How Meditation Can Help Manage Symptoms of Trauma

Meditation offers practitioners powerful benefits, yet many people are confused as to what exactly those benefits are. In a nutshell, meditation focuses attention in a deliberate manner, taking you from a state of noisy mental chatter to calm and quiet inner peace. And isn’t that something most of us could use?

While meditation has been practiced for thousands of years in the east and – more recently – west as a way to grow spiritually, modern medicine is now finally extolling the numerous health benefits that meditation offers.

Meditation has the ability to reduce stress hormones by calming the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems. These systems are what activate our main panic responses (“fight,” “flight,” “freeze,” or “friend”) to stressful situations. Because of this, meditation can be a wonderful coping strategy for those suffering with trauma.

Is Meditation Better than Medication

Historically, people battling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have been given medication to help alleviate unwanted and unpleasant symptoms. But a new study has found that regular practice of meditation enables some active duty service members battling PTSD to reduce, or even eliminate their need of psychotropic medications and to better control their often-debilitating symptoms.

This is great news for service men and women, and anyone who is battling PTSD. Not only can meditation help to calm your nerves and rewire your brain, it can also reduce the risk of developing negative side effects to many psychotropic medications used to treat PTSD and anxiety disorders. Beyond memory loss and erectile dysfunction, one of the biggest side effects of these medications is depression. That’s the last thing a person suffering from PTSD needs.

How to Begin a Meditation Practice

If you are suffering from the effects of trauma and would like to try meditation, here are some steps you can take to get started:

Find a Group Practice

If you’re completely new to meditation, you may want to join a group meditation course that meets every week. You can usually find groups in your local area through online communities such as Meetup.com.

Be Open Minded

Meditation has long been associated with new age movements. But you would be amazed at the different kinds of people that now practice meditation. If you tend to be a skeptical person, try to have an open mind as you begin your practice.

Be Patient

It’s called a practice for a reason. You won’t “get” meditation overnight. You’ll have to keep at it before it becomes natural for you and you really reap the benefits. Try to have patience and just keep at it.

If you or a loved one are suffering from trauma symptoms and would like to speak with someone who can help, please get in touch with us. We would be happy to discuss the treatment options that would work best for you.

Sources:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201601/meditation-reduces-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-symptoms

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201306/how-does-meditation-reduce-anxiety-neural-level

https://psychcentral.com/news/2018/01/13/transcendental-meditation-shown-to-ease-veterans-ptsd/131167.html

Overcoming Trauma: The Power to Transform

Traumatic experiences—old or new—can upend our worlds in so many different ways. The emotional and physiological effects of trauma are challenging in and of themselves, and often they create an escalating feedback loop that can become all-encompassing and overwhelming.

When the effects of trauma start to feel like dominant forces in our lives, it can feel as if the trauma is more than just an experience or experiences we’ve had . . . it can start to feel like who we are.  Experiences like sleep disturbance, generalized anxiety, a heightened startle response, rumination, irritability, sadness, physical aches and pains, suicidal thinking, decreased enjoyment of previously cherished activities, anger outbursts, and a wide range of other symptoms can result in the feeling that we are a different person from who we were before the trauma occurred.

It’s true that trauma can have significant effects on the brain and the body, and can meaningfully alter certain physiological processes that are inextricably linked to emotional and mental experiences and states. However, the same malleability that enables trauma-related changes to take place also enables healing and recovery to be achievable.

An individual who has had a bicycle accident and broken a leg usually thinks of their leg as being broken, but rarely will consider themselves to be broken by virtue of the impacted limb. They can separate the injured leg from their “self” and they usually have decent confidence that the broken leg A) is completely repairable; and B) doesn’t indicate any kind of greater implication for their individual being.

It’s hard for most people to consider trauma as a similar sort of “injury” to a broken leg, however, because the internal nature of the emotional and psychological aspects are a lot harder to get some perspective on because they are internal and therefore harder to point to. It’s a little bit like wearing those purple tinted sunglasses without realizing you have them on . . . you would just take it at face value that everything looks a little purple. Similarly, it may be hard for individuals experiencing the aftereffects of trauma to “see” that the experiences they are having are a function of the traumatic experience on the body and brain, not just The Way Things Are or Who I Am.

There are incredibly effective, well-researched, evidenced-based therapy protocols for treating trauma so that symptoms can be identified as such and the individual can regain their sense of themselves and their identity independent of the traumatic event. Typically, trauma-specific psychotherapies such as Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) are paired with medication protocols so that individuals have an opportunity to get the maximum net effect out of their treatment.

CPT is an evidenced-based protocol that was developed and researched with active duty military personnel who experienced conflict trauma, and victims of assault. CPT is a 12-session protocol facilitated by a trained therapist. The goal of CPT is to help patients identify the aspects of the trauma that have created “stuck points”, which are the parts of the experience that the individual is having the most trouble coping with and creating the most disruptive thoughts, feelings, and secondary trauma symptoms. EMDR is another evidenced-based treatment for trauma, in which the certified EMDR therapist helps patients use gentle sensory experiences (such as watching an electronic light sequence or soft tapping) to defuse trauma triggers. And ART

There are additional trauma therapies available, some of which have more empirically validated (scientific) evidenced behind them than others. If you or someone you know are considering engaging in trauma therapy, make sure that you are receiving treatment from a licensed practitioner who has appropriate certifications in the specialty they are providing. Licensure standards vary from state to state, and some certifications are national or even international. You can do a quick google search to identify the kinds of licensure trauma therapists need to hold in your state and then verify the good standing of any professional’s license through your state’s professional licensing/regulatory agency.

In addition to state licensing as a therapist, you can check with organizations like EMDRIA (EMDR International Association, https://emdria.site-ym.com/search/custom.asp?id=2590 ) or the CPT page (https://cptforptsd.com/cpt-provider-roster/ ), which are two reputable organizations with whom some certified practitioners choose to be affiliated. Not being affiliated with these organizations does not necessarily mean that a provider has not been certified in these areas.

Professional trauma treatments delivered by experienced, trained professionals are highly effective, especially when combined with appropriate medication therapies that help “reset” the body’s flight-or-fight system which frequently becomes hyperactive after a traumatic experience. If you’re not sure where to start, ask your PCP or your therapist about seeking professional trauma care in your community that is appropriate for your needs. Transforming the pain of trauma is more possible than ever before.

Hope and Healing After Trauma

The human psyche has a tremendous capacity for recovery and growth. Recovering from a traumatic experience requires that the painful emotions be thoroughly processed. If these emotions are not dealt with directly, the distressing feelings and troubling events replay over and over in the course of a lifetime, creating a condition known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In the wake of crisis it is possible to learn and grow at rates 100 times faster than at any other time, because there is a door of opportunity. Growth can go at warp speed in every domain of life.

You can learn much that is deep and profound. You do this by interacting and by working together on the meaning of the difficult experience. Those who have the courage to become part of the trauma tribe, to experience and share their pain, or to help them overcome their pain, also have the opportunity to share their growth. Everyone who goes through this process ends up better, stronger, smarter, deeper, and more connected.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an integrative psychotherapy approach that has been extensively researched and proven effective for the treatment of trauma. EMDR is a set of standardized protocols that incorporates elements from many different treatment approaches. EMDR therapy has helped millions of people of all ages relieve many types of psychological stress.

The goal of EMDR therapy is to process completely the experiences that are causing problems, and to include new ones that are needed for full health. “Processing” does not mean talking about it. “Processing” means setting up a learning state that will allow experiences that are causing problems to be “digested” and stored appropriately in your brain. That means that what is useful to you from an experience will be learned, and stored with appropriate emotions in your brain, and be able to guide you in positive ways in the future. The inappropriate emotions, beliefs, and body sensations will be discarded. Negative emotions, feelings and behaviors are generally caused by unresolved earlier experiences that are pushing you in the wrong directions. The goal of EMDR therapy is to leave you with the emotions, understanding, and perspectives that will lead to healthy and useful behaviors and interactions. The amount of time to complete EMDR treatment will depend upon the history of the client.

Well Life Therapy, LLC can work with you to resolve, heal and process traumatic experiences and the anxiety, distress and depression that may ensue. Contact us today and we can get you started on your own journey of hope and healing.