Trauma Treatment at Discovery Mood & Anxiety
The worst thing about trauma is that it doesn’t always end. Whether it’s exposure to violence or surviving years of abuse, trauma often sticks around in the form of trauma disorders.
These devastating (but treatable) mental health disorders cause people to experience intense flashbacks, severe anxiety and more. Also, trauma disorders often drive people towards substance abuse to treat their symptoms and find relief. Finally, in some cases, people respond to trauma with self-harm.
But that doesn’t have to be your story. Trauma disorders are treatable. Discovery Mood & Anxiety provides a safe, welcoming environment where real progress can take place. Our dedicated Stars and Stripes Program is specifically designed to meet the needs of veterans and first responders.
What Is Trauma?
Trauma is a psychological state that results from experiencing an intensely disturbing or distressing event or events. These events are so disturbing for a person that they’re unable to cope, causing psychological, emotional, and physical effects that often last for a lifetime.
There are several different types of trauma:
- Acute Trauma: Acute trauma is caused by a single event, like a single assault, a car crash or a natural disaster.
- Chronic Trauma: This form of trauma results from prolonged, repeated exposure to trauma, like bullying or domestic abuse.
- Complex Trauma: Multiple traumatic events, such as childhood neglect or abuse, can cause complex trauma.
- Secondary Trauma: People who are close to trauma survivors, like first responders or caregivers, often experience secondary trauma.
What Causes Trauma?
Trauma is caused by certain experiences that a person can’t cope with. This often leaves them with long-lasting psychological, emotional, and physical effects. Also, there is no time limit on traumatic experiences: they can be sudden or prolonged. Not every traumatic event has to be major, either – sometimes, trauma can be very subtle.
Finally, what’s traumatic for one person may not be for another. We’re all very different, and trauma is very personal.
Here are some of the more common forms it comes in:
- Accidents: Car accidents, falls, and other incidents can create trauma.
- Medical Emergencies: These can involve you, a friend, or another loved one.
- Loss: Losing a loved one, whether suddenly or after a long decline, is often a source of trauma.
- Abuse and Violence: Emotional, sexual and physical abuse are all sources of trauma, such as domestic violence or being the victim of other violent crimes.
- Natural Disasters: Surviving a tornado, earthquake, a wildfire, and more can leave a person feeling traumatized.
- Combat: Many soldiers struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from trauma related to combat.
- Bullying: Childhood bullying often has effects that last for a lifetime.
- Medical Trauma: Chronic illness, long-term hospitalization, and certain procedures can cause trauma.
- Neglect: Neglect, particularly in childhood, can strongly hinder development and cause trauma as well.
- Seeing Trauma: Witnessing a traumatic act (like a shooting, for instance) often causes trauma.
Trauma sources also include racism, homelessness, financial problems and discrimination.
How Common Is Trauma?
According to the National Center for PTSD, most people experience a traumatic event at least once in their lives. However, the Center also notes that the word “trauma” can be used to describe many kinds of stressful events, not all of which can cause a trauma disorder like PTSD.
The Center also says that the exact number of people with PTSD isn’t known, due to a variety of reasons. However, they said that around six out of every 100 people (6%) will deal with PTSD at least once during their lives…and women are twice as likely as men to develop this disorder.
What Are Trauma Symptoms?
It’s difficult to say exactly what trauma symptoms are; they can vary widely depending on the traumatic event and the person who survived it. Also, trauma symptoms can be emotional, psychological, and even physical.
Psychological and Emotional Symptoms of Trauma
Psychological and emotional trauma symptoms include:
•Flashbacks: Flashbacks are involuntary and highly vivid intrusive memories of the traumatic event affecting you. They feel like you’re reliving the event again.
• Hypervigilance: Hypervigilance feels like you’re constantly alert or on edge.
• Nightmares: It’s common to have intense and disturbing dreams when struggling with trauma.
• Intrusive Thoughts: Like flashbacks, these are unwanted memories that can interfere with daily life.
• Avoidance: Many people with trauma avoid people, conversational topics, and places that remind them of the traumatic event.
• Guilt and Shame: Feelings of guilt and shame often occur after trauma. This is particularly true if the person blames themselves for the event.
• Mood Swings: Many people with trauma often feel irritable, which can turn into sudden anger.
• Depressive Symptoms: Some symptoms of trauma can resemble those of depression, such as problems with concentration, difficulty making decisions, and a loss of interest in things that were once enjoyed.
Physical Symptoms of Trauma
Physical symptoms of trauma include:
• Sleep Disturbances: Trauma interferes with the sleep cycle, making it hard to fall and stay asleep.
• Fatigue and Low Energy: Trauma is a major energy sink.
• Physical Pain: Trauma causes digestive problems, stomachaches, headaches, and even chest pain.
• Rapid breathing and/or heartbeat: Sometimes, trauma can feel like a panic attack.
Symptoms of Trauma in Children
Children often show trauma in different ways than adults do. It’s common for children who have been subject to trauma to re-enact the event through play. Many kids display regressive behaviors as well, like being clingy or bedwetting.
Also, children who’ve been through trauma often have difficulty expressing their emotions or exhibiting symptoms that can resemble attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
How Is Trauma Diagnosed?
Diagnosing trauma often involves a mental health evaluation. This helps caregivers understand your symptoms like hypervigilance, flashbacks, problems sleeping, and more. Finally, there’s often a physical exam, which helps them rule out problems like sleep issues, anxiety, or other issues.
How is Trauma Treated?
Talk Therapy
Talk therapy, or psychotherapy, is extremely effective in treating trauma. During a talk therapy session, you essentially participate in a conversation with a therapist, who will safely guide you through a process where you explore the source of your problems and learn healthy ways to cope with them.
Forms of psychotherapy include:
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is very helpful in treating trauma. Trauma often causes us to develop negative beliefs about our traumatic experiences. CBT helps challenge those beliefs and reframe our view of the event.
• Dialectical Behavior Therapy: Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) helps you manage the intense emotions and memories trauma creates. DBT also helps you increase your distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and set healthy boundaries in relationships. Finally, DBT also helps you process trauma by letting you safely confront your memories and thoughts during your sessions.
• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) helps you accept difficult experiences and prevent disturbing thoughts from controlling your behavior. It also helps you to live in the moment and find what’s truly valuable in life.
Experiential Therapy
Experiential therapy is a form of therapy that revolves around experience and action instead of talking. It can include:
• Music therapy
• Art therapy
• Role-playing
• Working with animals
And more. This helps you express difficult emotions and thoughts without words, helping you find another way of safely exploring your trauma…and working through it.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) uses bilateral stimulation, like side-to-side eye movements. Through a carefully guided process, EMDR helps reduce the emotional impact of trauma, helping you heal from trauma.
Measurement-Based Care
Discovery Mood & Anxiety makes use of a unique measurement-based care approach to help our patients safely understand and treat their trauma. We carefully analyze 27 distinct wellness indicators, including your physical and mental health, your history, and any co-occurring conditions you may have. This gives us a complete picture of your health…and needs.
It also allows us to carefully construct effective, highly personalized care programs that grow with you and meet your needs at every stage of your journey.
How Can I Help a Loved One with Trauma?
Helping a loved one through trauma is incredibly compassionate. The thing is, though, it’s not about fixing them. Rather, it’s all about walking alongside them on their path as they heal.
You can help in a variety of ways:
- Learn About Trauma: By learning about trauma, you’ll have a better understanding of its symptoms and what your loved one is going through.
- Listen, Don’t Judge: Don’t ask for details about the traumatic event – let your loved one share at their own pace and in their own way. Also, it’s okay if they need space or quiet, so respect their boundaries.
- Provide a Calm Space: Avoid surprises – people struggling with trauma don’t always like them. Also, try to keep things as quiet as possible.
- Patience is Key: Healing from trauma is a process that’s never a straight line. There’s going to be setbacks and other issues…but that never means failure.
What Happens If Trauma Isn’t Treated?
Left untreated, trauma almost always leads to greater problems that tend to get worse over time. The symptoms of trauma – flashbacks, anxiety, nightmares – get worse and more disruptive. Many people struggling with untreated trauma disconnect from their feelings, causing them to feel detached from their emotions.
Trauma can physically alter the brain, too. It can cause attention, memory, and decision-making to become impaired. The constant stress of trauma can lead to exhaustion, muscle aches, and headaches. More dangerously, trauma can lead to heart disease due to high blood pressure and high heart rates. Plus, stress can actually decrease immune function, leading to diseases.
Trauma can also cause severe isolation and problems at work and in relationships. Finally, trauma puts you at major risk for substance abuse, suicidal ideation, and angry outbursts.
Getting help for trauma and the various disorders it causes is critical.
What Are Trauma Disorders?
Trauma disorders are a family of mental health disorders that often develop after a person sees or survives a traumatic experience. Like other mental health disorders, trauma disorders affect your emotions, memories, and relationships…and can also make daily life all but impossible.
Trauma disorders include:
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Acute stress disorder (ASD)
- Adjustment disorders
- Reactive attachment disorder (RAD)
And more. Let’s explore these treatable conditions in more detail.
What Is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?
Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is probably the trauma disorder most people are familiar with. It’s a condition that’s usually triggered by events involving:
- Threatened or actual death
- Serious injury
- Sexual violence
- Emotional abuse
- Accidents
- The sudden loss of a loved one
- Natural disasters
PTSD symptoms include intrusive thoughts, nightmares, and memories of the event (or events) that caused PTSD to develop. Many people with PTSD experience flashbacks, vivid memories that make them feel like they’re reliving their trauma. People with PTSD will also avoid the people and places they associate with their trauma, experience guilt, fear and shame, and often have trouble expressing positive emotions.
Then there are arousal symptoms: people with PTSD often startle easily, feeling like they’re always on guard. This also causes them to get angry easily and engage in reckless behavior.
Finally, studies have shown that PTSD seems to cause changes in certain areas of the brain; many people with PTSD often have abnormal levels of stress hormones like norepinephrine and cortisol.
PTSD can affect anyone. While it’s a very serious condition, it’s also treatable.
What Is Acute Stress Disorder?
Acute stress disorder (ASD) is a trauma disorder that shares many of the same symptoms of PTSD but doesn’t last as long. It’s different from PTSD in another way as well: ASD tends to develop within three days to a month after experiencing a traumatic event; PTSD often takes longer to develop.
ASD shares many of the same causes and symptoms as PTSD, and it’s often treated the same way, too.
What Are Adjustment Disorders?
Adjustment disorders are short-term trauma disorders that involve difficulty with coping or adjusting to a major life change or stressful event. According to the Mayo Clinic, symptoms often start within three months of the event and usually go away within six months.
These trauma disorders are often divided into several types, depending on the symptoms:
- Depressed mood
- Anxiety
- Mixed anxiety and depressed mood
- Disturbance of conduct: Reckless or aggressive behavior
- Mixed disturbance of emotions and conduct
- Unspecified: This adjustment disorder type involves symptoms like insomnia and headaches
What Is Reactive Attachment Disorder?
Reactive attachment disorder (RAD) is a rare but serious disorder usually found in children who have never formed healthy emotional bonds with caregivers. This results from:
- Abuse
- Severe neglect
- Inconsistent care
In general, RAD develops in young children during their early years when their basic needs, like comfort and affection, aren’t met. This results in children struggling with trust and avoiding being close emotionally.
Symptoms of RAD include:
- Aversion to Touch and Physical Attention: The child does not like to be held or hugged and instead may squirm away.
- Being in Control: The child often needs to be in control and will throw excessive temper tantrums, be disobedient, defiant, and argumentative.
- Lack of Emotion During Punishment: When a child is asked to go on a time-out, they are often relieved that they can be alone, and punishment shows them reinforcement that they are “unwanted.”.
- Inappropriate Affection: The child will often be inappropriately affectionate towards strangers but will show no signs of affection towards their primary caregiver.
Discovery Mood & Anxiety’s adolescent treatment program can help children overcome RAD and other mental health disorders.
Discovery Mood & Anxiety: Expert Care for Trauma & More
Trauma is a particularly cruel prison. You never asked to be subjected to trauma – the things you are feeling and going through simply aren’t your fault. However, you’re forced to live with the aftermath.
It doesn’t have to be like this. With the right help, you’ll be able to safely confront your past, learn more about yourself, and live a life where you’re in charge and not your trauma. Our measurement-based approach helps us create personalized treatment programs that meet your needs when you need them met.
And then there’s Discovery 365™, our groundbreaking post-care platform that leverages cutting-edge technology to help you during your first year after treatment. It’ll connect you to resources by using facial recognition technology to let you know when you need a little extra support.
Discovery Mood & Anxiety provides expert care for:
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Clinically Reviewed by
Matthew Ruble, MD
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