Witt Psychotherapy

Trauma Therapy

Do You Feel Stuck? Are You Reliving Traumatic Experiences?

Have you found yourself avoiding thinking or talking about something or someone?
Have you noticed difficulty with regulating your emotions, where they feel either out of control or numbed?
Do you feel like you are to blame for what happened? Are you punishing yourself?
Do you wish you could just get unstuck and feel normal again?

It can feel painful and isolating when you have experienced something traumatic. Sometimes this pain doesn't appear right away and only surfaces months or years later. But you find yourself inside of a system that always seems to lead back to those events, those people, or that period of time. It seems easier to just push it down rather than look at it, but it keeps coming back up.

Nightmares, sleep issues, problems relating to other people, feeling unsafe and on guard all the time...these are all common issues following trauma. Does this describe you? Well, then: you're normal. And trauma therapy can help.

Trauma Symptoms Are a Normal Human Process

Everyone faces these kinds of issues and symptoms after a traumatic event. It is a normal human reaction to being absolutely overwhelmed. Most often, these symptoms go away when we face the painful feelings and reality and create a new relationship with it inside of ourselves. However, when you avoid touching the pain, it remains frozen and stuck. It's like the grief process: all people across cultures experience specific emotional reactions following the death of a loved one, and if we move through that process then we come out the other side as a changed person. If we avoid experiencing grief, you get stuck in the process. When you avoid dealing with the trauma and your symptoms keep going for longer than one month, then we give it the name of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD therapy is no different from trauma therapy.

Almost every human is going to deal with challenges following traumatic experiences – it’s unavoidable. Few people go through life without loss, abuse, or experiencing or witnessing something terrible. Trauma can be a singular event, multiple events, or can feel like it covers a large segment of your life, like an entire childhood living with an abusive parent.

Many people facing trauma avoid discussing their concerns and desires with family and friends. It can seem like a burden that you don't want to place on other people. You decide to just move on, forget about it, "deal with it." What's the point of thinking about it anyway? It feels terrible, you'd rather just distract or avoid. And because of this avoidance, it never changes. The pain that wants to come up gets pushed beneath the surface, and it leaks out instead into other areas of your life.

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The good news, however, is that with the help of a compassionate, experienced trauma therapist you can face this and actually feel better. This process has been studied, quite a lot.

Trauma Therapy is Effective

If you have experienced chronic invalidation and emotional abuse from caregivers, a terrible accident, violence, sexual assault, death of loved ones, or the horrors of war, I have helped people like you face inner pain and come out the other side. Trauma focused counseling is inherently challenging and requires an experienced professional. At Witt Psychotherapy, I use an integrative approach that follows the three phases of recovery from trauma.

I am trained provider of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), which is more bodily focused type of trauma treatment. I am a trained and certified provider of Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), which is an evidence based way to address your beliefs about trauma and how you have been affected by it. To deal with emotional difficulties and resistance, I lean on Experiential Dynamic Therapy (EDT) to elicit feelings so that we can work with them. There are exceedingly few providers in San Antonio that work this way, so you will be getting a unique experience.

In our sessions, we’ll address your unique needs and utilize inner strength to do the work required to get out of the woods. I've met with many clients who had tried trauma therapy before and had not found it helpful. When the therapist tries to go by the book, it can feel impersonal and superficial. The most common feedback I receive from clients is that they learned a lot about themselves that they were not aware of, even after the first session. They feel differently about themselves, their past, and their future.

Questions About Trauma Therapy

This Sounds Terrifying. What If Therapy Makes Things Worse?

Deciding not to get help for a problem right now could allow the problem to grow in a few months or years. Trauma reactions not only affect our emotion regulation but also our behavior, our relationships, our career, and more. The avoidance of doing the difficult work now leads to long term pain, even though avoiding it may feel better in the short term. With an experienced therapist, you can expected to be guided through the tough parts to get out on the other side. It gets easier.

I Think That I Need Help, But I’ve Heard That Therapy Can Be Expensive.

Therapy is an investment in yourself and in your relationships. By facing these issues within a strong partnership, you can significantly reduce symptoms of stress and anxiety that arise when life inevitably gets hard. Additionally, taking time to grow your strengths now will prevent significant and costly difficulties in the future like stress-related health issues, divorce, career problems, and hospitalization.

If you would like to schedule an appointment or discuss any questions you may have regarding trauma therapy, use the contact form on the top of the page or click the green scheduling buttons. I am also available at 210-660-8080 or at justin@wittpsychotherapy.com