Most Therapists Are Not Trauma Informed

What I discovered in my citywide hunt for a therapist equipped to heal PTSD.

Photo credits: anthony-tran from unsplash

After I survived an abusive marriage, an abduction and the loss of my pregnancy (yes, pretty intense stuff) I knew I couldn’t heal my Complex — PTSD alone.

The problem is, little did I know that 99% of therapists aren’t adequately trained to help trauma survivors heal our hyperactive nervous systems from the triggers, startling nightmares, flashbacks, trauma related migraines and panic attacks that come up in our bodies. Unfortunately, I only learned this about a year later when I hit rock bottom.

Other survivors reached out to me recently reporting similar experiences like, “My therapist recommended I search for a more specialized trauma therapist, but there are only two in my city adequately trained to help me with my PTSD symptoms”. Or, “After practicing the techniques you’ve created, I’m finally able to feel my feet again…they usually feel numb because I suffer from dissociation”. Evidently, trauma runs deeper in the body tissues than words can reach. Most therapists are trained to use words, not movements that tap into the body tissues.

In the meantime, I found Mary, a highly educated and successful therapist. I truly and deeply appreciated my sessions with Mary, she had a heavenly calming presence and she helped me build trust in humanity again! Like me, Mary was a free spirit and had a small, colourful tattoo of a bird on her forearm that made me sigh a breathe of relief just looking at it, because it reminded me of her soothing, kind energy.

But there were some things Mary couldn’t help me with. Painfully important things.

Mary didn’t know how to help me stop the strange twitching that kept coming up in my back. No amount of talking about the flashbacks that led to this twitching made it stop.

Mary couldn’t help me dispel the panic anxiety that I lived with almost constantly throughout my days, no matter how much we talked it through.

Every time I did my cardio, my heart rate increased and then my body would go into panic attack mode because I had unwittingly activated my nervous system through exercise.

Not sleeping well, distracted by flashbacks and living in constant anxiety made it difficult for me to excel in my university and work but more importantly, it depleted my emotional energy making it nearly impossible for me to connect emotionally with my kids.

On a more intimate note, how was I supposed to enjoy sex and human touch when all my body wanted to do was dissociate and be left alone?

I realized that Mary was great at helping me understand quite logically all the reasons why I didn’t have to feel anxious and afraid anymore, but she just couldn’t help me stop FEELING this constant fear.

I even tried talking to myself regularly throughout the day to convince my body that I was safe, but my head and my nervous system seemed to be in continuous disagreement.

As time dragged on and my PTSD symptoms persisted, anti-anxiety medication appeared to be my only option to get a break from living with my hyperactive nervous system. It was an exhausting and draining way to live my life, day in and day out.

It dawned on me that understanding something like safety, intimacy and trust happens in the brain but actually enjoying FEELING those emotions and sensations happens in the body and the two don’t always meet in the middle, no matter how badly you want them to.

Sure, Mary used Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Exposure Therapy and every other therapy technique she knew but nothing could help my body calm down.

As time went on, things got worse and I began getting migraines that lasted for days and sometimes even weeks.

Luckily, Mary and I were wise enough to know that my strange aches and pains were trauma related. Because she had never been adequately trained to work with my body’s nervous system, Mary was only knowledgeable in helping me understand things differently and talk them through, so finally, Mary encouraged me to find new experts to help my body relax and work through the trauma that was coming up in my tissues.

Everything quickly began to make sense in my first session with the Somatic Experiencing Therapist who was referred to me by a friend named ‘Lina’.

Lina explained to me that when a trauma happens, the body creates a surge of adrenaline, cortisol and all the other necessary hormones to help us get into fight/flight mode to escape the perceived dangerous situation.

But what happens if we can’t fight or run away? What happens if we are stuck in place or we just freeze because there is no way out? All these hormones build up over time in our body and wait to be released.

So I learned that my body had unfinished business to do… that my trauma hormones were causing my body to stay stuck in a fearful, easily triggered, sympathetic nervous system activation state.

These hormones had to be released through completing the movements I had never been able to. I had to tremble, to shake, to kick, to punch, to shake my head ‘no’ from side to side, to run.

Furthermore, the sensations in my body were trying to tell me something. They needed something from me.

They wanted to be given a voice, to be validated, to express their pain through writing, music and art. They needed to tell their story, they needed me to hold space for them, to grieve with them.

So often people go to therapy and push themselves to achieve the goal of ‘healing’ but they are missing the first step.

The very first step to healing isn’t recovery. The first step to healing from trauma is GRIEVING with your body parts.

You LOST something, your body needs the space to grieve this loss completely and mindfully. Cultures and religions created lifelong traditions around grieving the loss of a loved one but none for grieving the loss of safety, trust and the world you once knew that has now been shattered to pieces.

We need to create these grieving rituals for ourselves.

Oddly, around this time I made a friend who was a Drama Therapist. Sharon may have been a super-nerd who spoke like a librarian… but holy mother of god, was she ever creative!

When she first told me that she that she studied Drama Therapy, I conjured a picture in my mind of a drama therapy session looking something like this:

Drama Therapist: “What brings you here today?”

Client: “Well, I think I’m depressed. I lost my job, my relationship and the bank has just begun to repossess my house”.

Drama Therapist:

Responds over-dramatically, sinking from his chair to the floor as he works himself into a histrionic state,

“Whattt?!! Are you serious?!!! That is terrible, awful, horrible!!” He theatrically bangs his fists on the floor and weeps bitterly in response to his client’s statement.

Client: Unsure how to respond to his Drama Therapist’s emotionally charged outburst. Client kneels on the floor to comfort his Drama Therapist.

Sharon laughed at my imagined version of a Drama Therapy session and said, “Good guess Tanya, but not quite!”

Instead of banging her fists on the floor in a histrionic state with overly dramatic sympathy for me, Sharon, taught me how to distance myself from the vivid flashbacks that were haunting me through escaping into other characters.

I dressed up like a ridiculous princess on rollerblades wearing a child’s costume that barely covered my boobs and laughed so hard at myself I almost forgot to feel traumatized for once.

Or sometimes Sharon just played the role of my parent, telling me exactly the words of advice and comfort that I needed to hear, “You didn’t deserve to be abused. You are powerful and beautiful and smart and you deserve to be treated with love, respect and admiration”.

Wow. It felt so good to hear those words.

During these Drama Therapy moments, my parasympathetic nervous system actually got a chance to re-learn how to function in my post-trauma body once again, giving my system and break and helping my body to finally reach a state of relaxation.

Sharon helped me create a short video to replay my story back to me. For the first time, as I watched my life story play before me, I saw my experiences from an outsider’s point of view. It gave me a weird ‘aha moment’, shedding light on a refreshing new perspective on my life and myself as an individual.

I felt differently about my story after that.

All in all, I learned about eight different therapies and tens of neuroplasticity exercises (these are mindful movement based techniques to teach your body how to feel safety and calm again by making new neural connections and creating reparative experiences). These helped me rewire my nervous system to release the accumulated trauma and stress hormones, and also re-map feelings of safety and trust in my post-trauma world so my body could finally heal and rebalance.

It’s also not fair that I had to work so hard to find professionals to help me when all I needed was professional emotional support and not a city-wide treasure hunt.

Combing techniques to rewire my nervous system and finally reaching a state of calming emotional balance helped my month long migraines dissipate.

It helped me reclaim my good old silly personality and best of all, my efforts helped me to finally have enough emotional capacity to reconnect with my children.

But I lost so much time I could have had with them.

For these reasons, I created trauma healing neuroplasticity exercises by working with licensed experts in over six different therapies to include techniques from:

Somatic Experiencing Therapy, Exercise Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Authentic Movement Therapy techniques, Art, Drama and Play Therapy techniques and Nature Therapy.

We live our lives to feel embodied, connected with ourselves and the ones we love most. And truly living life means having fun, enjoying ourselves and feeling whole again. You deserve to live your life normally again…and who knows?

You might just find yourself enjoying your time with an overly dramatic therapist one day… but one with their masters degree, in a good crazy kind of way ;)

Tanya is a mental health nurse specializing in trauma therapy and women’s health. She writes for Rewire Trauma Therapy’s online therapy services: https://www.rewiretraumatherapy.com/