Dissociation is an outcome for many people who have experienced lengthy and ongoing trauma. This may be as a result of childhood attachment problems, such as neglect, or more serious forms of childhood abuse. In adults, war, torture and imprisonment can lead to dissociative conditions. Memory for events is often affected, as well as a feeling of not being in touch with reality, or even your own body. Time can be lost and it can feel like you aren't fully in control of your mind or behaviour. A severe form of this is Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formally known as Multiple Personality Disorder. This can be extremely disabling for some people, and confusing for family and professionals alike. Achieving a diagnosis on the NHS can be problematic due to the number of clinicians who are not experienced in the assessment and treatment of the condition. Screening and full assessment is available via Cheshire Psychology, as well as ongoing therapy where required.
What is Complex Trauma and who experiences it?
Many people have heard of the term PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - a condition that sometimes follows overwhelming and life threatening events such as a road traffic accident, assault, torture or combat experience. PTSD is diagnosed when someone has been suffering symptoms (severe anxiety, flashbacks to the traumatic event and avoidance of reminders) for longer than four months after the event.
On Monday 6th June 2011 Radio 4's You and Yours Programme highlighted the intention of the Ministry of Defence to support its military personnnel suffering from PTSD ( Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). They are agreeing a three year contract to fund clinicians to provide EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing ) a form of psychotherapy recommended by NICE the National Institute for Clinical Excellence as a suitable treatment for psychological trauma.
The Radio 4 programme interviewed people who had been treated with EMDR, one of whom was the mother of a murder victim who had been unable to move past the horrific details of her daughter's death to rebuild her life.
Causes of trauma
Accidents and other distressing events happen to all of us at some time in our lives. Sometimes we take these in our stride and live through them unscathed, but some events can leave a residue that continues to affect us years later. Some examples of the causes of trauma are given in the list below:
How do trauma therapists help people feel safe when they have experienced terrible and overwhelming events? Where do they begin?
Some clients know they are looking for a place where they feel safe but other clients may not be able to say they feel unsafe due to a lack of confidence. Sometimes traumatised clients will hide their true selves, even in therapy, until they feel it is safe enough to emerge.
Anxiety is a condition which can affect us all at any time. A modest amount of it does no harm, in fact it can serve to keep us out of trouble. But too much anxiety can lead to symptoms such as panic, phobias such as agoraphobia and claustrophobia, stage fright, and so on. In extreme forms it can become paralysing, making it impossible to carry on the normal activities of living, working and relating to people.
In helping many people work through their anxiety in counselling and psychotherapy, I have come to the conclusion that there is always an underlying cause for the anxiety. It may not be easy to find the cause, as it may have happened at a time before the earliest memories, but I believe that the cause always exists. Some typical causes include
EMDR is an integrative psychotherapy practice based upon Adaptive Information Processing. It was originally developed by Francine Shapiro (1995, 2001) to treat PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and other trauma responses but has also been successful in treating anxieties, phobias, and complex grief.
EMDR is an integrative psychotherapy practice based upon Adaptive Information Processing. It was originally developed by Francine Shapiro (1995, 2001) to treat PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and other trauma responses but has also been successful in treating anxieties, phobias, and complex grief.
The Adaptive Information Processing model that underlies EMDR maintains that new experiences pass through a physiological system which processes all new information so that we can adapt to it. This is how we update the internal maps by which we navigate our world.
Many people have heard of the term PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - a condition that sometimes follows overwhelming and life threatening events such as a road traffic accident, assault, torture or combat experience. PTSD is diagnosed when someone has been suffering symptoms (severe anxiety, flashbacks to the traumatic event and avoidance of reminders) for longer than four months after the event.
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