9 Things Your Trauma Therapist Wants You to Know
- It’s possible to heal. There may always be a scar but there isn’t always a pain.
- If you’re experiencing it, then other people do too. You are not alone.
- Shame often develops after trauma. It is an emotion – the feeling or sense of being “bad”. Shame can feel intense but that doesn’t make it “true” any more than any other emotion like happiness, sadness, or anger are “true”.
- There’s not really a difference between our mind and our body. Emotions are sensations; Thoughts are expressed through our bodies; The way we move and hold ourselves influences how we feel. When trauma happens to our bodies it has also happened to our minds. When trauma happens to our mind it has also happened to our body.
- Racism, sexism, ableism, fatphobia, transphobia, and oppression are forms of trauma.
- Trauma is subjective. Something is traumatic when it overwhelms your ability to cope with it in the present moment.
- Therapy can be harmful when you don’t work with someone with adequate training & expertise.
- Your symptoms (anxiety, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, struggles with intimacy, irritability, etc) can be resolved. You don’t have to spend your life just “coping”.
- Trauma therapy may be hard but it is so, so, so worth it! Dealing with things now means you not to have to deal with them later.