Understanding What is Trauma Signs and Symptoms?
People often wonder What is Trauma? It is when someone has an emotional response to an event such as an accident, losing a loved one, experiencing physical or sexual abuse, having a serious injury or illness, having witnessed a violent act or war, and/or facing a natural disaster. It may take some time for the brain to process the traumatic event, this can cause feelings of denial and/or shock right after the event has occurred.
Later on, unforeseen emotions may include; flashbacks and/or nightmares, avoiding social situations, relationships may seem more strained, and physical symptoms may appear, headaches or nausea.
If you have faced a traumatic event, it may be difficult to move forward with your life. Trauma can cause behavioral and emotional health concerns; Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD), Post -Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), Major Depression, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder.
This type of therapy is considered to be a behavioral treatment for PTSD. This is because exposure therapy targets learned behaviors that people engage in, as a way to respond to situations or thoughts and memories that are viewed as scarey or anxiety-provoking.
EMDR therapy is an eight-phase treatment. Eye movements are used during one part of the session. After the therapist has determined which memory to target first, the client is asked to hold in mind the different aspects of that thought or experience and to use their eyes to track the therapist’s hand as it moves back and forth across the individual’s field of sight. As this happens, for reasons believed by a Harvard researcher to be connected with the biological mechanisms involved in Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, internal associations arise and the clients begin to process the memory and disturbing emotions. If EMDR is successful, the meaning of painful traumatic experiences is transformed on an emotional level. Unlike talk therapy, the insights clients gather during EMDR therapy come from the client’s own speedy intellectual and emotional processes. The emotional wounds of clients have not only been closed but transformed. An outcome of the EMDR therapeutic process is that the persons’ thoughts, behavior, and emotions are all major indicators of resolution and emotional health-the clients do not need to speak about their trauma in great detail or do homework activities that are primarily used in other therapeutic processes when involved in EMDR therapy.
Eye movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a psychotherapy that helps people to move forward from the emotional distress and symptoms that have resulted from horrific life experiences. Research studies indicate that by using EMDR therapy clients can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took many years to make a positive difference. It is believed that extreme emotional pain needs time to heal. EMDR therapy shows that the brain can heal from cognitive trauma just as the body heals from physiological trauma. EMDR therapy indicates that a similar succession of events occurs with mental processes. The brain’s information processing system moves towards mental health.If the brain is blocked or off balance by the shock of a difficult event, the emotional wound can cause severe suffering. Once the block is removed, healing can happen. Using the detailed protocols and procedures learned in EMDR therapy training, therapists can assist clients in activating their natural healing processes in the brain.