Trauma and Grief Counseling

What is Trauma?

Trauma is a stress reaction created when our life, or the life of a loved one, is endangered. When we suffer trauma, it creates a scenario in our mind that is just waiting for that traumatic event to happen again.

When a set of circumstances causes your brain to react as though the event were occurring again, it responds as though it were – despite any hard evidence to the contrary. The perpetrators aren’t present, but your instincts are convinced they are. The setting is different, but it is just close enough to remind you of danger.

According to the DSM-IV (the master psychological diagnosis manual), you or a close relative must have suffered a near-death event or a sexual assault to develop post-traumatic stress.

When this stress lasts longer than a month after the incident, it becomes Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Although there are different labels, such as Acute, Chronic, or Delayed Onset, a diagnosis is warranted only if it causes significant distress or impairment in an important area of life.

There are different types of trauma.

But not all of them are in the DSM-IV. You can have a nervous system response affecting your daily life while just living a “normal life.” If you are reading this, you are probably functional, or functional enough. There is a chance that your symptoms are being attributed to something else.

The understanding of trauma and PTSD is evolving; it is now understood that diagnoses of anxiety, ADHD, and many other disorders can be attributed to trauma reactions.

Trauma comes with an additional wrinkle: You may not remember the event that traumatized you. Your brain, in an effort to protect you, may have “patched over” the event, so thinking about it doesn’t continually re-traumatize you. Despite that, however, you still have feelings and reactions that weaken your control and smother your peace, that you can’t fully identify.

How is Grief Different?

Where trauma is a response to danger, grief is a response to loss. It’s your mind’s difficulty in processing that the way things were is over, and likely can never be again.

Grief is like standing with your back to the ocean. Sometimes you are just aware of the water washing over your toes, but at other times, a wave knocks you down and batters you around or floods your world to the point that you can’t figure out which way is up.

Grief counseling is not about eliminating grief, but instead processing it healthily so it isn’t overwhelming or hindering you. When grieving, you have all the time in the world. There is no ticking clock on your grief.

Therapy focuses on processing your grief.

This form of therapy involves holding your grief, acknowledging its validity and tangible impact, and then processing it through retelling with imagination work.

Grief work is often a “bottom-up” process; you will usually feel grief in your body. It can be deep, scary, and dark. What people need in these places is a sense of holding and understanding. Once your grief is acknowledged, we can develop tools to express it in healthy ways, using nature, art, or other means.

I bring not only understanding and experience, but also the training and tools to meet you where you are and help you create moments of calm, where you can then find yourself. This can be done by creating or honoring your values and beliefs (or using cultural traditions around loss, be it your culture borrowed from others).

All of us have felt grief, but very few know how to hold it and move through it.

Together or separate?

Trauma always comes with grief, but grief doesn’t always come with trauma.

Managing grief and trauma have the same roots. In both, we identify the reactions and feelings that are causing problems, follow them to their source, and, one by one, untangle and separate the threads so that when the event is triggered, it doesn’t pull every other part of you with it.

Trauma and grief counseling can take many paths.

Our first goal will be to assess your unique situation and determine which approaches will work best for you. It involves managing emotional regulation, a skill that is essential for expressing your feelings without being overwhelmed by them.

If your nervous system is misfiring due to a blocked memory, we will assess how your emotions are felt in your body and work through them without the memories. Your mind may be numb from the emotional turmoil, but your body is aware that something is wrong.

If we decide together that you need validation to heal, there are techniques to uncover buried memories. We can use body sense to gain insight into your emotions, which I can help identify and work through. Work on boundaries and asking for needs allows you to set boundaries with other people to help you feel safe and heard in your relationships, helping to de-fang the worst of the trauma response.

There is no single path to healing. There are complications and speed bumps that will crop up. But we will handle those together. You are a unique individual who deserves and needs unique treatment. Throughout the process, you will be an active participant.