Trauma Recovery

EMOTIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA

If you’ve gone through a traumatic experience, you may be struggling with painful emotions, frightening memories, or a sense of constant danger that you just can’t kick. Or you may feel numb, disconnected, and unable to trust other people. But you can overcome trauma’s paralyzing hold on your present life. With treatment and support, you can heal and move on from psychological and emotional trauma, putting it in the past where it belongs.

Trauma is the result of extraordinarily stressful events that shatter your sense of security, making you feel helpless and vulnerable in a dangerous world. Traumatic experiences often involve a threat to life or safety, but any situation that leaves you feeling frightened and alone can be traumatic, even if it doesn’t involve physical harm. Experiences involving betrayal, verbal abuse, or any major loss can be just as traumatizing as a life-threatening catastrophe, especially when they happen during childhood.

Whether the threat is physical or psychological, trauma results when an experience is so overwhelming that you freeze, go numb, or disconnect from what’s happening. While this automatic response protects you from the terror you feel, it also prevents you from moving on. Despite being cut off from your trauma-related feelings, you can’t escape them completely. They remain outside of conscious awareness in all their original intensity, influencing the way you see the world, react to everyday situations, and relate to others.

SEXUAL ASSAULT

Unfortunately, sexual assault can come in many forms such as sexual abuse, rape, molestation, and incest and can happen in childhood or adulthood. Sexual assault is an incredibly personal and destructive crime. Its effects on individuals and their loved ones can be felt psychologically, emotionally, and physically. They can be brief in duration or last a very long time. It is important to remember that there are many different reactions to sexual assault. Every individual’s response will be different depending on the situation.

Sexual assault can lead an individual to experience complications in their self-esteem, view of their body, ability to trust, as well as to an inability to reach orgasm, lack of interest in sex, vaginismus, and to fear of intimacy or touching.

Therapy helps individuals recover from the effects of abuse by helping them regain trust, express their anger, and overcome their fears. Abuse survivors can learn to feel safe and have healthy, pleasurable sexual experiences and intimate relationships.

If you have been sexually assaulted and would like a safe and confidential place to receive support and guidance, please contact Best Me Psychotherapy @ 323-271-1600.

If you have just been sexually assaulted and/or cannot wait for an appointment, please contact RAINN – Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network @ 1-800-656-HOPE for 24/7 confidential support.