Experiences that may bring someone to trauma therapy
- Hypervigilance
- Emotional numbness
- Strong reactions to rejection
- Feeling disconnected from your body
- Chronic tension
How I think about trauma
Trauma work doesn't always start with a full account of what happened, and it doesn't have to. Some of what's most relevant may show up less as a story than as tension, a startle response, a feeling of disconnection, or a reaction that seems to come from nowhere. I draw on EMDR in part because it's suited to this kind of material, experience that's organized as sensation and image rather than narrative, but the aim is always the same: finding out what your system currently expects, and encountering something that genuinely contradicts it.
I also don't assume every symptom points to hidden trauma, or that meaningful change requires digging through your whole history. Sometimes it does. Often the more useful question is simply what you learned and what's still active now.