Resolving Trauma Successfully

The approach to trauma therapy that I use is holistic and addresses the most common symptoms of unresolved trauma, including anxiety and depression. I utilize a model that addresses both the mind (thoughts and emotions related to trauma) and the body (helping you to discharge the accumulated stress caught in your nervous system).

There are two main categories of trauma

Shock Trauma:

• rape or sexual assault
• war or combat
• physical or emotional violence
• witnessing physical or emotional violence
• motor vehicle accidents
• dental or medical surgeries
• falls

Developmental Trauma

• birth trauma
• surgical procedures in the first years of life
• early childhood neglect and/or emotional abuse
• childhood physical abuse and/or witnessing violence
• childhood sexual abuse
• growing up in families with addiction
• being the victim of prejudice, discrimination or bullying

Many people suffer from both types of trauma. Developmental trauma can leave you vulnerable to be overwhelmed more easily by shock trauma.

Understanding Your Brain Processes in Traumatic Responses

Humans have built-in, unconscious responses to everyday threat, much like the rest of the animal kingdom. This instinct for survival can best be described as the fight, flight and freeze responses. It looks something like this:

1. When you face a perceived threat or a totally new event:
   Your “alarm” sounds in your brainstem, the oldest part of your brain, which sends a message of “danger”
2. Once this happens, your body tenses, your senses sharpen and you begin to orientate to and focus on the ‘danger’.
3. Next, a message goes directly to your emotional brain, which registers fear. Your heart-rate increases, your breathing becomes shallower and a tremendous amount of energy begins to mount in your large muscles, preparing you to run or fight. Most of this happens outside of your awareness. If you are overwhelmed by the traumatic event, you may freeze — becoming immobile and unable to protect yourself. All of this happens at lightning speed and is non–verbal in nature.
4. Lastly, your ‘reasoning’ is engaged in the front part of your brain, the neo-cortex, as you try to figure out a solution to your problem.

How Trauma is Resolved

If trauma counselling is to successfully resolve your trauma, it will need to happen at all three levels of your brain — brainstem (behavioral), limbic (emotional) system, and cortex (thinking). For this reason neither talk therapy nor body-centered therapy on its own can resolve the thwarted energy of fight, flight or freeze. Nor can it fully regulate your nervous system and bring it back to a state of balance and calm (harmonious resting baseline).

For this reason, I use a mind-body approach in trauma therapy, that both helps you “make sense” of your experience, while allowing the trauma energy in your body to dissipate. The results are amazing: less discomfort emotionally and physically, and more joy and balance.

Trauma counselling is beneficial when you have a lot of fight/flight energy in your nervous system. The symptoms that arise from this state include anxiety, panic attacks and bouts of depression. This pattern can fluctuate so that sometimes you experience the highs and sometimes you experience more of the lows. Some people are even misdiagnosed with psychiatric disorders because of these swings.

The thwarted flight/fight/freeze response is equivalent to driving your car with your foot on the gas and simultaneously pulling on the emergency brake.

If you drive your car this way, your engine would not last long.

Likewise, this wear and tear on your body is taxing to your whole system. This process can become chronic if you are in a constant state of ongoing danger, or do not have the skills to resolve your past trauma. Your nervous system will become “kindled”, and there will be a lot of heightened arousal with difficulty managing even small amounts of stress, such as being stuck in traffic or an unexpected change in your routine.

If this is so, then you may suffer the following debilitating effects of chronic trauma:

• Reduced immune functioning — leading to many chronic physical issues such as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, chronic pain, irritable bowel syndrome, Crone’s disease, to name a few
• Reduced capacity to learn — resulting in memory loss, confusion, and a sense of being disconnected from your experience in life
• Reduced ability to relax — your ‘engine’ is constantly running on full speed, and when you try to slow down, the anxiety you feel can seem unbearable — so you keep going until you fall down from exhaustion

You have the innate capacity to self regulate or heal from this state of “over-drive”. You can end your suffering in trauma therapy by learning the skills necessary to naturally release the blocked energy of trauma.

I Can Teach You the Skills Required in Order to Resolve Trauma

If you can identify any of the following then you may be a good candidate for trauma therapy:

• You repeatedly enter into traumatic situations or relationships
• Feel burned out and have difficulty pacing yourself or allowing yourself to fully rest or relax
• Are in a constant state of anxiety or feel depressed
• You turn to substances to self-soothe and suffer from alcoholism, drug abuse, gambling problems, sexual or internet addiction, food addiction or any other compulsive behavior
• You suffer from the symptoms of unresolved trauma, such as chronic pain, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, insomnia or autoimmune disorders

Two Cases in Point

A Residential School Survivor

When I was a graduate student I worked in an emergency ward of a busy downtown hospital. One evening I noticed a woman had been brought in and was waiting to be sent to the psychiatric ward. She had been to the Ward many times and was considered “crazy”, presenting with hallucinations about nuns who were chasing her. She was of First Nations ancestry and I went to speak with her about her ‘hallucinations’. She was in her early 60’s and was a chronic alcoholic and had been addicted to heroin most of her life. I approached her bedside and asked her if she was ever in a residential school. She said “Yes”. I asked her if it had been run by nuns and again she answered, “Yes”. I then very matter-of-factly asked her, “What did they do to you?”  She stared at me as though frozen in time. When she finally spoke she said that no one had ever asked her that question before. She hesitantly went on to tell me her story. She said that when she was 7 years old, she pulled on the chord of the nun’s dress and it came undone. The nun was furious and took her into a room, stripped her down, and made her soak a sheet in ice cold water and wrap herself in it. She then beat the little girl until she passed out. This horrific trauma at an early age set the stage for this woman’s lifelong struggle with alcohol and drugs and led to her chronic institutionalization and psychiatric medication. This woman was not “crazy”, nor was she hallucinating. She was ‘remembering’ her trauma. Had she been offered the opportunity to heal properly, she would not have shown up in the emergency ward that night, or the many nights before and after.

A Child War Survivor

When I worked as a Director of a northern community counselling centre, I was asked to see a woman in her late 50’s who had become increasingly ‘catatonic’. Her family were very concerned about how atypically she was withdrawing from all social contact and would not even speak any more. She came to see me with her husband, who initially spoke for her. I realized that they were Polish, and due to my Polish heritage, I wondered about war trauma. My first question to them was, “Where were you during WWII?”  Again, I got the look of shock at asking the unspeakable. I continued to focus on what she had experienced as a young girl of 5-9 years of age, in Poland during the Nazi occupation. She slowly began to speak with me and tell me of the bodies that hung from the stairwells, bloody and dead. How she tried to cope with the responsibility of selling enough coffee each day to feed her family — at 6 years of age! She began to allow herself to grieve the loss of a childhood she never had and to walk through the horror of those events. As she did, she came out of her self-imposed seclusion and went on to reconnect with her husband, her two sons and her community. Her psychiatric medication was reduced and she left counseling, to live a new and normal life.

Trauma Counselling Will Help You to Feel More Complete and Whole

The good news is that my method of both helping you make sense of your experience while working out the stress caught in your body memory will “quench” the kindled nervous system. That means we slowly and effectively will reduce the amount of stress you are carrying inside and replace it with a sense of your own resiliency (inner strength).

I am constantly amazed at the profound positive impact that this approach has on the people I work with.

As accumulated stress dissipates, it is replaced with joy, excitement and confidence. You ultimately open up to the life that is waiting to be lived.

Don’t hesitate any longer! Simply contact me for an initial telephone consultation so we can decide together whether counselling is a viable option for you at this time.

I look forward to hearing from you,

Sue Diamond Potts, M.A., R.C.C. Registered Clinical Counsellor, (#178)

Sue Diamond Potts Counselling Services
Phone: 604-682-1484 | Fax: 604-909-4690
Email: sue@suediamondpotts.com
830–470 Granville Street (@ Pender St.), Vancouver, B.C. V6C 1V5

Serving Vancouver, the Lower Mainland, North Vancouver,
West Vancouver, Sunshine Coast and Washington State.

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