Trauma as described by Gabor Mate, is “a lasting rupture or split within the self due to difficult or hurtful events (Mate, 2022, p.21). It is not what happens to you that is trauma, but what happens wiithin someone as they experience an event (Mate, 2022, p.21).
Trauma can be an event such as witnessing or being part of a situation that caused your brain to go into high alert and trigger your nervous system to go into survival mode. It can also be growing up in an environment with parents who never gave you the love and affection that you needed.
Gabor Mate
With the ongoing distractors in our world, it makes it easy to disconnect from ourselves and move towards things that give us immediate gratification, but theres a sense where we come back to ourselves and react with anger to others, or experience ongoing rejection.
Trauma reactions may show up in our reactions to our partners, or our children. It may cause us to turn inward at ourselves and experience self hate; while also causing us to people please in order to not be rejected.
Our response to traumatic situations is our means of survival as humans, but there’s a time where those strategies for coping do not serve us or the people around us.
If you have experienced any of these factors mentioned, you may have experienced trauma.
A gazelle comes into contact with a cheetah and quickly springs to action either to run away, fight or freeze. The gazelle goes into survival mode and then when the threat is gone, is able to go about their day.
Animals are really good at transitioning from survival mode to everyday life; however, humans tend to go into survival mode when in a threatened state, and continue running and running and running.
Work with a local therapist who is trained to work with trauma. It can be helpful to work with someone who is familiar with how to go about approaching trauma. We work at a pace that is right for you to ensure you are prepared emotionally with tools to settle and ground your self as we then move to more of the processing work when you are ready.
It is helpful to work with someone where you feel comfortable and a local person can be helpful for familiarity with culture of the city, closeness, and comfortability. One of the most important aspects of working with us is that we want you to feel safe enough emotionally that when we delve into deeper issues, you have the tools to manage these emotions that come up.
Are you low in mood and generally in a place of sadness for more than a two-week period?
EMDR is a body based approach that uses Bilateral Stimulation and works with the Adaptive information Processing system.
Building stronger relationships with friends, family, and loved ones
If you are unsure of which service area to book, you can simply book an individual or couples appointment and specify with your therapist in your intake what it is you are wanting to work on. Our categories are a way of helping explain our approach to different presenting issues. It is also not limited to these areas. Also if you are in need of immediate support please call the distress line or 811 to reach someone immediately. Thank you for visiting our site.