Trauma Recovery
There is a strong tendency in our culture to stigmatize the word trauma, as if it were something to be ashamed of or kept secret. At Transcend Health and Wellness, we use an affirming and non-judgmental definition of trauma.
Trauma is any big or shocking event in childhood or anywhere along one’s life span that was beyond your ability and skills to contend with at the time. It also may be any experience that has left a challenging impression on you to this day regardless of how long ago it was or how trivial we (or others) think it is or should be. Trauma is often described as an experience that was “too much too fast,” or “too little for too long”.
Within this framework, all of us have traumas no matter how loving and functional our childhood and adulthood. Life leaves its mark on us, and we are all healing and evolving, becoming more whole as we move towards and along our life’s path.
Part of our universal experience of being human includes inquires into one’s identity, purpose, family, loved ones, relationships, addictions or compulsions, fears, ways in which we limit ourselves or feel stuck in life, or behaviors, perceptions, and beliefs that are no longer serving us.
What all of these topics have in common is the innate desire to be free, and the movement towards discovery and integration of self and within community.
Whether you have had a specific traumatic event that has led to an official diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS), or find the experiences of the past limiting your ability to be present and thrive by holding you in painful reactive patterns, the modalities at Transcend Health and Wellness can help you.
Contemporary medical research demonstrates that traumatic events cause the brain to prioritize and shunt blood to specific areas associated with survival, thus depriving other areas of the brain. Other physiological effects of trauma include abnormal levels of cortisol, the body’s stress hormone, which can cause weight gain and insomnia, as well as excessive stimulation in the limbic system, our brain emotional center. Hyperarousal and overreacting to seemingly unrelated events is another possible challenge. Common symptoms include pain, depression, Has, anxiety, panic attacks, irritability, etc.
From the perspective of Chinese medicine cosmology, traumas leave their mark at a variety of levels in our being. Acupuncture, herbal medicine, meditation exercises, and other modalities become part of an integrated approach to treating trauma, and can support traditional Western psychiatric and behavioral therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), and EMDR.