Trauma is a physiological (body) state that people experience when something life-threatening happens to them or when they witness someone else in danger. For most people, the feeling passes when the experience is over, but about 20% of people continue to stay in this body state days, months, even years afterward. Sometimes, people feel fine for a long time, then a current event triggers the trauma state, and they feel as if it is happening all over again.

This is known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is the official medical diagnosis. However, many experts are now using the term post-traumatic stress injury (PTSI), particularly in cases of prolonged/cumulative stress such as first responders and military personnel experience. Rather than seeing the trauma response as disordered, we have come to understand that it is a result of injury.

Trauma occurs as a result of accidents, natural disasters, sexual or physical assault, abuse in childhood, involvement in critical incidents for first responders, physical injuries, being a victim of a crime, and even from experiences as a child in the womb when the mother is traumatized. It can happen after a single incident, or it can be the consequence of a series of life events or having grown up in an unsafe environment, known as complex PTSD.

Some symptoms of PTSD/PTSI are:

• Feeling scared all the time and not knowing why
• Nightmares and insomnia
• Startling easily at everyday things
• Anger outbursts and irritability
• Withdrawal from friends and family
• Being hyper-aware of surroundings
• Re-enacting the trauma situation in current relationships
• Feeling anxious about certain smells, tastes, sensations, or types of lighting without knowing why
• Fear of being in public or going to certain places
• Flashbacks and intrusive, disturbing thoughts and memories
• Emotional meltdowns that aren’t about what’s happening in the present moment
• Sudden changes in sleeping and eating habits

Using EMDR Therapy and other therapy techniques, we re-establish the body as a safe place to be and a resource. We work to process the trauma in a contained, realistic way that does not overwhelm the client. We then put the traumatic events into context, i.e., “this happened in my past, but it does not define who I am.” Resolving trauma is the equivalent of mentally separating it out from the present, labeling it and filing it away in a filing cabinet.