What is Trauma?

Do you bottle up your emotions? Find yourself avoiding or distracting away from your pain, or attempting to manage symptoms without support? 

My name is Sadaf Shalchian P. and I am an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist at S.A.G.E. Holistic Health & Wellness Center where it would be my honor to work with you on these issues and help you address your emotional suffering to prevent you from experiencing more cumulative damage overtime. 

We all have been held back, we all have been through small or big traumas, events and experiences that have allowed our belief system to become about survival and not about thriving. 

It is important to validate the part of the person who used all the internal and external resources to survive a divorce, that heartbreak, that abuse, that person that didn’t believe in them, that person that criticized them until they lost all belief in themselves, that person that made them feel insignificant and devalued and maybe even not good enough, the event in their life that made them lose hope, or the events that led them to develop a fear of abandonment, failure, success, being judged, emotional pain, fear of rejection, and even expressing true feelings. 

And the list goes on, there are many more expressions of traumatic experiences not listed here.

You did what you knew how to do to get past the trauma or the negative experience. 

But from understanding the research done by many professionals, we learn that true inner healing takes more than just surviving. 

Often times the reason behind the failed relationships, dysfunctional reactions, emotional dis-regulation, lack of self-discipline, lack of achieving what you set your mind to, incapability to love deeply, incapability to be selfless, lack of confidence, experience of shame and doubt and fear, is our self-understanding that comes through the lens of our past small and big traumas or experiences. 

The negative experience we have as life contaminates our thought process, emotions, and our behavior. We are held back because of our inner core beliefs and fears.

Therefore, it is crucial to seek help. 

I have an eye for helping individuals organize their experiences and create a well thought out plan to recover from difficult or challenging experiences they have faced. I have the training and the experience to know that we can walk into this together and you can come out feeling more like yourself than you may have in a long time. When clients come to me with trauma or undesirable events in life, my approach is to work with the deep rooted symptoms and belief systems connected to the trauma in order to clear the slate and replace those negative thoughts and emotions with new skills and positive thoughts to build the person up. 

What is trauma? Trauma is the experience of psychological distress following any terrible, life-threatening, or even a negative non-life-threatening event.

Trauma can be any life-threatening or non-life-threatening experiences which can include: 

Sexual, physical, emotional,   or verbal abuse 

Bullying 

Interpersonal conflict

Childhood emotional neglect 

Parental abandonment

Break-up of a   relationship/friendship 

Having a parent with mental illness or a substance use disorder.

Trauma from  embarrassment, betrayal and affairs 

Infidelity 

Infertility 

Divorce 

Abrupt or extended relocation

Legal trouble

Financial worries or difficulty

Death of family member, lover, friend, teacher, or pet

Physical pain or injury (e.g. severe car accident)

Illness

War

Natural disasters

Terrorism

Witnessing a death

Rape

Domestic abuse

Common responses to trauma include:

Relationship issues with self and others

Limiting self 

Lack of confidence 

Fear

Irritability

Sudden, dramatic mood   changes

Anxiety and nervousness

Anger

Denial

Depression

Flashbacks or repeated   memories of the event

Difficulty concentrating

Altered sleeping or insomnia

Changes in appetite

Intense fear that the traumatic event will recur, particularly around anniversaries of the event (or when going back to the scene of the original event)

Withdrawal and isolation   from day-to-day activities

Physical symptoms of stress,   such as headaches and nausea

Worsening of an existing   medical condition

In therapy, we can work together to understand the connection between the trauma experience and your emotional and behavioral responses. In addition to creating a safe space where we move at a pace that feels comfortable to you, I will offer skills and strategies to assist you in better understanding, coping with, and processing emotions and memories tied to traumatic experiences, with the end goal of enabling you to create a healthier and more adaptive meaning of the experience that took place in your life.

Working with the shame, vulnerability, and resilience of the experience, we can together understand, heal, and rebuild your wounded heart. I use well-researched and world-known techniques such as EMDR (best treatment for trauma), Internal Family Systems, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Emotion Focused Therapy, Psychodynamic, and other therapeutic techniques to meet you right where you are to help you uproot the weeds of the past and plant new seeds for your future. 

I look forward to working with you. Follow the link here to schedule a personal phone consult to discuss working together to begin your healing journey today.