If you’ve gone through a traumatic experience, you may be struggling with upsetting emotions, frightening memories, or a sense of constant danger. Or you may feel numb, disconnected, and unable to trust other people. Trauma disrupts the body’s natural equilibrium, freezing you in a state of hyper-arousal and fear. In essence, your nervous system gets stuck in overdrive. When bad things happen, it can take a while to get over the pain and feel safe again. But with the right treatment, self-help strategies, and support, you can speed your recovery. Whether the traumatic event happened years ago or yesterday, you can heal and move on.

ABOUT TRAUMA TREATMENT

Treatment for psychological and emotional trauma

In order to heal from psychological and emotional trauma, you must face and resolve the unbearable feelings and memories you’ve long avoided. Otherwise they will return again and again, unbidden and uncontrollable.

Trauma treatment and healing involves:

• Processing trauma-related memories and feelings
• Discharging pent-up “fight-or-flight” energy
• Learning how to regulate strong emotions
• Building or rebuilding the ability to trust other people

Successful trauma treatment must address this imbalance and reestablish your physical sense of safety. The following therapy is commonly used in the treatment of emotional and psychological trauma and is used with excellent results at OpenDoor:

• Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) helps you process and evaluate your thoughts and feelings about a trauma.The underlying concept behind CBT is that our thoughts and feelings play a fundamental role in our behavior. For example, a person who spends a lot of time thinking about plane crashes, runway accidents, and other air disasters may find themselves avoiding air travel. The goal of cognitive behavior therapy is to teach patients that while they cannot control every aspect of the world around them, they can take control of how they interpret and deal with things in their environment.Cognitive behavior therapy has become increasingly popular in recent years with both mental health consumers and treatment professionals. Because CBT is usually a short-term treatment option, it is often more affordable than some other types of therapy.  CBT is also empirically supported and has been shown to effectively help patients overcome a wide variety of maladaptive behaviors.