TRAUMA

TRAUMA

Some people have had experiences in the past which were so awful, so difficult and so upsetting, that no matter what they tried to do to get over them, from medicine to counselling, nothing proved successful in helping them to allow the past to return to and remain where, it belongs – in the past.

In addition to offering longer term psychotherapeutic exploration and understanding of the existential, spiritual and psycho-biological impact of such traumatic experience in terms of how it subsequently can affect everything from sleeping and eating patterns to self-esteem, depression, and addiction, The Surrey Centre can also provide those who need it with a modern, evidenced-based treatment called EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing).

EMDR can be particularly helpful when a person continues to be haunted by intrusive memories, flashbacks, and/or nightmares which prevent her or him from moving forward in their lives and letting the past go.  In contrast to the traumatic experience still troubling them, and over which the traumatised person had no control, in EMDR they are completely in charge of the process involved in targeting those memories, and with the therapist’s assistance, working through their feelings as they arise and reconnecting emotionally with what happened. This reprocessing, as it is called, of what happened previously enables the person to render the memories and/or dysfunctional ways of coping with them, less distressing in the here and now.

The effects of trauma may vary for each individual but they are usually very stressful, frightening and if they are not dealt with, can cause lasting effects including low self-esteem, low self-worth, alcoholism, drug addiction, depression and anxiety. Prolonged, untreated trauma can also manifest itself as ‘Post Traumatic Stress Disorder’.  Individuals can relive the traumatic event through flashbacks and nightmares and these can develop straight after the event but often it is months or years later that they relive the trauma. PTSD can be successfully treated, even when it develops many years after a traumatic event.