Adult Trauma Therapy

You’ve been through something awful. You think. Maybe? You’re really not sure. You know people have been through much worse, so what happened to you shouldn’t be affecting your life like this. You should be over it by now.

When you look in the mirror, all you see is someone who is damaged, broken, and dirty. Every day you feel like an imposter. You can’t tell people what happened. If anyone knew what happened, they would know you are a total fraud. They wouldn’t understand and they would probably blame you. And you already blame yourself.

You can’t focus. You can’t sleep. You feel anxious and scared at the most unexpected and inconvenient times. Most of the time you can’t figure out why. Thoughts and memories of what happened to you come into your mind whenever you’re feeling tired, sick, or not occupied.

You try not to think about it, but it doesn’t work. When you do, you can’t help but thinking about how you must have deserved it. You replay what happened and think about everything you could, or should, have done differently. The one drink that used to work to quiet the thoughts has turned into multiple. The occasional use of marijuana, or other substances, has become more frequent. Your family or friends have expressed concern about your use, or maybe you’ve been hiding so they don’t know just how much you’ve been using.

You know you aren’t the only one who has been through something like this, but you still feel so alone. Despite relationships, you feel disconnected. You aren’t sure having relationships is even safe. So, you just push others away, keeping them at a distance. You wonder if you even deserve to be loved and supported.

You do your best to pretend you’re okay, but you’re not. You used to be. You used to be able to handle this, and had tricks that helped, but they aren’t enough anymore. You don’t get it – why is this worse now?

You can’t go on like this. You just want to feel safe. You want rest. You want to get through just one day without thinking about what happened. You’re tired of watching for danger everywhere. You want to feel safe, physically and emotionally.

You want to trust others. You want to feel like you can trust yourself. You want to stop getting angry and scared so easily. You want to feel joy and fulfillment again. You want to feel deserving and worthy of love. You want to feel hopeful again.

You want to feel strong and confident. You don’t want to feel ashamed and guilty all the time. You want to feel good enough. You wish you could believe in unconditional love. You just want to put this behind you once and for all. You cannot carry the weight of this for the rest of your life.

You believe you’re weak. You’re thinking about therapy, but strong people don’t need therapy, so you must be weak. Right? You’re afraid of what therapy might be like. You don’t want to be completely overwhelmed. You’re not sure you can handle it.

I haven’t met you yet, but I know you can handle it. I haven’t met anyone yet who couldn’t. It’s hard, but so is living like you have been, right? Pick your hard – leaving things the same or choosing healing? Therapy won’t be harder than your life right now, and it certainly won’t be worse than what you went through. If you survived that, you can get through anything.

As for the idea that strong people don’t need therapy? Not true. I meet with strong people all the time. The thing is, they just don’t know they are strong. They do realize this when we are finished, though.

Working with me, you will be an active participant in your healing. I will be there to teach you what you need to know and to guide you, but you will do the work. You will leave session with tasks to complete before the next session so that you can practice what you are learning. Because skills only get better and stronger with practice.

I can’t change what has happened or make you forget it, but I can help you change how you think about it. I can help you change how it affects you and your relationships. You’ll understand that what you have been through is not your whole story, although it might feel like it now. Your life story is so much bigger than these past experiences. You can find our more about trauma here.