Family Constellation Workshop In Mumbai

Trauma is defined as “severe emotional shock and pain caused by an extremely upsetting experience” (The Cambridge Dictionary)

Trauma counselling is a short-term intervention, which is appropriate when a person has suffered a traumatic incident.Trauma Counselling helps you to identify and come to terms with feelings and emotions you may experience during or after a traumatic event. These emotions will vary from individual to individual. Trauma can involve single incidents such as a rape, car accident, witnessing a robbery, divorce, loss of job, business losses or being involved in a natural disaster. Most people undergo at least one traumatic incident in their entire life.

Causes of Trauma

As previously mentioned, trauma is subjective and can have a multitude of causes. The common factor for events that lead to trauma is that they are not anticipated and are outside the realms of what we deem to be acceptable – physically, emotionally or socially. Below are some examples of events that could lead to psychological trauma.

1. Abuse

This can refer to physical, emotional, sexual or verbal abuse. Anything that can be described as improper treatment that leads you to feel violated in some way constitutes abuse. The traumatic event could be a one-off attack or a recurring form of abuse that takes place over long periods of time.

2. Violence

Experiencing violence in any way can be traumatic. Whether you have been the victim of physical violence, threatened with violence or even witnessed violence – you could find yourself suffering from symptoms of psychological trauma.

3. Accidents 

Being involved in an accident can lead to a traumatic response. Examples include car accidents, a bad fall and accidentally harming someone else. Even if you were not physically harmed by the accident in question, being involved and experiencing the event can still lead to traumatic feelings.

4. Catastrophic events 

This can relate to natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes as well as man-made events like war and bombings. Being involved in these kinds of events can affect you both directly and indirectly.

5. Terminal illness/bereavement 

Whether it’s yourself or someone close to you who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, traumatic symptoms are often experienced. Equally, when someone close to you passes away (whether it’s expected or unexpected) you can start to question your belief system and shut down emotionally.

Trauma counselling supports you in identifying and coming to terms with the feelings and emotions you may feel during and after a traumatic experience. These emotions will vary from individual to individual, but the most commonly experienced emotions are anger and fear.

A person in trauma or a traumatic situation goes through a host of emotions. But most important emotions that they feel are anger and fear. These are two very powerful emotions and if they are suppressed, it affects the physical, mental and emotional health of the person. We often misinterpret or misunderstand such individuals as there venting out of emotions is not channelized. They throw fits of rage and anger. Of course, the responses are not limited to anger or fear, they could also feel shock, hopelessness, numbness, self-pity, feeling of being a victim and many such more emotions.

An effect of these powerful emotions is the activation of the “fight or flight” response. Your adrenal glands dump adrenaline into your bloodstream and you are poised either to fight for your life or to run for your life. While this was an appropriate response for our ancestors when faced with a saber-toothed tiger, it is not effective when faced with a thug holding a gun to your head – fighting or running is likely to get you shot!

As this stored energy generally has no physical outlet, it can manifest in a host of physical symptoms such as headaches, pain in the neck and shoulders, chest pain, stomach pain, diarrhoea, yawning and sighing, absent mindedness, nausea, tearfulness, disturbed sleeping patterns and short-temperedness or aggression.

Trauma counselling differs from traditional counselling and analysis in that it is typically short-term and often limited to one or two sessions. It is a fact that trauma counselling often uncovers other issues from the past that have never been dealt with and in this case, longer-term therapy may be indicated.

Trauma Counselling can help you with the following:

• Help you to understand your coping mechanisms.
• Validate your feelings and emotions.
• Stop using suppression and avoidance as a form of defense.
• Help you to make sense of what has happened to you.
• Integrate the event meaningfully into your life.
• Begin to live in the present rather than constantly being retriggered by the past.