Trauma

The impact of trauma can be subtle, insidious, or outright destructive. How an event affects an individual is unique.  People process experiences differently, and not everyone has the same reaction to any event; what one person experiences as trauma may not cause distress for another.  Traumatic experiences undermine a person’s sense of safety in the world and create a sense that catastrophe could strike at any time.

Initial reactions to trauma can include:

• Exhaustion
• Headaches
• Nausea
• Anger which can be uncontrollable and rage like
• Confusion
• Sadness
• Anxiety
• Agitation
• Numbness
• Dissociative Symptoms
• Confusion
• Shame
• Poor concentration

While these feelings are normal, some people have difficulty moving on with their lives. Indicators of more severe and/or delayed responses include:

• Continuous distress without periods of relative calm or rest
• Severe dissociative symptoms
• Intense intrusive recollections that continue despite a return to safety
• Persistent fatigue
• Physical illnesses
• Sleep disorders
• Social isolation
• Nightmares
• Fear of recurrence
• Anxiety focused on flashbacks
• Depression
• Avoidance of emotions, sensations, or activities that are associated with the trauma

Stress leading from trauma tends to evoke two emotional extremes:

• Feeling either too much (overwhelmed), or
• too little (numb) emotion.

Self-medicating with drugs and or alcohol, perhaps leading to addiction, is one of the many coping strategies that traumatised people use in an attempt to regain emotional control, although ultimately it causes even further emotional dysregulation. Other efforts toward emotional regulation can include:

• Undertaking high-risk or self-damaging behaviours including self-harm
• Disordered eating
• Gambling
• Overworking
• Repression or denial of emotions.

When thoughts and memories of the traumatic event don’t go away or get worse, they may lead to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)  which can seriously disrupt a person’s ability to regulate their emotions and maintain healthy relationships.  In these instances, people often benefit greatly from treatment approaches that are “trauma informed.” Trauma-informed care refers to therapeutic approaches that validate and are tailored to the unique experience of a person coping with PTSD. It understands the symptoms of trauma to be coping strategies that have developed in reaction to a traumatic experience. Non-judgmentally, it recognizes that a person with PTSD may have behavioural, emotional or physical adaptations that have developed in specific response to overwhelming stressors.

Treatments, such as CBT and EMDR at Infinite Possibilities Counselling, can help you find the optimal level of emotion and assist in dealing more appropriately with the regulation of difficult emotions. Our goal is to help you learn to regulate your emotions without the use of substances or other unsafe behaviours.  This could involve learning new coping skills as well as how to tolerate distressing emotions which in turn aims to provide the individual concerned with a better quality of life including day to day functioning.

Abuse

Abuse can occur anywhere including:

• home
• school
• youth or community centre
• bar or nightclub
• hospital
• care facility
• public place including public transport

Often the people who engage in abuse are taking advantage of a special relationship. They may be a family member, friend or paid worker who we expect to trust but alternatively it may also be a stranger.  Anyone can become a victim of abuse (abuse knows no gender) – it is no reflection of intelligence, strength or worth.

Types of Abuse

• Physical abuse – deliberately hurting or injuring someone. This could include hitting, smacking, pushing, shaking, spitting, pinching, scalding, misusing medication, inappropriate restraint, inappropriate physical punishments or other ways of causing physical harm.
• Sexual abuse – abusive sexual behaviour by one person upon another. It is often perpetrated using force or by taking advantage of another and most definitely without their consent.  In the case of a child, according to the NSPCC, they’re forced, tricked or manipulated into sexual activities. They might not understand that what’s happening is abuse or that it’s wrong for the abuser to do this to them.
• Financial abuse – a common tactic used by abusers to gain power and control in a relationship. The forms of financial abuse may be subtle or overt but in general, include tactics to conceal information, limit the victim’s access to assets, or reduce accessibility to the family finances.
• Domestic abuse – an incident, or pattern of incidents, of controlling, coercive, threatening, degrading and violent behaviour, including sexual violence, in the majority of cases by a partner or ex-partner, but also by a family member, friend, carer or a person in a position of power and responsibility.
• Emotional and psychological abuse – a pattern of behaviour in which the perpetrator insults, humiliates, and generally instils fear in an individual in order to control them. The individual’s reality may become distorted as they internalize the abuse as being their own fault.
• Online abuse – any type of abuse that happens on the internet, using technology like computers, tablets, mobile phones, games consoles and other internet-enabled devices. Children and young people may experience several types of abuse online, including bullying, cyberbullying and/or situations where the child is exploited/coerced into sending explicit pictures for the abuser’s self-gratification.
• Institutional abuse – the mistreatment of people brought about by poor or inadequate care or support, or systematic poor practice that affects the whole care setting. It occurs when the individual’s wishes and needs are sacrificed for the smooth running of a group, service or organisation.
• Historic abuse – According to the NSPCC this is defined as non-recent child abuse. It is when an adult was abused as a child or young person under the age of 18.  Sometimes adults who were abused in childhood blame themselves or are made to feel it’s their fault. But this is never the case.

If any of the above applies to you, please reach out and contact us for further guidance and support. There is no excuse for abuse!