Trauma Therapy
Trauma therapy Massachusetts is available at Atlantic Behavioral Health. Our trauma therapy services with our experienced trauma professionals are available to assist with whatever help you need. Trauma is a hugely negative influence on lives around the world, including MA, and it can leave a deep scar, both physically and in terms of mental health. It might manifest as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other trauma-related symptoms, but no matter how it comes about, it has to be dealt with quickly, effectively, and professionally, and that’s precisely what we’re here for. We want to help trauma survivors move forward in life, and our trauma-informed care is a great place to start. Let’s look more closely at what trauma is, what trauma therapy can help with, and how we specifically can be there for you.
Atlantic Behavioral Health
What Is Trauma?
When you think about trauma and what it is, you might think about the event itself – people say they’ve been through traumatic events, and we understand what that means. However, a traumatic event won’t always lead to the need for trauma therapy, so it’s worth looking more deeply into what trauma is, what it does, and who can be affected.
Trauma is a catch-all term that covers a broad range of different mental health conditions and illnesses. It could stem from a single traumatic event, or it might come from complex trauma. Trauma can also manifest in many different ways, affecting people hugely in terms of their everyday lives.
Trauma often begins with traumatic events, which will be emotionally overwhelming incidents that leave a scar on someone’s emotional reactions. These events could include childhood trauma, domestic violence, sexual violence, and more. When someone has experienced traumatic events, their emotional response can be deeply affected, leading to a range of trauma-related issues, including PTSD symptoms such as flashbacks, nightmares, and severe anxiety disorders.
Who Is Affected?
Something that’s important to note is that trauma can affect everyone from all walks of life and backgrounds. It can come from a one-time event, like a car accident, or be the result of prolonged exposure to distressing circumstances and situations, like living through a war. This is why a skilled trauma therapist, equipped with plenty of trauma therapies, can help and is essential if you are suffering from trauma and mental health problems.
What Causes Trauma?
Understanding the root causes of trauma is so important when it comes to getting to the heart of what has caused someone to go through this mental health problem. Trauma can come from lots of different sources and reasons. Still, whatever triggered the condition, it will have been a traumatic event, even if it was just a one-off rather than ongoing traumatic events.
Trauma can be triggered by anything that the patient finds traumatic, even if others don’t. It might be childhood trauma, racial trauma, any kind of violence, and so on. These things can make someone feel less safe and secure, and these feelings related to the trauma can then cause them to develop trauma issues themselves. This emotional response caused by trauma can be intense fear and anxiety, helplessness and hopelessness, and other feelings that are part of the diagnostic criteria for post traumatic stress disorder and other conditions.
Symptoms Of Trauma
Trauma can be hugely disruptive to someone’s life, as it leaves plenty of trauma-related issues and symptoms behind that disrupt people’s mental health and emotional well-being. Understanding these symptoms is vital when it comes to knowing what kind of trauma therapy is required to put people on the path to recovery.
Trauma symptoms can affect both the mind and the body, and those who have had trauma or who are experiencing trauma right now will feel many different emotions and other responses to what they’re going through; these are all traumatic stress symptoms, and they can range from post traumatic stress disorder symptoms, like severe anxiety, to a constant state of heightened fear and awareness, known as traumatic stress.
The good news is that for many people suffering from trauma, trauma therapy can help in a big way, giving them healthy coping skills to manage their trauma and related problems. Therapists specializing in trauma-informed therapy can guide patients through the process, teaching them how to deal with their memories, emotions, and behaviors related to the trauma. Let’s look at what these therapies and treatments might be.
Treating Trauma And Trauma Symptoms
If you know you or a loved one needs to seek treatment for trauma symptoms, that’s a big step forward in getting your life back on track and ensuring that trauma doesn’t take over. What’s excellent to know is that there are many trauma therapy options that can give you all the knowledge, guidance, and help you might need in this regard, ensuring that you can move forward effectively – it might take some time (everyone’s different and everyone will take as much time as they need to heal properly from the trauma they’ve been through – after all, there are many different types of trauma therapy to try out, and they can all be beneficial) but with the right help from trauma therapists who can treat trauma and past trauma in the right way, anything is possible. Recovery from mental health symptoms can happen. Here are some excellent options to consider when it comes to trauma-focused therapy.
Cognitive processing therapy (CPT), also known as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), is a widely recognized and accepted effective therapy process for trauma that helps people understand how their traumatic experiences have affected their thoughts to this day. This therapy helps people to take their trauma memory and think of it in different terms, trying to make a negative into a positive and reframing how this affects their beliefs, emotions, thoughts, feelings, and even physical health in some cases. This will often reduce symptoms and significant distress and change how trauma affects people.
Prolonged exposure therapy is another evidence-based way to reduce psychological trauma and its symptoms, as well as symptoms of those who might develop PTSD. A licensed therapist will gradually expose patients to the memories and situations they’ve been in in the past that have caused them to experience types of trauma and help them regain spiritual well-being, and address memories that hurt them.
EMDR is a unique form of trauma therapy that uses guided eye movements to process upsetting and distressing memories and emotions. This kind of trauma therapy can help by allowing people to reframe their negative experiences so that the emotional impact of the trauma is lessened so that it’s no longer such an issue.
Narrative exposure therapy focuses on helping people create a more understandable narrative regarding their trauma and traumatic experiences so that they can get things organized in their minds and memories. When they do this, they’ll be able to understand how and why things happened much better, helping them to avoid similar situations and to think of things from a different angle. In most cases, this trauma therapy will work to ensure people know that whatever happened wasn’t their fault since guilt can be a big trigger when it comes to trauma and the various types of trauma that exist.
A trauma therapist can help families work together through therapy to ensure that someone who has trauma issues has the support they need not just at a treatment center or clinic, but also at home. This is vital, as it means the patient can access help, talk things through, and generally feel more understood at all times, encouraging them to continue their treatment and get well. This kind of talk therapy is something many people find useful, whether they’re the patient or a family member.
Intensive Outpatient Services
There are many ways for people to undergo trauma therapy, but one that stands out – and one that we can offer with our expert trauma-informed therapy professionals, is an intensive outpatient program, or IOS. Our trauma treatment center offers a higher form of care than many other options, including inpatient options and traditional outpatient trauma therapy services, with people attending therapy sessions at times that suit them and that are designed to help them in the most beneficial way, ensuring they learn trauma focused coping skills with a trauma-informed approach. Our program is up to a 10-12 weeks and designed to help you to get past your traumatic experience.
Specialized Trauma Informed Therapist To Work With
One of the many big benefits of using an IOS to heal from a traumatic event is that you’ll have the best access to specialists in trauma therapy who can ensure you learn coping skills. These mental health professionals have a deep understanding of how complicated trauma can be, and they’re up to date on the most current ways to help people who’ve suffered from at least one trauma. They’ll know precisely what treatment to suggest, and they’ll be able to put together a treatment plan that is tailored to your own experiences.
This could include eye movement desensitization and reprocessing work, affordable online therapy, cognitive processing therapy (CPT), and various other types of trauma therapy. They’ll know just what to do to help you get past your mental health problems thanks to the many mental health resources they have access to.
Structure And Routine
Trauma can seriously disrupt the sense of safety and control someone might usually feel in their life, but the great thing about IOSs is that they offer a structured environment with plenty of routine so that patients can be reassured and feel safe enough to go to traumatic event therapy. This can be exactly what someone needs when it comes to getting their lives back on track and giving them stability in their daily lives that a traumatic event might have taken away from them.
Flexibility
Although we’ve said that our intensive outpatient program is structured, it can also be highly flexible, depending on what the patient needs, including finding a private practice or going to a national center. That’s because they allow patients to continue with their usual routines at home, no matter whether that’s going to work, studying, taking care of a family, and more. They can do all this and still receive the best help from a trauma-informed therapist, meaning they can have access to the help they need without causing any additional disruption to their lives – this in itself can be great for someone’s mental health.
Gaining Coping Skills
One of the most crucial elements of recovering from trauma is being able to develop coping skills. IOSs provide a safe space to gain and practice these skills with plenty of guidance from a trauma therapist. In this way, if they’re triggered by a traumatic experience in the future, they’ll know how to deal with it much more effectively.
Do You Qualify?
If you feel that an IOS Psychiatric Day Program would help you find assistance to treat PTSD and other trauma issues, it’s wise to get in touch with professionals as soon as possible. Although we’ll try to help as many people as we can, especially those who have been through a traumatic experience, it isn’t always the right thing for the individual patient.
Get In Touch Today
If you or a loved one has been through traumatic experiences, don’t hesitate to contact us so we can help you get the guidance, support, and therapy you need to move forward. Our intensive outpatient program in Massachusetts could be exactly what you need, so let’s talk – it’s a great way to get started.
