What is trauma therapy?

[grit]

I’d try trauma therapy. That kind of talk therapy that you’re doing only succeeds in letting...

for the risk of sounding really sounding stupid, what is trauma therapy? I read and read and I simply do not get. No one in my family has ever been to therapy. It is like you know those stories you hear like I am the first in college in my family. I am the first in therapy in my family but I really would like less talk and more body/breathing. My trauma is so early that I do not have verbal access directly.

What is trauma therapy exactly? Can you please EveHarrington, elaborate?

Thanks

 

[Skywatcher]

This question actually has a lot more to it than I realized when I started to write an answer. Mostly, I think that the “trauma therapist” has had additional training in the sensitivity of dealing with those of us who have been deeply wounded by bad things happening to us? My first T wasn’t a trauma therapist and she seemed to think that I had the power to just turn off the past and move on. She made everything I was going through worse in a way. My current T is a trauma therapist and explained to me about how the brain works and that I really can’t just will flashbacks to not happen. That we have to sort of “reset” my brain. She also has worked a lot on building a sense of me feeling safe and take things at a pace that I can handle. In the beginning, she put a lot of focus on teaching me tools in grounding and breathing in addition to helping me to set up support outside of sessions. The first T gave me no tools, even when I asked.

 

[Suzetig]

Trauma therapy encompasses a range of different therapies which are shown to be effective in PTSD and therapists who have a specialism in trauma.

For example trauma focussed CBT, DBT, Somatic experiencing, EMDR, IFS all have varying evidence base for supporting recovery from PTSD. Very often trauma therapies are manualised in that they have a clear pattern or model for delivery which is consistently applied across Client groups.

Then you have trauma therapists who may practice in a more relational way who have a specialism in trauma. So psychodynamic or rogerian/humanistic therapies in which the therapeutic relationship is the therapy (rather than being the vehicle by which the “therapy” is delivered as is the case in CBT, DBT etc). Both can be effective in treating traumatised clients - relational therapy is particularly recommended for clients who have experienced significant childhood trauma.

In any event, I would look for a therapist who had extensive experience of working with trauma in a variety of settings and had some form of further training or study in trauma.