Trauma

Sometimes events can be traumatic.

Trauma occurs when a person is overwhelmed by events or circumstances and responds with intense fear, horror, and helplessness.

Extreme stress overwhelms the person’s capacity to cope.

A traumatic event is an incident that causes physical, emotional, spiritual, or psychological harm.

Traumatic events can cause physical and emotional distress.

A person experiencing the distressing event may feel threatened, anxious, or frightened as a result.

In some cases, they may not know how to respond or may be in denial about the effect that the event caused.

Like the circumstance that produces phobia, the person with trauma experiences a fight/flight response. During this time, powerful neurochemicals in the brain are released and supercharge the Amygdala, which is the part of the brain responsible for emotional memories.

Memories stored via the Amygdala are not easily forgotten, as it has no sense of the passage of time.

Traumatic events are not easy to forget.

While most people who experience a traumatic event can put it behind them and eventually return to normal, a significant number of people are unable to forget the event and find it repeating in their brain and body through uncontrolled remembering. This can take the form of flashbacks, which involve reliving the traumatic event as if it were still occurring in the present.

A flashback can come in the form of an image, sound, or feeling that creates an experience of reliving the trauma. It also can occur through nightmares, which are a form of reliving during sleep. Some people become fearful of going to sleep due to repeating nightmares related to their trauma.

Uncontrolled remembering also can occur when people are reminded of the original event by seeing or hearing something in their current life that brings them back to the original trauma. For example, a war veteran might be sensitive to loud sounds like those heard in war; and each time they hear one, the sound triggers a flashback.

Some traumatic events can result in PTSD.

If it was a recent trauma, what will happen next? Most people who experience trauma do resolve it on their own within the first 30-60 days after the event.

However, if you have experienced a traumatic event that causes uncontrolled remembering, flashbacks, or nightmares for more than a couple of months after the event, and it is causing you distress or inability to function normally in your life, there is a good chance you have PTSD.

Not everyone who experiences a traumatic event develops PTSD. But everyone with PTSD has experienced a traumatic event that they are unable to put in the past and that is intruding into their everyday life.

For an online screening for possible PTSD, follow these links:

https://safeharborhouse.com/resources/ptsd-self-test/
https://www.psycom.net/ptsd-test/

How do I know if I need therapy for trauma or PTSD?

If you still experience a high degree of distress for longer than 60 days after the event, you can contact Dr. Bob for a consultation; he will assess whether the services he offers would be of benefit to you.

We will arrange an initial appointment only if you will get significant relief using these methods.

Several types of interventions can be used to treat PTSD.

There are two main hypnotherapeutic interventions Dr. Bob uses that help people resolve their PTSD and get rid of flashbacks, nightmares, and uncontrolled remembering.

They are Visual-Kinesthetic Dissociation and Eye Movement Integration. These work the same for PTSD-uncontrolled remembering (flashbacks, nightmares) as well as they do with phobia.

For a full description of the therapeutic effects of V/K Dissociation, follow this link:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239938915_NLP_and_PTSD_The_Visual-Kinesthetic_Dissociation_Protocol

With the use of a movie theatre/movie screen visualization, the client is helped to reprocess the event in a state of complete security and confidence and without any reliving or retelling of it. The method can be done content free, meaning the client doesn’t even need to share the nature or details of the event or discuss it in any way.

Eye Movement Integration also developed under the framework of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) works as quickly and effectively as the other technique and uses eye-movements with the imagined dissociated image in the background.

It is not the same method as EMDR and only requires 1-2 sessions, whereas EMDR requires many more sessions.

For a more detailed explanation of this technique, follow this link:

https://www.nlpco.com/library/eye-movement-integration-therapy/

Here is how we think it works.

We are not sure how or why these methods work to resolve PTSD and phobia.

But what appears to happen is that the memories of the traumatic event are somehow reconsolidated from the primitive part of the brain (Amygdala) to the thinking part (Neocortex; Prefrontal Cortex).This allows the person to process them in line with other life experiences that typically fade with the passage of time.

What will happen in our sessions for PTSD? How long do they take?

After a phone consultation, we will meet for an initial evaluation. You will be asked to share your concerns, symptoms, and desired outcome for treatment.

Dr. Bob will explain in detail the method we will be using to get your desired outcome.

Once you have committed to making this change, the treatment will be provided in the next session. We will do a post-treatment test to ensure the traumatic flashback is gone. When it’s clear you have achieved the desired response, we will schedule one follow-up session to confirm that it worked.

In most cases, that is all that is required. In some cases, if there are still remnants of the undesired state, we will do another treatment of either V/K Dissociation or Eye Movement Integration to remove them.

The total number of sessions is typically between three and five.

Permanent change is possible.

As far as we can tell, yes. The clients who received these treatments report that they have not had any recurrence of symptoms.

There is very little controlled research in this area. Therefore, we cannot know for certain that these methods work for everyone and are permanent. For this reason, results are not guaranteed.