The Spectrum of Trauma Healing
Trauma is when our choice is taken away.
As a therapist who specializes in working with survivors of trauma, I’ve been privileged to witness trauma healing in many different people. The end result doesn’t always look the same; “trauma healing” can look different for each person based on their needs.
I work with many people who are experiencing PTSD and CPTSD symptoms, and they often choose to work with me because they want to feel free from those symptoms. Through a lot of grounding, stabilization, resource development, expanding their Window of Tolerance, and trauma healing modalities such as IFS, SP, or EMDR, they’re able to process the trauma they experienced. Usually their PTSD symptoms, by then, have decreased or gone away completely.
Does “healing from trauma” mean the absence of trauma symptoms? Or can we go further?
Part of what makes an experience traumatic is having our choice taken away - when we don’t have a say in what happens to us, or we’re forced to experience something without the resources to help or make it stop.
Part of my job that I love the most is getting to witness folks reconnect with their right to choose what happens to them - their right to decide where their boundaries are, what feels good to them, and what doesn’t feel good to them.
So much of trauma work involves offering choices, empowering folks to find what feels good to them in their body, and practicing ongoing consent.
In my work with clients, I am so often describing what we might do in a session, and then checking if this “feels okay” or “sounds okay” to them to move forward with. I welcome questions or hesitations as opportunities to communicate, negotiate boundaries, and find what feels safe and right to my clients.
Often, when people first hear about what I do and what I specialize in, they cringe at how “sad” my job must be “hearing about trauma all the time”. It’s actually quite the opposite.
Getting to witness someone not only heal from trauma symptoms, but then to step back into their power and make choices from what they sense in their body now, is truly a privilege and sacred experience.
The Spectrum of Healing
Reclaiming access to choice
For so many survivors, the trauma they identify in therapy wasn’t the first experience of having their choice taken away. For some people, access to choice has never been an option.
Access to choice allows folks to decide, now, after trauma, what they want future relationships to look/feel like, what they want their sexuality and sexual experiences to look/feel like, what their boundaries are with work/life balance, how they want to move forward in compassion and respect toward their body, and so much more.
Meeting their own access to choice for the first time can be confusing, unfamiliar, or scary. And, with a slow, increased sense of safety, it can become completely accessible, familiar, and empowering.
Pause, and notice what comes up for you with these topics.
As a trauma therapist, I feel incredibly privileged to get to do the work I do, and to get to work with such powerful survivors. If any of this resonates with you, take a look around the rest of my site to see if we might be a good fit.
Trauma healing and reclaiming choice is for you, too.
