TRAUMA-FOCUSED Treatment

Trauma refers to a person’s bodily response to a distressing experience. Few people can go through life without encountering some kind of trauma. Unlike ordinary hardships, traumatic events tend to be sudden and unpredictable, involve a serious threat to life—bodily injury or death—and feel beyond a person’s control. 

Most importantly, events are traumatic to the degree that they undermine a person's sense of safety in the world and create a sense that catastrophe could strike at any time. 

Trauma is often an unspoken presence in the background of our lives, that may step forward unannounced.  This is also known as being triggered. We can track trauma responses and predict when they're likely to show up, but we are not in control of the actions of others that can be triggering. 

Acute Trauma reflects intense distress in the immediate aftermath of a one-time event and the reaction is of short duration (i.e., accident, assault, or loss of loved one).

Chronic Trauma can arise from harmful events that are repeated or prolonged. It can develop in response to persistent bullying, neglect, abuse (emotional, physical, 

or sexual), and domestic violence.

Complex Trauma can arise from experiencing repeated or multiple traumatic events from which there is no possibility of escape. The sense of being trapped is a feature of the experience. Like other types of trauma, it can undermine a sense of safety in the world and beget hypervigilance, constant (and exhausting!) monitoring of the environment for the possibility of threat.

Secondary (Vicarious) Trauma arises from exposure to other people’s suffering and can strike those in professions that are called on to respond to injury and mayhem, notably physicians, first responders, and law enforcement. Over time, such individuals are at risk for compassion fatigue, avoiding emotional investment in other people to protect themselves from experiencing distress.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) cover a wide range of difficult situations that children either directly face or witness while growing up, before they have developed effective coping skills. ACEs can disrupt the normal course of development and the emotional injury can last long into adulthood (i.e., loss of a parent; neglect; emotional, physical, or sexual abuse; and divorce).

Generational Trauma refers to the impact that the trauma experienced by people has on subsequent generations in that group. The primary modes of transmission are the uterine environment during pregnancy causing epigenetic changes in the developing embryo, and the shared family environment of the infant causing psychological, behavioral and social changes in the individual. 

Identity-Based Trauma refers to the impact of ongoing exposure to identity-based stressors, including discrimination, bias, racism, violence and other forms of oppression and abuse that create an environment where individuals feel unsafe simply because of their assigned belonging to a specific cultural group and/or social identity.

Trauma-Focused Therapy refers to a group of specific approaches to treatment that primarily focus on trauma symptoms management and recovery. 

In trauma-focused therapy, clients learn about trauma, work to re-establish safety, identify what their triggers are, develop coping skills to use in triggering moments, and practice trauma processing and integration. 

Trauma-focused therapy aims to reduce trauma symptoms and increase a sense of personal empowerment. 

While they differ, both trauma-informed and trauma-focused treatment can foster posttraumatic growth.