Trauma

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Trauma is among the most difficult experiences life can offer. It's no surprise that it often lies beneath the surface for many people seeking therapy. 

Many people associate trauma with abuse, rape, or war. While those are certainly traumatic experiences, trauma isn’t limited to them. Any event that overwhelms your ability to cope which sends you into fight, flight, or freeze, can be traumatic.

What’s traumatic for one person may not be for another, even within the same family. For example, one sibling might feel devastated by an event, while another is less affected.

Trauma is not only an event that overwhelms the body, the mind, and the psyche.  It is an experience that fractures the connection to one's inner world.  When something unbearable happens, parts of the self retreat in order to survive.  These hidden or "split off" parts carry the pain, fear, or shame that once felt too much to hold.

There is no hiding from these fractures in the psyche.

Take imagination, for example.   Trauma can intrude into the imagination which becomes a source of fear within one's mind.  No longer a sense of retreat or coping, the imagination becomes an out of control tormentor always seeing monsters just around the corner.  

Take dreams and nightmares , as another example.  There is no rest when nightmares make sleep unbearable.  Nightly hauntings that could inspire the worst movies.  

Depth psychotherapy is especially good at helping to quiet the nightmares, find rest, and reclaim your imaginal world.

 Over time, the protective structures that formed around the wound can harden into patterns of numbness, vigilance, or self-blame.  Yet within these very defenses lies the seed of healing.  

Jungian work approaches trauma with deep respect for the wisdom of the psyche.  Recognizing that symptoms are not simply obstacles, but meaningful expressions of how the soul has tried to protect itself. 

In depth therapy, the goal is not to erase the past, but to create a safe space for what has been exiled to return in bearable ways.  

Through gentle exploration of dreams, images, sensations, and memories, the psyche begins to reconnect its lost pieces.  This process of remembering and reintegrating allows what was once a source of suffering to become a source of strength, self-compassion, and deeper wholeness.