Trauma is an experience or series of experiences that overwhelm a person's ability to cope, make sense of and effectively respond to the situation.
Learning about the stages of healing can be distressing, motivating, upsetting, or uplifting. No matter how you feel, your reaction is not wrong. Acknowledging your emotional response to the stages of healing can allow you to harness your emotions’ energy and reach out to a trained therapist.
When looking for a therapist, it is vital to keep in mind that, regardless of what type of psychotherapy you pursue, your therapist should empower you and welcome you as a collaborator in your therapy. Studies have found that individuals who are active participants in their therapy are more satisfied with the therapy. In addition, it is crucial that you feel safe in your therapeutic relationship.
There is no magical treatment that will heal you overnight, nor is there one form of psychotherapy that is right for everyone, but you should be able to find a therapist, as well as a therapeutic approach, that works for you. Healing is like a marathon. It requires preparation, repeated practice, courage, determination, and the support of others—including that of a professional coach or therapist.
While there are numerous therapy approaches, the purpose of all trauma-focused therapy is to integrate the traumatic event into your life, not subtract it. This page discusses the most common forms of trauma therapy. Each approach is described in its most pure form, but keep in mind that many therapists combine different types of therapies.
When looking for a therapist, it is vital to keep in mind that, regardless of what type of psychotherapy you pursue, your therapist should empower you and welcome you as a collaborator in your therapy. Studies have found that individuals who are active participants in their therapy are more satisfied with the therapy. In addition, it is crucial that you feel safe in your therapeutic relationship.
There is no magical treatment that will heal you overnight, nor is there one form of psychotherapy that is right for everyone, but you should be able to find a therapist, as well as a therapeutic approach, that works for you. Healing is like a marathon. It requires preparation, repeated practice, courage, determination, and the support of others—including that of a professional coach or therapist.
While there are numerous therapy approaches, the purpose of all trauma-focused therapy is to integrate the traumatic event into your life, not subtract it. This page discusses the most common forms of trauma therapy. Each approach is described in its most pure form, but keep in mind that many therapists combine different types of therapies.
EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing
A structured therapy that encourages the patient to briefly focus on the trauma memory while simultaneously experiencing bilateral stimulation (typically eye movements), which is associated with a reduction in the vividness and emotion associated with the trauma memories.
PE
Prolonged Exposure
Prolonged exposure is a specific type of cognitive behavioral therapy that teaches individuals to gradually approach trauma-related memories, feelings and situations. By facing what has been avoided, a person presumably learns that the trauma-related memories and cues are not dangerous and do not need to be avoided.
CPT
Cognitive Processing Therapy
Cognitive processing therapy is a specific type of cognitive behavioral therapy that helps patients learn how to modify and challenge unhelpful beliefs related to the trauma.
CBT
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on the relationships among thoughts, feelings and behaviors; targets current problems and symptoms; and focuses on changing patterns of behaviors, thoughts and feelings that lead to difficulties in functioning.
Brainspotting
Brainspotting therapy identifies trauma, negative emotions, and pain, including physical pain. Therapists guide the patient’s eyes with a pointer. The direction in which people look can affect the way they feel. Brainspotting helps doctors identify triggers for a traumatic memory or negative emotion.
DBT
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
Dialectical behavior therapy aims to better regulate emotions. This form of therapy has been effective in helping those who experience suicidal thoughts. This method has been effective for a number of mental health disorders including PTSD. It helps instill new skills to help people change unhealthy behaviors.
SE
Somatic Experiencing
Somatic Experiencing encourages resiliency in the nervous system by encouraging a person to track their activation as they describe what happened before, during, and after an event. SE enables a person to maintain their equilibrium while processing the events by working with small pieces at a time and releasing or discharging the sensations (heat, cold, shaking, or tears) that arise.
ART
Accelerated Resolution Therapy
Accelerated Resolution Therapy is a form of psychotherapy with roots in existing evidence-based therapies but shown to achieve benefits much more rapidly (usually within 1-5 sessions). Clients with depression, anxiety, panic attacks, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse, sexual abuse and many other mental and physical conditions can experience remarkable benefits starting in the first session. ART is not hypnosis.
| |||
ARM - Anchored Relational Model (formerly AIR Network Therapy)
Anchored Relational Model (formerly AIR Network Therapy)
Anchored Relational Model (ARM) therapy is a neuro-developmental, competency-based model of therapy primarily used to help people heal from past trauma and neglect. ARM places value on understanding the neurology associated with trauma and development. This therapy stresses the importance of helping people to identify aspects of themselves which may have developed as a response to traumatic experiences, and to help them to build a better understanding of those parts and what is needed for healing.
At times, EMDR is used in combination with ARM to address specific distressing memories.
At times, EMDR is used in combination with ARM to address specific distressing memories.
CRM
Comprehensive Resource Model
Comprehensive Resource Model is a neuro biologically-based trauma processing modality that creates physiological and neurological resources that provides opportunities to resolve Trauma-based overwhelming experiences.
IFS
Internal Family Systems Therapy
Internal Family Systems Therapy is a comprehensive approach to healing trauma and other related symptoms that includes guidelines for working with individuals, couples and families. The Internal Family Systems Therapy Model represents a new synthesis of two already existing paradigms: systems thinking and the multiplicity of the mind. It brings concepts and methods from the structural, strategic, narrative, and Bowenian schools of family therapy to the world of subpersonalities. Internal Family Systems Therapy provides practical methods to recognize and access the “higher” or “deeper” Self, so that the process of growth happens according to an “inner wisdom.” In accessing the Self and healing parts, a person is not pushed, rushed, or imposed upon. The process is allowed to unfold at its own speed, and according to its own pattern.
DBR
Deep Brain Reorienting
|
Deep Brain Reorienting is a gentle, body-aware approach that helps clients process trauma by working with the brain’s earliest responses to stress. DBR focuses on the automatic tension and orienting reactions that happen before emotions or thoughts fully form. By slowing down and following these subtle physical cues, clients can safely access and release the roots of trauma without becoming overwhelmed.
DBR is especially effective for: People who feel stuck in patterns of PTSD anxiety or depression that haven't responded to traditional therapies. Individuals with attachment wounds, early developmental trauma, or chronic emotional shutdown and persistent symptoms of anxiousness and worry. |
|
We find most people don't seem to come to therapy because they know what happened- they come because something inside won't settle. They feel stuck in patterns of symptoms reflecting anxiety, depression. and overwhelm. For many, the root cause stems from early, wordless moments of shock in the brain.
That is where Deep Brain Orienting comes in. Where many therapies begin with the story, DBR begins with the tension-orienting reflex that happens in milliseconds before our nervous system reacts to the perceived threat, abuse, and/or trauma. Neuroscience research indicates it's not the event itself that causes trauma, it's the shock to the system -the overwhelming activation of our survival circuits before we have a chance to make sense of what's happening. This shock registers in the brainstem, our most primitive part of the brain; it bypasses our ability to think or even feel- its raw instinct is to orient, freeze and brace. This initial orientation, the body's automatic reaction to threat, can become a kind of emotional scar tissue. Even decades later, it can drive chronic anxiety, overreactions, shutdowns and numbness. DBR starts at the brainstem level where the trauma lives as body memory, not a narrative memory.
Using slow guided attention to physical sensations a therapist helps the client track that micro-moment when the system braced for impact. From there, clients are gently guided through stages of reaction in sequences held in the brain allowing the nervous system to complete what it never got a chance to. It's a process of unwinding the trauma at its roots.This is a gentle body-led process and works well for those who haven't had success with traditional forms of therapy, may even have struggled with trauma therapies, or may have found therapy helpful-but still felt something unfinished. DBR doesn't just help a client cope with trauma. It helps their brains reorganize how it remembers it-so they are no longer stuck in neurobiological endless loops of survival reactiveness.
You don't need to come with a story, you don't need to relive a trauma event. You will be gently guided to notice sensations, track what unfolds, and stay anchored in the present as your body and brain patterning leads the way, It's a surprisingly, at times,quiet process - rooted in safety, slowness, and respect for the wisdom of your system. It's not about pushing through. It's about following what's ready.
That is where Deep Brain Orienting comes in. Where many therapies begin with the story, DBR begins with the tension-orienting reflex that happens in milliseconds before our nervous system reacts to the perceived threat, abuse, and/or trauma. Neuroscience research indicates it's not the event itself that causes trauma, it's the shock to the system -the overwhelming activation of our survival circuits before we have a chance to make sense of what's happening. This shock registers in the brainstem, our most primitive part of the brain; it bypasses our ability to think or even feel- its raw instinct is to orient, freeze and brace. This initial orientation, the body's automatic reaction to threat, can become a kind of emotional scar tissue. Even decades later, it can drive chronic anxiety, overreactions, shutdowns and numbness. DBR starts at the brainstem level where the trauma lives as body memory, not a narrative memory.
Using slow guided attention to physical sensations a therapist helps the client track that micro-moment when the system braced for impact. From there, clients are gently guided through stages of reaction in sequences held in the brain allowing the nervous system to complete what it never got a chance to. It's a process of unwinding the trauma at its roots.This is a gentle body-led process and works well for those who haven't had success with traditional forms of therapy, may even have struggled with trauma therapies, or may have found therapy helpful-but still felt something unfinished. DBR doesn't just help a client cope with trauma. It helps their brains reorganize how it remembers it-so they are no longer stuck in neurobiological endless loops of survival reactiveness.
You don't need to come with a story, you don't need to relive a trauma event. You will be gently guided to notice sensations, track what unfolds, and stay anchored in the present as your body and brain patterning leads the way, It's a surprisingly, at times,quiet process - rooted in safety, slowness, and respect for the wisdom of your system. It's not about pushing through. It's about following what's ready.
SSP
Safe & Sound Protocol
Based on years of research by Dr. Stephen Porges and his Polyvagal Theory, the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) is a five-hour therapeutic listening intervention designed to support the client's emotional regulation and neuroception (i.e. sense of one's safety), as well as decrease the client's auditory sensitivity. The music is designed to stimulate the vagus nerve, which is responsible for calming the nervous system. This allows for enhanced social engagement and resilience in children and adults. The purpose of SSP is to create new, positive connections in the brain that allow the client to regulate oneself by "stretching the nervous system, not stressing the nervous system."
SSP is a great way to help children and adults move through major transitions (such as starting school, starting a new job, going on vacation), engage more purposefully in social interaction, experience emotional regulation, and prepare for participation in other therapeutic interventions. SSP is meant to complement the work a child or adult is already doing (or will be doing) in therapy-- it is not meant as a stand alone intervention. As SSP works implicitly on the nervous system to enhance one's neuroception, the work with a therapist will work explicitly to recognize one's state of regulation and find strategies to get back to a state of regulation more readily. The protocol is also adaptive and changes with the latest research in the field. Visit the Integrated Listening System (iLs) website for more information.
SSP is a great way to help children and adults move through major transitions (such as starting school, starting a new job, going on vacation), engage more purposefully in social interaction, experience emotional regulation, and prepare for participation in other therapeutic interventions. SSP is meant to complement the work a child or adult is already doing (or will be doing) in therapy-- it is not meant as a stand alone intervention. As SSP works implicitly on the nervous system to enhance one's neuroception, the work with a therapist will work explicitly to recognize one's state of regulation and find strategies to get back to a state of regulation more readily. The protocol is also adaptive and changes with the latest research in the field. Visit the Integrated Listening System (iLs) website for more information.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or P.T.S.D. is a disorder in which a person has difficulty recovering after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event.
The condition may last months or years, with triggers that can bring back memories of the trauma accompanied by intense emotional and physical reactions.
Symptoms may include nightmares or unwanted memories of the trauma, avoidance of situations that bring back memories of the trauma, heightened reactions, anxiety, or depressed mood.
Treatment includes different types of trauma-focused psychotherapy as well as medications to manage symptoms.
Note: This webpage is for informational and educational purposes only. It does not render individual professional advice or endorse any particular treatment for any individuals. It is recommended that individuals consult with a mental health professional in order to obtain an accurate diagnosis and to discuss various treatment options. When you meet with a professional, be sure to work together to establish clear treatment goals and to monitor progress toward those goals. Even treatments that have scientific support will not work for everyone, and carefully monitoring your progress will help you and your mental health professional decide if a different approach should be tried.
"When action
meets compassion,
lives change."
Andover Blaine Plymouth St. Paul Rogers Oakdale/Woodbury Teletherapy
|
|
|
Disclosures
|
Model representations of real patients are shown. Actual patients cannot be divulged due to HIPAA regulations.
This site is presented for information only and is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice. Presentation and Design ©2004-2026 Rum River Counseling, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
|