Trauma & PTSD Treatment
Could You Have PTSD Or Post-Traumatic Stress?
Have you experienced or witnessed a life-threatening event such as a car accident, natural disaster, or sexual abuse/assault? If you’ve experienced a violent or otherwise traumatic event—perhaps due to military combat, assault, or emotional/physical abuse—you may be experiencing post-traumatic stress.
Do you have frequent thoughts or recurring nightmares about something that happened to you or someone you love? The painful emotions created by a traumatic experience—such as fear, anxiety, anger, grief, or overwhelming sadness—may reappear without warning. Even if your trauma was many years ago, the same emotions may quickly resurface when you encounter situations that are reminders of your experience.
Do you startle easily or often feel anxious, paranoid, irritable, or hostile? If so, you may avoid people or situations that intensify these emotions. And when you do engage with the world, you may be hypervigilant, habitually looking for potential threats or establishing an escape plan. For example, you may situate yourself close to an exit or keep it within eyesight in restaurants or other public places.
If you’re still struggling with the unhealed emotions of past trauma, you may feel like no one understands you. Your partner, friends, or colleagues may wonder why you’re so jumpy, seem unusually aggressive, or tend to overreact to certain situations. You may have even tried talk therapy, medications, alcohol, or other drugs to alleviate your symptoms only to have them return again and again.
Fortunately, healing is possible for you!! With the help of a qualified, knowledgeable, and experienced therapist, you can leave the painful memories and emotions associated with past trauma where they belong: in the past.
Most People Experience Trauma At Some Point
PTSD is both common and extremely debilitating. Fortunately, the understanding of trauma has advanced significantly in recent years.
In the 1960s and 1970s, post-traumatic stress was viewed as a condition exclusively affecting military veterans, and as such, it was commonly referred to as “shell shock.” It’s true that combat vets are much more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress than civilians given their frequent exposure to violence, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. In the years following the Vietnam war though, researchers and mental health professionals have come to understand that a wide variety of life events can cause trauma.
More than half of U.S. adults will experience trauma at some point in their lives. Most people would easily identify something like witnessing a murder as trauma. But relatively benign events can also be traumatic for some people. For example, while one child may view getting lost as a fun opportunity to explore the neighborhood, another may feel so incredibly unsafe and abandoned that the experience can lead to post-traumatic stress.
According to the National Center for PTSD, some trauma survivors—as many as 8 out of every 100 Americans—will actually go on to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an acute form of post-traumatic stress. Fortunately, the prevalence of the disorder has garnered the attention of the world’s leading mental health professionals in recent decades, leading to the development of increasingly effective treatments.
Brainspotting: The Best Treatment For PTSD
Dan Lundy, LPC, a therapist here at The Southern Colorado Hope For Healing Institute, knows firsthand that many traditional psychological interventions for PTSD, such as talk therapy, aren’t always effective. For some of his early clients, talking repeatedly about a traumatic event didn’t help, and often made things worse. Disheartened and frustrated by his inability to help clients like these, Dan started investigating alternative trauma therapies and discovered a miraculous new treatment called Brainspotting.
The foundation of Brainspotting is the idea that you can access the memories and unhealed emotional wounds stored in a person’s subcortical brain by stimulating that person’s visual field, all without the need for verbal communication. Therapists certified in this protocol use spatial cues to guide their clients to the visual locations that correspond with their traumatic memories, triggering their brains’ innate ability to process and heal the emotions associated with past trauma.
When Dan first heard about Brainspotting at a conference, he was extremely skeptical of the idea that waving a wand in front of a person’s face could have any bearing on their mental health. Then a colleague told him about the rapid healing they experienced after a single Brainspotting session. That revelation piqued his interest. Years later, after trying it himself, studying it extensively, and using the technique on hundreds of patients, Dan came to regard Brainspotting as the most effective form of trauma treatment available.
At the SoCo Hope For Healing Institute, we use Brainspotting to help our clients process and release the emotional residues of past trauma. Brainspotting accesses such deeply buried memories and emotions that some clients have even recalled emotional wounds from childhood that they had previously forgotten, facilitating even deeper healing than they expected.
One past client initially had so much trauma-induced anxiety that he could barely leave the house. After receiving Brainspotting treatments, he’s now working, taking better care of his loved ones, and making healthier life choices. Brainspotting gave him a chance at a normal life by eliminating his nightmares, reducing his anxiety levels, and restoring his trust and confidence in others. It can do the same for you.
As you consider trauma treatment options, you may wonder. . .
Do I have to talk about the event associated with my trauma?
One of the things that make Brainspotting such a revolutionary form of PTSD therapy is that it accommodates the preferences of a wide variety of clients. If you feel compelled to verbalize your emotions and past experiences during our sessions, you’re fully welcome to do so. On the other hand, if talking about your underlying issues is too painful, you can still get the full benefit of Brainspotting in our sessions without the need for verbalization.
Is Brainspotting a legitimate form of trauma treatment? It sounds like some kind of voodoo magic.
Scientists still have much to learn about the mechanisms behind Brainspotting, which was originally discovered less than 15 years ago. That said, numerous peer-reviewed studies have confirmed Brainspotting’s effectiveness as a PTSD treatment.
In a 2016 study, for example, The Newtown-Sandy Hook Community Foundation asked school shooting survivors what types of therapy they had tried and how effective they had been. Over a dozen different types of therapeutic intervention, including talk therapy, equine therapy, EMDR, aromatherapy, and many more were evaluated. By a wide margin, Brainspotting was the most effective treatment.
Why haven’t I heard of Brainspotting before?
Unfortunately, talk therapy is still considered the gold standard and there are very few Brainspotting-certified therapists in the Colorado Springs area. Even if you encountered a traumatic experience in service to your country as a military vet, you may not have access to a therapist certified in Brainspotting treatment (or even effective trauma treatment) through the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.
We Can Help You Heal
The Southern Colorado Hope for Healing Institute offers an experienced, compassionate staff certified in Brainspotting. We serve adults and children coping with past trauma in Pueblo and Colorado Springs. For a free, 15-minute consultation or to schedule your first appointment, call us at 1-719-271-6677.
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Testimonials
“I’m feeling good, steady progress with BSP in addressing my past and current PTSD/chaos. I’m now feeling more confidence and enjoy the peaceful and relaxed feelings I get following my sessions. I’m sober now over 160 days!!!
-Mandy J.
Colorado Springs
“I’ve had anxiety and sadness most of my life and feel bad about what I did to an animal. After 2 Brainspotting sessions I feel great…no more sadness or suicidal ideations.”
-Garrett F. 11 y.o.
Colorado Springs