Teen Trauma Therapy
There’s no way you can tell anyone what happened. They just wouldn’t understand. What if they don’t believe you? Even if they did, they’d probably blame you. You know you can’t handle that.
You’re not even sure that what happened was really even something bad. It feels like it was, and it’s really been messing with you. But maybe it wasn’t. Other people have been through worse. You just want to forget about it and move on, but that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen.
What you do know is that since this happened, you haven’t been the same. You can’t focus – whether it’s in the classroom, on the field, in the studio, or with your friends. You’re jumpy all the time and the littlest things scare you. You’re barely sleeping. Sometimes it’s because you can’t fall asleep. Sometimes it’s because you’re having nightmares all night.
You try to keep yourself busy. If you can just stay busy, maybe you won’t think about what happened. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. No matter how hard you try to avoid it, thoughts and images creep into your mind and get stuck there. They seem to get triggered at the most random times. And there are certain sights, smells, or sounds that can set you off.
You’ve been yelling at your little brother or your mom or snapping at your best friend. You yelled at your coach the other day, and next, it might be your favorite teacher. You have no idea why, and you carry guilt from this. You’d apologize, but you’re not sure what to say, or how to explain it. How could you? You don’t even understand it.
You’ve even tried alcohol or marijuana a couple of times to see if it would help. And maybe it worked, for a little while, but the thoughts, the feelings all came back. You know it’s not a solution and don’t want it to get worse. And you’re pretty sure your parents would ground you forever if they found out.
Your emotions are all over the place. You get mad at the dumbest things. Most of the time, you are faking being happy. Half the time you just want to hide and cry. The rest of the time you are so angry, you want punch something (or someone). You feel anxious and depressed all the time.
You don’t feel safe anywhere. You always have to know where the exits are and exactly who’s around. You have no idea who to trust. Should you trust anyone? You don’t want to let people get close – physically or emotionally. Some days it feels like you are getting through your day on auto-pilot, like you’re not really participating in your life.
It’s really starting to feel like you’re going crazy.
You’re not.
It definitely feels like it, but you’re not. I promise. You’re actually having a really normal response to something that was really not normal.
You want to stop feeling like this. You want to stop thinking about what happened. You want to not feel ashamed or embarrassed anymore. You want to feel confident and believe in yourself again.
You want to believe that the world and other people are good. You want to feel like you can trust yourself and others. You just want to feel happy again, but you’re not sure you deserve it.
You do. And I can help you get there. I will help you understand why your emotions are all over the place. And I can help you take more control over your emotions. They’ll start to make sense to you.
I can’t help you forget that it happened, but I can help you think about it less and be less bothered by it when you do. I can help you stop the “I should have…” or “If I had just…” thoughts. You can heal from what happened. You can feel like yourself again and be the person you want to be.