If you’ve been watching the scenes coming out of Turkey and Syria you’ve probably been affected. Maybe you are even experiencing vicarious trauma. Vicarious trauma happens when you feel emotional pain, terror, fear and helplessness from exposure to others peoples’ trauma. For instance, imagining what it’s like to be stuck under rubble from the earthquake, losing your entire family or becoming homeless.
When it comes to trauma, no single person is immune. However, women are twice as likely to experience some type of traumatic event than men. With medical trauma, that scale can be tipped even a little further. Medical trauma is considered a physiological or psychological response to some negative, likely traumatic, experience within a medical setting.
Emotional trauma can impact anyone and occur at any time. Whether it is something you have recently experienced or something that has been packed away, it is quite possible to feel sad, anxious, overwhelmed, or unhappy. While there is no clear-cut time frame for healing, knowing that you can move forward and regain your power is important. Here are six ways that you can begin your recovery process.
The way EMDR and many other therapies now conceptualize trauma is with a much broader scope than traditionally thought. It isn’t just limited veterans who have seen combat or people who were abused as children - though those experiences certainly qualify as trauma and often result in a PTSD diagnosis.
Do you believe that we are all made of different parts? After all, not everyone is all bad or all good. Human beings have a combination of helpful and harmful amounts of themselves. Unfortunately, trauma has a way of bringing out the worst in us. INTERNAL FAMILY SYSTEMS (IFS) is a type of therapy that helps you discover who you are and bring all of these parts together. The three main parts include: Exiles, Managers and Firefighters.
Unfortunately, when two people have a traumatic history in a relationship, it can create something called “trauma bonding.” It can even happen in your relationships with family members or friends. It’s easy for abusers to shift the perspective of their victims, often using gaslighting techniques. They can get you to change the way you view what happened, or what continues to happen. Instead of recognizing that you’re the victim, they can end up making you feel like you’re the one to blame.
The emotional scars that you are carrying from relationship trauma can be hard to heal from. If you have been betrayed once, you are also expecting future betrayals. You may run away from relationships with people who care about you for fear of getting hurt again. But it is important to know that you can heal no matter how long it takes. That not everyone in the world is bad for you.
Can trauma occur if something terrible has happened to someone else? This is called vicarious trauma. If you see or hear stories of people going through tragedies it can cause a different perspective of the world you once thought was safe. You feel various emotions, from anxiety to guilt, hopelessness, or numbness. Serving Boulder, Longmont, Denver.
Betrayal trauma is the emotional impact of your experience after your trust or well-being is violated. It is most often experienced in attachment relationships, like caregivers and children, or in romantic partnerships. You have to continue to rely on the betrayer for support, care, shelter, or other basic needs. These experiences of betrayal can be so traumatic that you feel you will never want to trust anyone again.
Trauma can get stuck in your nervous system in a multisensory way. You hear, see, and feel things when you recall the event or become triggered in some way. Some of the memory is real mixed with things you imagine. Regardless, your body holds it all in your nervous system in an unfinished, unresolved state.
The concept of generational trauma is built upon the reality that trauma sets into motion certain genetic processes. If, for example, your grandparent endured trauma, it's quite possible that you will feel the impact. You may feel symptoms. You may inherit coping mechanisms. The possibilities appear to be endless. Therefore, the impacts are equally endless. How can we manage such a covert legacy?
Structural Racism Affects Young People of Color in particular, the malignancy of racism, woven into the fabric of the institutions and systems is harmful on a variety of levels. Over time, assumptions and stereotypes about racial groups have become embedded in our culture. This serves to legitimize racial inequality and throw up roadblocks for young people.
What’s a trauma bond? This sort of connection is actually a relationship shaped by unreliable, inconsistent reinforcement patterns. Promises are broken. Calm periods don't last. ”Out-of-nowhere” intensity and negativity always follow. Everything seems complicated and erratic. Anxiety is an integral part of your interactions (or lack thereof).
