Have you failed to approach someone and introduce yourself because you were afraid he or she might respond negatively? Have you not asked your boss to go home sick when you felt awful because you didn’t want to let the company down? If so, you are not alone. Many of us permit our moods to influence our choices, including what we purchase in the store and when we let others take advantage of us. However, if you can master your emotions, you will feel more control in many situations and make better decisions.
What Causes Us to Have Fears?
Many people will experience anxiety caused by fear. They may not have symptoms that would constitute an anxiety disorder, but their fears do affect their daily life. Some fears come from past experiences. Various forms of emotional trauma, for example, can cause people to feel overly sensitive to their environment. According to a recent post from the American Psychological Association, there are common responses, for example, people will experience after surviving a disaster. This could be anything that causes the person a high level of stress or trauma – such as a school shooting, a hurricane, a home fire, or a tornado. In other instances, trauma victims, especially young children, experience violence in the home, such as a conflict between two or more family members. Common responses to disasters: intense or unpredictable feelings, changes to thoughts and behavior patterns, sensitivity to environmental factors, strained interpersonal relationships, and physical symptoms related to stress. If you are exhibiting any of these changes in your daily life, you may benefit from therapy.
Are You in Need of Therapy for Emotional Trauma?
If you step back and look at feelings of depression, anxiety, sadness, or fear, they could have a source. There is an event or a series of events from the past, for example, that you’ve not been able to fully process or accept. Another possibility is that emotional scars from a past traumatic event are so deeply entrenched in your mind that you’ve buried the pain. It will take serious work to bring these issues to the surface and address them. However, it takes a commitment to working through the past to find relief from emotional trauma. Now could be the right time to seek therapy. In this blog post, we share some common ways that people work through trauma in therapy, which is one of the counseling specialties of Mary Shull.
Working Through Trauma
When you seek therapy for past trauma, there are different techniques that will help you process your feelings. At the very least, you need a safe place to tell your story and to discuss the aspects of it that were difficult. Some traumatic events, such as a war veteran’s months or years spent in a field of combat which contributed to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), are so extensive that it can take multiple sessions to get the story out in the open. Also, there can be specific events you tend to replay over and over in your mind that will be discussed in detail. Some patients find it helpful to revisit the place where the emotional trauma occurred. This may not be possible if you were exposed to trauma in a distant location. However, when you seek therapy, you will work with your counselor to set goals for what you want to achieve. You will build trust with Mary and progress through a recovery process, checking off therapy goals as you go.
For more details on therapy for recovering from trauma, please contact me.
