Emotional and Psychological Trauma

Individuals who have experienced an extremely stressful or disturbing event which left them feeling helpless and emotionally out of control, they may have been traumatized. Psychological trauma can leave people struggling with upsetting emotions, memories, and anxiety that won’t go away. It can also leave a person feeling numb, disconnected, and unable to trust other people. When bad things happen, it can take a while to get over the pain and feel safe again. But with counselling and psychotherapy, you can speed your recovery. Whether the trauma happened years ago or yesterday, you can make positive changes and move on with your life.

Emotional and psychological trauma is the result of extraordinarily stressful events that shatter people’s sense of security, making them feel helpless in a dangerous world. Traumatic experiences often involve a threat to life or safety, but any situation that leaves a person feeling overwhelmed and isolated can be traumatic, even if it doesn’t involve physical harm. It’s not the objective facts that determine whether an event is traumatic, but your subjective emotional experience of the event. The more frightened and helpless individuals feel, the more likely they are to be traumatized.

Psychological and Emotional Trauma Can Be Caused By:

• One-time events, injury, such as an accident, or violent attack, especially if it was unexpected or happened in childhood.
• Ongoing, relentless stress, such as battling a life-threatening illness or traumatic events that occur repeatedly, living in a crime-ridden neighbourhood, such as bullying, childhood neglect, or domestic violence.
• Commonly overlooked causes, such as the sudden death of someone close, the breakup of a significant relationship, surgery, or a humiliating or deeply disappointing experience, especially if someone was deliberately cruel.

Counselling and psychotherapy can offer a non-judgmental space for exploring the very difficult and disturbing past or present traumatic experiences, and in time it helps people to adopt, and develop new positive ways for managing and alleviating symptoms.