Healing Trauma

Is some traumatic experience from your past negatively impacting your well being, even if this trauma happened many years ago? If so, you may be experiencing symptoms of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). PTSD is a normal response to an abnormal and overwhelming experience. PTSD can result from all kinds of trauma, from a car accident, to physical, emotional or sexual abuse.

Do you relate to any of the following:

  • Do you re-experience the trauma in intrusive images, feelings or nightmares?
  • Do you find yourself on constant “red alert”, and at the same time feel detached from others and emotionally numb?
  • Do you have difficulty falling and staying asleep?
  • o you avoid people or experiences that may trigger the traumatic memories/feelings?

When you have been living with these symptoms, it can feel as if you will never feel normal again, however if you are willing to seek proper treatment, you will be able to overcome these symptoms, and move on with your life.

Treatment for PTSD

EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) is the primary psychotherapeutic approach I take in helping my clients overcome their trauma symptoms. EMDR is an extensively researched method of psychotherapy that has been proven very effective in the treatment of PTSD. While the length of treatment for trauma can vary depending on the nature and severity of the problem, many of my clients have reported significant reduction in their symptoms during our first EMDR session.

EMDR works from the assumption that we all have an innate capacity to heal from emotionally painful events, but this capacity can become temporarily ineffective as a result of severe or chronic traumas. In short, traumatic events by their nature can overwhelm our ability to process the information. The traumatic experience, fear, overwhelm, and negative beliefs related to the trauma get “frozen” in an isolated part of our brain. EMDR helps “unfreeze” these memories, feelings and beliefs, so that they can be processed and transformed by the rest of our brain system.

Once our inate capacity to heal is unlocked, then freedom from the effects of the trauma is finally experienced.

For more information or to schedule an initial appointment, please contact Karen at:
Karenmotan [at] sbcglobal.net, or by calling (415) 460-9117.

healing trauma
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
© Mary Oliver