone. You can’t really trust other people anyway. What is the point?

Scary thoughts create scary feelings. You may feel guilty, humiliated, angry, disgusted, resentful, ashamed about what you went through, and how it continue to affects you.

Here we go again on the emotional rollercoaster….

In the most simplistic terms, our job on this planet is to stay alive. Since you are reading this, *high five*. Our body’s job is to take in stimuli, but our mind’s job is to make sense of those stimuli. This is where we can get stuck.

Bodies are fluent in sensation; minds are fluent in words. They speak different languages.

They both want to protect us. They both want to keep us alive. In fact, they went through this trauma with you, they are scared too, and they are doing their best to keep that from ever happening to you again.

Symptoms are signals. They are scary, but they are not inherently dangerous.

I know – right now they are. But they are not trying to be.

We need to learn the language. What makes language powerful is not just the words themselves but the emotions behind them. Both are important. Words and emotion. Mind and body.

The stories we tell ourselves about what we survived, why we survived – and how we survived – are important.

No judgment for however you arrive to my office – you have arrived. No judgment what you have done to survive, what you are still doing to survive – you have survived.

We start there. That has served you, and it will continue to serve you.

We only work to change what is no longer serving you. Because you are in a different place now. You can no longer be the person who didn’t go through that. We are not trying to return to pre-trauma you – we are trying to find post-trauma you.

We are honoring the body and mind that brought you this far, however they did so. And we honor that they have led you here, on a search for someone who can help you.