Trauma Therapy

Are You Looking For Someone To Help You Say Goodbye To A Painful Past Experience?

Is a traumatic experience continuing to shape the way you think, feel, and live your life? Do you struggle with:

relational issues or the inability to feel safe and trust others?
restlessness, hypervigilance, or a sense of impending doom?
social anxiety, panic attacks, or depressive symptoms?

Perhaps you’re hoping that trauma therapy can help you reengage in life instead of avoiding situations that may trigger intense emotions. Or maybe you just need someone to help you process the experience in a healthy, productive way.

The Impact Of Trauma Can Spread To Every Aspect Of Your Life

In addition to the daily fear and emotional pain, trauma can affect you in far more complex ways. For instance, you may feel weak and tired all the time but still have trouble sleeping because of stress or nightmares. Protecting ourselves from ‘worse case scenario’ makes sense when we have experienced difficult things and it can also keep us from concentrating on real life, present-day experiences, such as work and other activities.

Physically, you may be experiencing weight loss, weight gain, or gastrointestinal (GI) problems from the constant worry. Or maybe even, trembling, sweating, hyperventilation, and increased heart rate.

Even though we may want nothing more than to feel better and heal our trauma, progress can seem scary, and that’s where Windows of Hope Counseling Center comes in. With our support, you can learn how to accept the strength, insight, and resilience that’s emerged from your experience while saying goodbye to the painful parts of your past.

Trauma Is An Unfortunate Part Of Life For Many

We all encounter experiences in life that have the power to hurt us, and how we perceive these experiences can impact how they affect us and what we learn from them. In therapy, we can spend time discussing each individual growth experience or individualized life lesson that may have arisen from trauma.

It is through our experiences we create our meaning of life. It is important to focus on all of the experiences that helped shape our life and how we see things.

We are not born knowing how to manage trauma, nor does our culture do much to educate us about the process. Oftentimes, those struggling with symptoms are told they’re being crazy—that they need to quit thinking about the past so much and just get over it. Some people are even persuaded that they’re still in pain because their faith isn’t strong enough. We can only move through our experiences. We can not get over or around them and we would lose a lot of important information about ourselves if we did.

The Truth Is That Trauma Is A Complex Condition

Most of the time, it’s impossible for a person to know what is actually happening to them when they begin experiencing symptoms. It’s also difficult to connect symptoms directly with trauma because, sometimes, the response doesn’t seem to match the experience in time or magnitude. We can become so caught up in wishing we could rewind time that we actually entrench ourselves more in the past. We call this process bargaining in the grief cycle.

At Windows of Hope Counseling Center, we intentionally created our non-profit organization with these challenges in mind to help those who lack the support, funds, and facilities to overcome trauma. Working with one of our trauma specialists can help identify what is fueling your symptoms while providing you with the tools, techniques, and guidance for living your life in peace.

Therapy Is A Powerful Way To Finally Leave Trauma Behind

For a lot of people dealing with trauma, it can feel like the experience has robbed them of control and made them a victim. However, in therapy, we place the focus on the survival of trauma, acknowledging that you are a survivor and perhaps even the hero of your own story. We can learn to let go of the part of the experience that no longer serves us and begin to grow from the learning that came from it.

Trauma therapy can also give you a safe environment to explore your thoughts, concerns, and emotions in a way that is unburdening and insightful. At the same time, we’ll help you address core issues, give you effective coping strategies for managing symptoms, and free you from the nagging desire to change the past so you finally move forward.

How Does Trauma Therapy Work?

We’ll begin by creating a safe space where you can build a connection and a relationship of trust with your trauma counselor. That allows you to gradually introduce what brings you to therapy and discuss your challenges, including current symptoms. From there, we’ll identify and start to explore the initial trauma that’s responsible for your distress.

This process may take a little time because, in the beginning, we will begin to learn how your symptoms are connected to the traumatic event. We will work on building coping skills, managing triggers, and embracing what you want to keep from your experience (your strength and courage) while saying goodbye to the rest.

The Four Shamanic Laws of the Universe state, It starts when it starts, What has happened is the only thing that could have happened, The right people show up, and It ends when it ends. How many ‘right people’ showed up after your experience? Were there first responders, doctors, family members and most importantly, you? One of our trauma therapists might be one of the ‘right people’ on your journey to healing. We would love to hold space for you.

How Do We Approach Trauma Therapy?

Our therapists at Windows of Hope Counseling Center use the psychodynamic therapeutic process along with a humanistic approach to therapy for addressing complex trauma, Acute Stress Disorder, PTSD, and other trauma-related issues. These holistic strategies help us identify the original traumatic experience and how it relates to your current symptoms.

We also utilize several cognitive and behavioral tools that can minimize the impact of trauma symptoms. For instance, Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT for Trauma and PTSD) and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) focus on helping you regulate emotions, tolerate distress, improve relationships, and change the way you think and feel.

The most important part of trauma/PTSD treatment is having a safe environment where you can express all of your thoughts, emotions, and experiences freely without fear of judgment. We also believe that you can only move as fast as your slowest part—that we all have our own rhythm and beat. So, we always want you to feel in control and move at a pace that resonates with you.

The counselors at Windows of Hope Counseling Center want you to know that, with the support of someone who is skilled in trauma and PTSD treatment, it is possible to feel safe and in control again. Although everyone experiences trauma differently, over time, we can help you leave your pain in the past while celebrating the resilience, strength, and courage you’ve discovered within yourself.

Perhaps You’re Considering Trauma Counseling But Still Have Concerns…

Will the therapist be able to handle my trauma symptoms?

Our skilled counselors are specially trained to help you identify and manage symptoms of trauma and PTSD. We’re going to utilize a broad range of holistic and evidence-based tools to create a customized treatment plan for your unique experience with trauma. We also provide a safe environment where you can process the event and work on the platonic, romantic, and familial relationships affected as a result.

I am having random thoughts that seem crazy.

Rest assured, neither you nor your thoughts are crazy; in fact, how you think and feel are actually in direct relation to trauma you’re either experiencing or have experienced in the past. So it’s normal to have intrusive, out-of-the-ordinary, even dark thoughts sometimes. Just the same, we want to help you understand the purpose of these thoughts, where they come from, and how you can manage them better in the future so you can feel a little more at ease with yourself.

I’m afraid that if I come to trauma therapy, my symptoms will get worse.

Trauma is like a deep splinter that you ignore, hoping that time will take care of things naturally—only to find out that the wound grows more painful and permanent-feeling every day. So, the longer we wait to address trauma, the more ingrained it becomes, which means that when we finally do something about it, it can be painful to work through.

And with any kind of healing, that pain is temporary, and we are ultimately better for it in the end. That being said, we’ll teach you powerful techniques for regulating your emotions and managing symptoms before we discuss the traumatic event.

Let Us Help You Leave Your Pain In The Past

If trauma is disrupting your relationships, your mental health, or your ability to function at your best, Windows Of Hope Counseling Center wants to help you. To set up your first online or in-person trauma treatment session, please call (310) 948-9929 or use our Contact Page.

We serve Palm Desert, Long Beach, CA, and its Surrounding Areas