Trauma is a psychological, distressing response to a terrible event in someone’s life that can become a pervasive problem. This exposure to an incident or series of events overwhelms a person’s ability to cope and often results in shock, changes in behaviour and denial.
When these types of experiences happen, people often seek the help of a therapist to get the skills to manage their feelings and emotional responses to what they have experienced. You can opt for physical meetings to talk to your therapist in person. Alternatively, online psychotherapy is also available, allowing you to attend virtual sessions.
Let’s take a look at the different types of therapy for trauma.
Type #1: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Behavioural therapy involves examining clients’ thoughts and how they influence their choices and behaviours. The goal is to help the individual change incorrect thoughts by using knowledge and skills and developing more helpful thinking patterns and coping mechanisms to reduce symptoms. Over time, CBT will improve quality of life as clients practice techniques like:
- Breathe work for managing anxiety
- Challenging negative and irrational thoughts
- Learning coping skills
- Increase positive relationship structures
- Controlling and measuring emotional responses
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) is another behavioural therapy form that helps you evaluate and change your upsetting thoughts from the traumatic experience to transform how you feel about yourself and the world.
Type #2: Prolonged Exposure Therapy
Exposure therapy consists of confronting fears and reducing the anxiety it produces. Exposing a client to their fears is difficult, but it helps to break the pattern of avoidance, and when applied in a safe place, they are better able to face that fear.
Trauma can become worse when people avoid their feelings, memories, images, sensations and thoughts about their experience. By facing those feelings and emotions, they can begin the process of desensitization and realize that the trauma is no longer happening because they are safe now. Breathing control and discussion about the fear work in unison with exposure to overcome the avoidance that the trauma developed.
Different forms include:
In Vivo Exposure
This is where the client is directly facing the feared situation or object in real life.
Imagined Exposure
The client imagines the feared event as vividly as they can.
Narrative Exposure
NET helps people establish a more positive life story by contextualizing traumatic events with positive events.
Systematic Exposure
This involves exposure to fearful situations in increasing amounts, followed by relaxation.
Stress Inoculation
With this therapy, individuals are taught coping skills to manage stress and various techniques like muscle relaxation, thought-stopping, role-playing, assertiveness skills and breathing exercises are used.
Type #3: Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy is when a trained therapist puts their client into a hypnotic state and engages in conversation about their traumatic issues. This trance-like situation puts people in a relaxed but awake and aware state, where they can shut out any distractions. The therapist can then work to bring up subconscious thoughts and fears to the surface to reduce their emotional attachment.
By accessing this level of consciousness, they visit deeper thoughts, feelings, habits and past learning and help reframe memories to bring a new perspective. These feelings accessed through hypnotherapy can be crucial to healing.
Type #4: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EDMR)
This requires specialized training and involves taking a client through an 8-step or phase sequence to process and release traumatic memories through bilateral eye movements.
The therapist will begin a session by asking you to think of a specific aspect of traumatic memory in your mind and then focus on their rhythmic hand movement, back and forth, to simulate both sides of the brain. The aim is to reprocess and release memories blocked by the trauma to get relief from:
- Nightmares
- Flashbacks
- Various triggers
Sometimes, sound or tapping is also used, allowing the client to focus on the sound or movement as they remember the upsetting memories.
Type #5: Psychodynamic Therapy
With psychodynamic therapy, a therapist helps you understand the relationship between past and current emotions and behaviours. The unconscious mind influences how we act, think and feel and past events from childhood and past relationships deeply affect our present beliefs and methods for coping.
When you understand these unconscious motives and feelings, you can learn to release them to improve self-esteem, social functioning, and current relationships.
Type #6: Other Therapy
Other popular therapy methods include:
- Art therapy
- Pharmacotherapy
- Narrative therapy
- Music therapy
- Inner child work
- Group therapy
- Accelerated resolution therapy
- Somatic therapy
The benefits of therapy are vast and include:
- Improved coping skills
- Building trust
- Overcome addictions associated with trauma
- Reducing avoidance and fear
- Challenging old beliefs
- Getting validation
- Shift focus from past to present
- Rebuilding your sense of self
Many therapists use various methods in their treatment plan rather than only one modality. They aim to effectively work with their clients to help them resolve their ongoing trauma to live a more meaningful, happy life.
