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INSIDE OUT COUNSELLING
Anxiety / Trauma Counselling
TRTP - Trauma Therapy
Christian Faith Counselling
ABOUT TRAUMA
Trauma is not an event. Trauma is our ongoing response to traumatic events.)
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Trauma is stored in our unconscious mind and in our body. Our whole being continues to respond to the trauma, as if it is happening NOW, as if it is still going on.
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We are often not consciously aware that we’re still responding to past events. We just experience the physical and emotional responses of our system being continuously triggered in the Fight Flight Freeze high stress response – in the hyperaroused Fight Flight response of anxiety, or the shut down survival Freeze response of depression.
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When we hear the word ‘trauma’, many people immediately think of war, torture, refugees, emergency services and, perhaps, natural disasters.
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However, there are many other forms of trauma. There are big ‘T’ traumas and small ‘t’ traumas. There are catastrophic and more everyday traumas.
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We achieve the best understanding when we take away the word ‘trauma’ altogether. When we replace it with ‘distressing events’ we get the broader view – the school teacher who humiliated us in front of the class, the critical parent, the bullying sibling, harassment at work, the medical diagnosis…
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In a system that’s out of balance, these unresolved distressing events can build up within us over time. They are accumulative. They can build up like the pressure in a balloon – that distressing event when I was 4 years old, that one when I was 9, when I was 12, 17, 26, 34…
There is only so much stress that can be put on a system before it cracks...
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The TRTP model views anxiety, depression, PTSD etc. as symptoms of a system, out of balance, that is under too much pressure.
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What sits behind these issues, is dreadfulness that has happened
in the past that has not been stored properly in memory.
These unresolved events are instead stored in our
unconscious and in our body. They continue to play out within us.
Our body continues to behave as if those events are still happening.
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We’re often not consciously aware of this. It can all go on outside
of our conscious engagement.
TRTP, The Richards Trauma Process, is a therapy that was created
in order to resolve trauma-related issues.
It resolves the trauma, the distressing events where they are stored
– in the unconscious and in the body.
