Understanding Trauma’s Impact - Selah Trauma Counseling Center

Curious about how trauma can show up in the brain, body, and relationships?

We’ve created a few examples and resources that may be supportive on your healing journey. We start with the criteria for diagnosing, which insurance requires us to use. Clusters of symptoms for commonality create a language AND you (and your loved ones) are more than symptoms, labels, behaviors, etc. You are worthy. We also included experiences that can lead to trauma and aren’t always recognized, for example, relational harm.

DSM criteria for diagnosing

Click to jump to Book supports, trauma treatment, or trauma impact. If you’re looking for ways to support or manage your symptoms between sessions, go to the Pause with Us page.

Click here to take an anonymous quiz to learn more about your symptoms. Or Here for a free stress quiz by Brain MD and learn more about your stress.

Intrusions

May look like flashbacks (includes sensory and emotional flashbacks), distressing and recurrent dreams, and a physiological reaction to cues that may resemble aspects of the event (s).

Changes in mood

Difficulty remembering aspects of the event(s). Negative beliefs about or expectations about self (No one can be trusted, I am bad), shame. Persistent negative emotional state. Diminished interest or participation in activities as well as feeling detached or estranged from others.

Avoidance

Avoidance of or efforts to avoid memories, thoughts, feelings places, people, situations, etc associated with the event(s).

Arousal/Reactivity

Irritability, anger, reckless or self-destructive behavior. Hypervigilance or exaggerated startle response. Problems with concentration and sleep disturbances.

What is Developmental Trauma?

Developmental trauma was proposed for the DSM 5 but did not make it, however, it is widely recognized in trauma treatment circles and internationally. It’s essentially used to describe early neglect, loss, and abuse that occurred during the developmental years, often both chronic and relational.
Click here for a great handout & more in depth explanation.

Trauma Treatment

Brief Overview

Treatment focuses on your symptoms and sensations; your unique experience based on your unique history. Event(s) provide context and you’ll find we don’t typically ask for that, especially in the beginning. We want to focus on headlines or themes rather than having you go back into the activation without the support. Then we focus on building capacity and weave in interventions to reprocess.
Building capacity to feel in your body can be a lengthy process and often utilizes pendulation in sessions, similar to adjusting the gas and brakes as you are driving to maintain a comfortable speed. Only you can determine when you feel “safe” enough so we spend a lot of time building rapport and trust as well as teaching skills to manage the overwhelming sensations and emotions.
Trauma processing is a very small portion of trauma treatment but one that often gets the most attention. Learning how to live and thrive without the weight of the memories occurs throughout treatment. It’s nested within building capacity and an important part to mention. Many people don’t recognize much of their behavior can be driven by survival mode.

Safety and Stability
With our clinicians at Selah, safety and stability is the most important part of trauma treatment. It is a place we’ll circle back to over-and-over. This builds a strong foundation. It can also take years depending on your internal sense of safety. Some folks choose to end treatment here as their symptoms are managed.

At Selah, we utilize polyvagal or nervous system state regulation to support safety and stability.

Co-regulation and polyvagal practices are utilized in session. This 5 minute videos explains what co-regulation is!

Processing and re-processing
This part of treatment is more specific. Several types of interventions can be utilized to support the shifting of the traumatic event(s) to ‘it happened’, from a previous place of ‘it’s happening.’

At Selah, we use Brainspotting, EMDR, TF-CBT, and other somatic interventions as trained in. This is to ensure that the activation is manageable and not a re-telling or re-living of the event, which would only reinforce the traumatic memory.

Integration
During integration, you are learning to live differently. While this traditionally is thought of only after reprocessing of an event(s), it can occur during safety and stabilization as well. Relationships change as boundaries are put into place, the way you begin to pause and not respond the same as you increase awareness towards behavior adaptions. There is further integration after the reprocessing where the world begins to open up and you’re no longer viewing the world from a place of a wound.

Trauma Impact

Info Box

We can tolerate a lot, we don’t always have capacity. So when we use Dan Siegel’s frame of the Window of Tolerance, we often change the language to capacity or choice to emphasize agency when so often trauma has taken choice away. When combined with the nervous system language, our adaptations begin to make sense. To uncouple those adaptations that are less than helpful, we return or reestablish a rhythm rather than the freezing or ricochet that so often occurs between shutdown and hypervigilance.

Books for Trauma/Complex Trauma

The Heart of Trauma by Bonnie Badenoch
Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment by Amir Levine, Rachel Heller
Truth and Repair by Judith Herman
The Complex PTSD workbook or Complex PTSD Resiliency by Dr. Arielle Schwartz
No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz
Healing the Fragmented Selves by Janina Fisher
Attuned by Thomas Huble
Becoming Safely Embodied by Dierdre Fay
Secure Relating by Sue Marriot and Ann Kelley
Fierce Self Compassion by Kristin Neff
Finding Meaning by David Kessler
The Garden Within by Anita Philips
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson

Books for Survivors of Sexual Abuse

The Sexual Healing Journey by Wendy Maltz
Victims No Longer: The Classic Guide for Men Recovering from Child Sexual Abuse by Mike Lew
The Princess Saves Herself by Amanda Lovelace
Body Rites by Shena J Young
Healing Sexual Trauma workbook by Erika Shershun