Trauma Therapy
What is Trauma?
Trauma refers to the lasting emotional impact that deeply distressing events and/or experiences can have on an individual. Trauma can be acute (a single incident), chronic (repeated and prolonged), or complex (multiple incidents or varied traumatic events). In the face of trauma or a perceived threat, our nervous system activates one of four different stress responses.
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Fight: This is exactly as it sounds. This stress response propels us to fight back.
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Flight: This involves the urge to get away from the perceived threat as quickly as possible.
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Freeze: This response induces feelings of immobility and paralysis. It is an instinctive survival mechanism that occurs when the threat seems too overwhelming, or if/when we are unable to fight or escape.
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Fawn: The fawn response involves prioritizing others’ needs over our own to seek approval and avoid conflict. This response is often linked with interpersonal trauma, such as needing to adapt to abusive or unpredictable environments and prioritizing others’ needs to survive.
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Following a traumatic event, you may experience one or more of the above trauma responses, sometimes, even long after the event has occurred. Trauma can leave our nervous system dysregulated, resulting in hyperarousal, hypervigilance, increased agitation or anxiety, dissociation or feelings of numbness, or avoidance. Other symptoms of trauma include flashbacks, nightmares, difficulty sleeping, and even somatic symptoms, such as chronic pain.
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Trauma therapy focuses first on stabilization, which involves building a sense of safety and regulating the nervous system. Since trauma therapy can reactivate the nervous system, it is important that clients feel they are equipped with the skills needed to regulate. Once this has been achieved, therapists and clients work together to process the traumatic event(s). After processing, when the traumatic event no longer causes the client dysregulation or disturbances, the focus of therapy shifts onto post-traumatic growth, and rebuilding life without the trauma.
What is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)?
EMDR is an evidenced based psychotherapy that has individuals focus on a distressing memory while simultaneously experiencing bilateral stimulation (typically eye movements), this process is associated with a diminishing of emotional, behavioural and cognitive response to stressful memories. EMDR has been extensively researched and shown to be an effective therapy to treat trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Research shows that EMDR can promote significantly faster recovery from symptoms than traditional talk therapies, it also does not require individuals to go deep into describing the traumatic event to their therapist.
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In addition to trauma and PTSD, EMDR is shown to be effective with panic attacks, general anxiety, eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and depression. EMDR can be offered in person or in virtual sessions and is shown to be effective with adolescents and adults.
What is Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART)?
ART is a new and rapidly emerging evidence-based therapy used to treat and process trauma. ART is unique in comparison to other trauma therapies because clients typically feel relief from their symptoms in as little as 1-5 sessions. ART integrates components from several other evidence-based therapies, such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Gestalt, Psychodynamic therapy, and Cognitive-Behavioural therapies.
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Within an ART session, individuals are asked to recall a traumatic event that they would like to process, while engaging in bilateral eye movements. Current research demonstrates that memories are vulnerable to change every time they are recalled, which means, we can change the way that a memory is stored within the brain and body, through the use of eye movements. How does this work? Bilateral stimulation activates both the right and left sides of the brain, and mimics REM sleep, which is the stage of sleep where the brain processes emotional memories. ART also utilizes other unique techniques, such as voluntary image replacement and image re-scripting, which are processes that are used to help eliminate the emotional and physiological responses that are associated with traumatic memories.
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In addition to treating trauma and PTSD, ART can also treat a wide array of other issues, such as anxiety, phobias, grief, addiction, and other stress-related conditions.
Why is ART different from traditional talk therapy?
Within an ART session, individuals are instructed to visualize their traumatic memory, however they are not required to talk about the memory or discuss any details if they do not want to. Additionally, ART is considered a “bottom-up” approach, whereas traditional talk therapy is considered a “top-down” approach. The terms “bottom-up” and “top-down” refer to the different areas of the brain that are targeted during therapy. Top-down approaches utilize the areas of the brain that are associated with thinking, speaking, and emotional awareness. Bottom-up approaches on the other hand, target the lower parts of the brain that are associated with reflexes, memories, and autonomic survival responses. Why is this distinction important? When individuals have experienced trauma, and their nervous system becomes activated, the areas of the brain responsible for thinking and logic go offline, making talk therapy less effective. Often, traditional talk therapy can even be re-traumatizing. Bottom-up approaches help individuals increase their awareness of bodily sensations and nervous system states, as well as develop skills to heal and regulate their nervous system so they are no longer living in a constant state of “fight, flight, or freeze.”
