Trauma Therapy in Houston, TX, and NC

Trauma is not an event itself but rather the way a person experiences and responds emotionally to an event. Trauma doesn’t have to be life-threatening and can include experiences that are painful, disturbing, or overwhelming. Trauma can occur in response to something a person experiences personally or witnesses happening to others (and sometimes even only hears about). It can be a single event or a series of similar events, and what is traumatic for one person may not be experienced as traumatic for someone else.

It is possible to be struggling with unresolved trauma and not even know it. In fact, it is not unusual for people to discount their experiences as “not big enough” or “not serious enough” to qualify as trauma. A reasonable rule-of-thumb is that if it felt traumatic and/or is having lasting negative effects, it was traumatic. Also, if you struggle with chronic anxiety, depression, or stress, it is likely that you are struggling with unresolved underlying trauma.

Some examples of events that may be traumatizing include:

•Unmet developmental needs during a critical period

•Parental loss in childhood

•Hateful or hurtful behavior by caregivers

•Physical, emotional, and sexual abuse

•Unpredictable or scary childhood

•Being raised by impaired or depressed caregivers

•Emotional neglect in childhood

•Traumatic labor and deliver

•Rejection by family when ‘coming out’

•Scary or life-threatening medical or dental procedures

•Sudden death of someone close to you

•Living in a dangerous environment

•A life-threatening illness

•Life-threatening events

•Being bullied

•Violence within close relationships / “domestic violence”

•Non-consensual sexual experiences

•Sexual harassment

•Serious accidents

•Witnessing violence

•Military combat

•Witnessing a suicide, abuse, or neglect

•Death or suicide of a loved one

•Social injustices, racism or other discrimination

•Natural disasters

•Terrorism

•Physical assault

•Auto accidents

•Death of a loved pet

•Discovering a partner’s infidelity

•A humiliating experience

•Work-related disturbing events (e.g., first responders, medical professionals, witnessing or experience life-threatening events at work)

•Vicarious trauma in helping professionals

Trauma results from painful, overwhelming, disturbing, or distressing experiences. There is no ‘bar’ an event must reach in order to qualify as trauma. Rather, what matters is your subjective emotional experience of and response to the event. The effects of trauma can show up in many different ways such as:

•Chronic stress, anger, anxiety, and depression

•Upsetting memories and emotions that won’t go away

•Strong emotional and physical reactions to things that remind you of what happened

•Trying to avoid thinking or talking about what happened

•Avoiding people, places, and situations that feel unsafe or remind you of what happened

•Trying to stay busy to avoid the memories or reminders of what happened

•Inability to do the things you want to do because of fear, anxiety, or panic

•Nightmares or flashbacks tied to a painful experience

•Being unable to relax or in a constant state of alertness

•Problems getting to sleep or staying sleeping

•Reactions to events that are out-of-proportion to the event

•Feeling numb or disconnected from yourself or what’s happening around you

•Use of substances or risky behaviors to ‘numb the pain’

•Lack of interest in things you previously enjoyed

•Thinking no one understands and having difficulties trusting others

•Withdrawing or feeling detached from family and friends

•Intense guilt or shame

•Frequent fatigue, headaches, gastro-intestinal symptoms, or body pain without a known medical cause

If you see yourself in the list above and things aren’t getting better, please seek professional assistance. There are effective therapies that can help. Dr. Robinson is a trauma specialist and provides trauma therapy in Asheville as well as throughout NC and TX.

The short answer is ‘it depends.’ Length of treatment varies widely and will depend upon a client’s unique history, needs, and goals. At times, recovery can occur within a few sessions (e.g., single incident car accident in adulthood) but in other instances it could take a year or more (e.g., complex childhood trauma).

Some factors that impact how long trauma therapy takes include:

•Client’s goals for therapy: Some people focus on reduction of daily symptoms so their day-to-day life gets easier or they are able to function in a job or relationship. Others seek deeper healing of symptoms and patterns that no longer serve them as well as personal growth.

•Type, timing, and severity of traumatic events. Single event traumas in adulthood tend to move toward recovery more quickly and easily than childhood trauma or chronic/repeated trauma. Trauma therapy tends to take longer if you experienced multiple instances of maltreatment or were particularly vulnerable at the time of the event(s). Also, if the harm was done by someone who was supposed to take care of you or someone you trusted, the injury will likely be deeper and require additional attention to repair. Recovery can also be impacted by whether a person was able to successfully “escape” or “fight back” during the experience and whether the experience violated a person’s moral code. That all being said, sometimes the absence of things that were supposed to be there (i.e., emotional neglect during childhood) can take even longer to recover from.

•History of other trauma. Unresolved other trauma in our past can slow recovery and may need attention too.

•Support systems. Lack of support after a traumatic experience or currently can impact symptom onset and severity and can complicate recovery.

•Lifestyle and coping skills. Good self-care (sleep, eat, exercise, healthy coping skills, etc…) can impact duration of trauma treatment.

•Co-occurring conditions. The presence of other medical and emotional conditions (e.g., depression, certain personality styles, substance use disorders, etc…) may require longer treatment.

So this means that it isn’t possible to give you a definitive answer to the question of how long trauma treatment takes, but you may have some sense of ‘longer vs shorter’ duration given how your history and experiences match up to the information provided above.

My goal is to help you recover as quickly as possible. As a part of this, we will have ongoing discussions about estimated treatment length, and we will regularly review changes you are noticing between sessions and progress you’ve made toward your therapy goals.

It is important that you feel in control of your therapy process so I will not ask you to share anything you don’t want to. While it can be helpful to share details of what you experienced, it is not necessary with EMDR. During the processing of traumatic memories, EMDR taps into the hard-wired mechanism in your brain that already knows how to work through the pieces of your experience, allowing self-healing. As your guide, I simply have to know that the process is still moving, and you aren’t stuck.

You are in control the entire time so you get to choose what you share.

Please feel free to reach out to Dr. Robinson, who provides trauma therapy in Asheville as well as throughout NC and TX, to discuss any concerns you have about this topic further.