Trauma therapy. What is it and when we may need it. Please note if you’re in need of emergency crisis support visit this post.
What is it?
✔️This type of psychological counselling is usually necessary after a person has experienced a traumatic event. Such experiences can be divorce, violence, forced migration, abuse, accidents, robberies, etc. And also age crises. In general, there is no clear list of traumatic events, because the same event will be perceived differently by different people. Subjective feelings are the main indicator here.
Does particular experience feel like traumatic for you? Does it prevent you from living normally? Do you feel like your life is divided into before and after? If answer is yes then crisis psychological counselling or in other words trauma aftercare is needed.
Important notice: this type of counselling is given after traumatic event is ended, not during.
How does it help?
After this type of intervention, your reaction to the event will be less acute. For example, a person who has been in a car accident will be able to get behind the wheel again (if they want so). Or a victim will stop seeing particular kind of people as a threat to life after experiencing violence. Trauma aftercare counselling also helps to get rid of nightmares, flashbacks and other unpleasant consequences of a traumatic event, if any are present.
✔️It’s important to understand that any therapy does not take away our memories, but helps to accept and incorporate unpleasant experiences, no matter how difficult they are. After that a person can get back to normal life.
How does trauma therapy look like?
After defining the request, you are offered techniques from which you choose the one you want to try for this session. All techniques are effective, but each person will have the ones that work best for them.
✔️For example, there are equally effective techniques in both cases – if you want to discuss what happened as well as you want to work without revealing details. Also some people are more inclined to use creative tools, while for others it is an absolute nonsense.
Unlike traditional psychological counselling, crisis counselling takes from one to two hours (sometimes more, sometimes less) per session. That’s because the person needs to have enough time and not to go home in a broken state just because time is up.
The number of meetings is defined individually in each case. From 2-3 to 12 on average. As soon as you feel that the traumatic experience no longer interferes with your daily life, counselling is finished.
