Different Types of Trauma Therapy: a full overview

Sep 1

Are you looking for Trauma Therapy near you in Los Angeles?

Learn more about our trauma therapy practices at Cutting Edge Counseling, with telehealth options for anyone living in California.

We are Los Angeles Therapists who are neuroscience-informed trauma therapy specialists. We have decades of experience supporting clients with PTSD and trauma.

What is trauma therapy?

We use EMDR Trauma Therapy, Somatic Trauma Therapy, Attachment Repair Trauma Therapy and Mindfulness Therapy.

These methods go beyond talk therapy to change the neuropathways in your brain towards a more positive and healthy formation. This results in improvements in your thoughts, your emotions and your body. Panic and anxiety decrease, self-acceptance and resilience increase, and you can finally move forward with ease.

Types of trauma that can be treated by Trauma Therapy

Trauma therapy is for ALL kinds of trauma, those that happened recently or long ago, those that arise from a single event or chronic stressful conditions, those that you remember well and those that may have happened even before you had language.

Trauma therapy offers hope for healing and there are techniques that have been scientifically proven to help people find relief from the symptoms of trauma.

We become traumatized when our nervous systems are overwhelmed and we are not able to fully process the experience. Our response to trauma can be impacted by a few factors such as our other life experiences, personality, or genetics.

Traumatic experiences can be something that occurred once, such as a traumatic pregnancy or birth, or something that is complex and occurred continuously over a long period of time, such as growing up with an alcoholic parent.

Trauma therapy can treat, but is not limited to:

Childhood trauma: We treat adults for traumas that happened in their childhoods. Childhood trauma can stem from events such as bullying, being raised by emotionally absent parents or an experience of violence.

Sexual trauma: Sexual trauma can happen at any age and can be treated no matter how long it has been since the trauma occurred. Not remembering or confusing details of what happened is a common symptom of trauma.

Family trauma: If your family was dysfunctional or you came from a stressful home, it can be difficult to see the impact that has had on you due to this state seeming “normal” in your home. Trauma therapy can bring you clarity and establish healthy boundaries.

Medical trauma: Medical trauma can occur due to the overwhelming stress of an illness whether the illness was brief or chronic. The trauma can stem from the emotional, mental and physical effects of the illness, and/or from dismissal by medical professionals and actions being taken without our express permission.

Attachment trauma: Attachment trauma often has its origins in the parent-child relationship and is the result of the bond of the relationship being broken by unpredictability, emotional unavailability or neglect.

The goals of trauma therapy

Trauma and PTSD can leave you feeling caught in the past. When you are struggling with trauma, you may experience intrusive memories, physiological symptoms, and the emotional toll of shame spirals, guilt, anxiety and sleeplessness.

Even if you understand the “why” behind your feelings, thoughts, and physical sensations, that understanding usually is not enough to resolve the aftereffects of trauma.

The goal of trauma therapy is to free you from the past so that your body, mind, and heart can feel safe, accepted and at peace.

At Cutting Edge Counseling we have helped people release the turmoil caused by trauma for over 30 years with the goal of our clients embracing a more hopeful and joyous future.

We have seen that with trauma therapy, our clients become more able to respond to stressful situations as needed and then return to a feeling of calm. The result of trauma therapy is that your brain actually creates new, more positive pathways which result in old stories and patterns being left behind in the past. Freedom from suffering is possible!

An overview of the different trauma therapy techniques:

EMDR Trauma Therapy: Eye Movement Therapy

Here at Cutting Edge Counseling in Los Angeles, we offer Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy, or EMDR.

This is a science-based, highly effective trauma treatment and is widely considered one of the best treatments for PTSD.

EMDR supports the brain and heart in healing from trauma by creating new neural pathways, moving the traumatic memories from the short-term memory into long-term memory storage.

Yes, trauma therapy really can change your brain! When our trauma-related memories move into long-term memory storage, you have a felt sense of the trauma being in the past. Fear, sadness, shame, and rage will subside. Your body will feel more relaxed, sleep will be normalized and your heart will lighten.

This helps you to leave the past behind and move forward in your life, knowing that you are safe.

What’s especially beneficial about EMDR Trauma Therapy is that you do not need to know or share the details of your traumatic event for it to be effective.

Somatic Trauma Therapy

While EMDR focuses on recalibrating the mind through eye movement, somatic therapies are a full body-centered approach to healing trauma. Trauma is not just an event; it is an overwhelm of our capacities.

Somatic trauma therapy is a holistic approach to healing PTSD and trauma, addressing the negative thoughts and self-criticism, the limiting fears, shame and anxiety that can come from traumatic events and experiences.

Because traumatic stress disrupts the functioning of our nervous systems, healing from PTSD and trauma must include the nervous system for us to return to emotional and physiological regulation and health.

Somatic Trauma Therapy has the benefit of moving beyond talk therapy and into the bodily experiences of trauma. This type of trauma therapy supports and regulates the nervous system, releasing the bound trauma from your body so you can find healing, resilience and well-being.

Somatic Trauma Therapy is based on the science of the interconnectedness of the body and brain. The brain sends out a multitude of signals and instructions to the body and the body, in turn, responds. Many of these signals are outside of our awareness or control in our everyday life.

The goal of Somatic Trauma Therapy is to increase the amount of ease that the body feels under normal conditions so that the body’s fight, flight, or freeze response is not continually activated. This helps to restore the body’s self-regulation.

In a Somatic Therapy session, we will support you and your body in completing the defensive response it wasn’t able to do in the traumatic event, re-establishing the rhythm of the nervous system to a relaxed state.

If you’re looking for a Somatic Therapist in Los Angeles, contact us to discover more about how we can help you.

Attachment Repair Trauma Therapy

Attachment Repair Therapy helps you to heal insecurities that may have resulted from bonds in your childhood during pivotal early development.

If we experience insecure attachment as a child, that can result in an insecure attachment style in your relationships as an adult.

Attachment disruption may show up as fear of abandonment, distrust or a lack of sense of belonging. Those with attachment disorders may have difficulty developing and maintaining significant relationships in their adult life or have a chronic sense of not being safe.

Attachment Repair Trauma Therapy offers healing from insecure attachment. In this method of trauma therapy, it is essential that you have rapport with your therapist, feel safe and supported in their presence.

As you build positive emotional experiences with an engaged and steadfast therapist, you will heal from the past with a sense of inner security and possibility.

At Cutting Edge Counselling we offer Attachment Repair Trauma Therapy in the Los Angeles area and virtually to California state residents. We work to slowly build trust and a positive relationship with you so that over time you can heal the past and move forward with a positive relationship with yourself and others.

Mindfulness Trauma Therapy

Mindfulness therapy supports those whose trauma is manifesting in the mind in the form of negative thought patterns, shame spirals, and fear.

With Mindfulness Trauma Therapy, you will learn the skills to work with your thoughts and shift from negative states into positive ones. In time, you can counter anxious and depressive thoughts with the techniques that you learn in therapy.

How we think has a huge impact on how we feel and act. Our negative thoughts can undermine our sense of self and inhibit our ability to experience life fully.

Mindfulness Trauma Therapy provides you with the tools to be more grounded in the present moment so that you can fully show up for what is happening now in your life.

With practice you can see yourself through a lens of compassion and self-respect.

If you’re looking for Mindfulness-based therapy in Los Angeles, we can help you to change your brain to drastically reduce rumination and negative thought patterns.