Today I’m starting a new series called “Healing Your Trauma”, to help you understand what resources are available to you to heal your trauma.
Today I’m starting a new series called “Healing Your Trauma”. This series is here to help you understand what resources are available to you to heal your trauma. Whether you know if you have trauma or not, any of these resources can help you uncover if you do, and help you heal it.
To start this series off, I’m introducing you to the differences between trauma-informed therapy and trauma coaching. These are the 2 main areas of mental health that can help you heal your trauma.
You can find links for all of the resources talked about in this series here. I encourage you to let God lead your search in finding the right practitioner and help for you. He is the Almighty Counselor, and the only One who truly knows exactly what’s going on inside of you, and which resource(s) are best to help you heal it. I’m praying for you.
This is the 1st post in a series of 10. You can find the whole series here.
If you believe that you have trauma, there are 2 main areas within mental health that can help you heal your trauma: trauma-informed therapy and trauma coaching.
Trauma-informed therapy is within the therapy side of mental health, while trauma coaching is within the somatic side of mental health (working primarily with your body (your nervous system)).
In general, therapy (also called talk therapy) is an incredible way to process what you’ve lived through on an emotional level. It provides a safe space to talk about these experiences, safely feel any emotions that you’re carrying from them, and work towards finding more positive changes in your life mentally and emotionally moving forward.
Trauma coaching is an incredible way to safely release any trauma that is being held in your brain (including your memories) and body (your nervous system). It allows you to safely revisit painful memories; release the fight, flight, freeze responses being held inside of them; feel any emotions you’re carry from these experiences; and allow your brain and body to let go of the trauma (heal it).
While both can help with healing trauma, they are different in how they approach trauma, and how they can offer help in healing it.
Trauma-informed therapy is a newly emerging area of talk therapy, where therapists understand what trauma is and how to detect if you have it or not. Since trauma is still a fairly new science in the mental health industry, it hasn’t made it’s way into all academic educations yet. As such, a trauma-informed therapist will be different from a regular therapist, in that they have additional training in trauma. This helps them determine if you have trauma, and help you feel any emotions you’re carrying around that.
Working with a trauma-informed therapist will give you a safe space to open up about what you’ve lived through in life, and understand how present day behaviors may be caused by your trauma. We call this a top-down approach, as it starts with your brain (your perception of having trauma), and works down into your body (how your actions and behaviors are stemming from that trauma).
The gap in trauma-informed therapy, is that it doesn’t include treatment to help heal your trauma. Trauma lives in your survival brain and body (your nervous system). Talk therapy typically works with your pre-frontal cortex (the part of your brain that’s responsible for conscious thought, rational thinking, logic and willpower). This part of the brain isn’t where trauma lives. So while a trauma-informed therapist can help you understand if you have trauma, and what that means for your life and mental health, they aren’t going to able to help you heal your trauma.
To heal your trauma, you need to work with trauma healing techniques (which are a separate education from therapy). If your therapist has additional training in a trauma healing technique, than they can help you heal your trauma. Many trauma-informed therapists are now trained in some of these techniques, so they can help you heal. Many still aren’t though. If you hire a trauma-informed therapist, make sure that they’re also trained in the techniques specific to healing trauma (which we’ll talk about in this series).
A trauma-informed therapist is an incredible first step to healing, if you believe you might have trauma. They can help you understand if you have trauma from the hard things you’ve lived through in life, process any emotions you have around learning that you have trauma, and be a support system for you as you get additional help to heal it.
Trauma coaching is a new field within mental health that is specific to helping you heal your trauma. It’s the area of mental health that includes trauma healing techniques. We call it coaching because as of right now, it’s not part of an academic education, and therefore isn’t part of traditional licensures (like therapy, psychology and psychiatry).
Working with a trauma coach will give you the space to safely access any trauma you have, and release it from your brain and body. This includes the fight, flight, freeze responses; emotions; and belief systems that are making up your trauma. Once these are released from your brain and body, you will no longer carry any pain from the memories. Nor will you get triggered later on because of them. This release is the healing of your trauma.
We call this a bottom-up approach, as it starts with your body (where the trauma lives, in your survival brain and nervous system), and works up into your brain (your pre-frontal cortex, where you consciously perceive what happened to you).
A trauma coach is an incredible main step in healing any trauma that you have. These techniques can also help you uncover any trauma that may be the root cause of your present day fears, worries or behaviors; and heal it.
Finding which area of mental health is right for you depends on what help you’re needing right now.
If you’re wanting to start exploring if you have trauma, but aren’t ready to heal it yet:
A trauma-informed therapist will be the best option for you. (Once you’re ready to start healing, you can hire a trauma coach or a trauma-informed therapist trained in trauma healing techniques to help you heal).
If you’re unsure if you have trauma, but are ready to heal any that might exist:
A trauma coach or a trauma-informed therapist trained in trauma healing techniques will be be the best option for you.
If you know you have trauma, and you’re ready to heal it:
A trauma coach or a trauma-informed therapist trained in trauma healing techniques will be the best option for you.
If you have the resources both financially and with your time, having both a trauma-informed therapist and a trauma coach at the same time, can be an incredible opportunity to support you through your healing. This will give you one space to heal your trauma, and a separate space to mentally and emotionally process that journey. (Trauma coaching won’t include time to talk about it, it’ll only have time for the healing techniques).
You can links for both here.
Throughout the next 8 posts, I’m going to introduce you to 4 of the main trauma healing techniques. These are the main techniques that a trauma coach or trauma-informed therapist will use to help you heal.
In the next post, I’ll start by introducing you to the first one: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).
If you’re ready to start healing your trauma, you can find practitioner directories for both trauma-informed therapists and trauma coaches here.
If you’re struggling with trauma triggers and life-altering effects they bring, I have resources for you.
While I always encourage healing in 1-on-1 sessions with a therapist or trauma coach, you’re also going to need help in between those sessions.
Here is a free video of one of my favorite mental health techniques for turning off trauma triggers. It’s a quick 5 minute exercise that will shift you back into the state of peace in your mind and body.
I also have a full Membership of videos and audios (just like the free one) to help you turn off your triggers anytime, anywhere. Some are short exercises to turn off your triggers quickly so you can get back to your life, while others are longer opportunities to turn off your triggers and release the hard emotions that came with them.
You deserve to live and thrive in the state of peace in your mind and body. And God wants that for you.
If you’re struggling with trauma and the damaging effects of it, know that it’s not only ok to get help. It’s beautiful.
From one survivor of this hard life to another,
I’m praying for you ♥︎
– L aura
