How Trauma Informed Care Can Help You

Many people will experience “traumatic events” in life. Trauma can inflict both a psychological and a physiological wound. Trauma is a response to a real, or a perceived, threat to your life or observing serious harm or death to another person.

Exposure to trauma often feels like it can take your breath and leave you reeling. Trauma Informed Care seeks to provide you an awareness of your feelings, reactions, and recovery as you begin to interact with other people.

What is Trauma Informed Care?

If you are looking for a counselor, be sure to find someone who understands the importance of compassion and empathy because these are essential to healing. Trauma Informed Care consists of meeting with a counselor who will work with you where you are at and help guide you through your trauma recovery.

Trauma Informed Care is more than something to accomplish. It a way of life and thinking. The foundation of this new perspective is recognizing that there may be many experiences which have caused trauma in one’s life. Every traumatic experience impacts you and leaves a mark, disturbing your feeling of safety.

A Trauma Informed Care approach is made up of several key steps according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (2018). A few of the key steps are recognizing the widespread impact of trauma, understanding and identifying the symptoms of trauma, and committing to develop a greater understanding of trauma and implementing your knowledge in practice. (SAMHSA, 2018.)

Who Would Benefit from Trauma Informed Care and Why?

Trauma Informed Care has a lot of benefits. In life, one of our deepest needs is to be seen, heard, and understood. Trauma Informed Care begins by illuminating your life and helping you understand the trauma you’ve experienced. Being invited on a journey of growth and recovery is a huge benefit for those suffering from trauma.

According to the Kaiser Permanente study on Adverse Childhood Experiences, known as ACE’s, 25% of people will experience an event that qualifies as traumatic. Unfortunately, many events go unnoticed unless they are extreme cases like extreme violence or a serious accident.

What can complicate things further is that traumatic experiences can take place in childhood and individuals can be unaware of the impact of these early experiences. Trauma Informed Care attempts to help people process their traumatic experiences in their own unique way.

Since each person is different, Trauma Informed Care will be unique for each person and, thus, can benefit everyone. If you are looking for a counselor, it is important to connect with them on a relational level. Some key things to look for is someone who can empathize with you and your needs.

One of the most common symptoms of trauma is loneliness.

Traumatic experiences can make you feel isolated and misunderstood. So finding a mental health professional who understands what you are experiencing can help reveal the distortions being caused by your experiences. The first step in your recovery process is having someone like this to show you compassion and listen to your story.

Compassion is one of the key elements of Trauma Informed Care. Being able to show compassion to yourself and others is important for moving forward. As you grow aware of others’ needs and concerns, you will be able to have greater empathy for them. Trauma Informed Care also communicates to others, “I see you’re hurting, I’m sensitive to your pain, and will guide you, as you are ready, to find your strength to overcome the past and find hope for tomorrow.”

Hope is really important because it shows you that you can make it. Things can change. The goal of Trauma Informed Care is to slowly restore your sense of reality and self-confidence. While your traumatic experiences are a permanent part of your life, you do not need to be defined by these experiences. You can move beyond them and forward in your own story.

What Impact Does Trauma Informed Care Have?

As mentioned above, Trauma Informed Care embraces the traumatic experiences and seeks to reveal distortions caused by trauma. The most common distortions produced by trauma are feelings of fear, shame, guilt, and anger. These four are the “four horsemen” of trauma.

If left unchecked, these feelings can destroy you and your sense of reality. By identifying these feelings, you can begin to lessen the power they have over you. Growing in awareness of these distortions is an important step on the road to recovery and relief.

Trauma Informed Care seeks to understand and learn from what you are experiencing emotionally. Trauma can produce a variety of emotions, which can make it difficult to identify trauma as the source of the issue.

According to Psychology Today (2017), a Trauma Informed Care approach reveals the complex and varied emotional responses to trauma. By starting with empathy, sensitivity, and a hopeful message, you can break through the varied emotions and get to the heart of the problem.

Trying to overcome trauma can sometimes feel impersonal and sterile. If you go to the doctor and explain that you can’t sleep and feel down, you may be given something to help you sleep. This may result in nightmares and grogginess caused by the new medicine.

The problem is that medicine can’t fix the problem. Instead, you need connection with others and space to process the experiences. A Trauma Informed Care approach is predicated on a foundation of care and communication to help you deal with the lingering effects of trauma in your life.

One of the most important steps is creating space for someone to diffuse the pressure or pent up energy related to the experience. It’s easy to say, “I’m okay” when you really are not. And everyone recovering from trauma will need space to express themselves and not be okay.

Trauma Informed Care builds resilience for people recovering from prolonged trauma. At the end of the day, this approach seeks to connect trauma survivors with professionals who want to treat them holistically, consider past traumatic events, and understand how individuals respond to trauma. Rather than trying to just deal with symptoms or apply a one-size-fits-all method, this approach meets people where they are at to begin the recovery process.

A trauma survivor left untreated will live a life clouded by feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness, and anxiety about what is to come and what has already happened. But this doesn’t have to be where the story ends. There is hope in the person and work of Jesus Christ. He offers us hope and an opportunity to be healed and restored.

A Christian Perspective on Trauma Informed Care

“Lord, help!” they cried in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He led them from the darkness and deepest gloom; he snapped their chains. Let them praise the Lord for his great love and for the wonderful things he has done for them. For he broke down their prison gates of bronze; he cut apart their bars of iron.

Psalm 107:13-16

Trauma Informed Care looks to answer the call Jesus gives us to minister to and care for the brokenhearted. When we walk through the “valley of the shadow of death” (Psalm 23), we may experience trauma.

God knows this and is filled with compassion for us. He sees every tear shed, whether from your eyes or in your heart. He is always with you throughout the good and bad experiences of life.

The great poet Mary Fishback Powers, who is credited with the poem “Footprints in the Sand,” writes of a dream walking on the beach with God. In the poem, she depicts one set of footprints walking through the darkest season of life and cries out, questioning how God could let her go through this alone.

God answers her saying in the hardest moments of life the single set of footprints on the beach were from when he carried her. It’s a powerful reminder of God’s remarkable faithfulness to us in the most painful moments of life.

Trauma Informed Care is a way for Christians to live out God’s call for us to bring love and light to the brokenhearted. In Lamentations 3:21-24 we read, “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’”

Sometimes it will feel like nobody can understand your pain and that nobody is there for you. It’s important to face those feelings because they are real and a part of your story. But it’s important to not lose hope in these moments because God is still there even in our despair. In Isaiah 41:10 “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

God’s heart is to restore the hearts of the brokenhearted. All throughout Scripture we find references to God’s love for the downcast and broken. There are over 60 places in Scripture that speak of God’s care for people affected by trauma and his faithfulness to them.

It’s really important to remember that God loves us and gives us a spirit of peace and hope. Trauma Informed Care focuses on your whole person, including understanding how God sees you.

Throughout the Scriptures, we see Jesus experience heartache. For example, when he went to the tomb of Lazarus. Even though he knew he would heal Lazarus, Jesus wept, experiencing deep loss and sadness.

This moment reveals the deep compassion God extends to those going through pain and difficulty. He truly is near to the brokenhearted. Like it says in Psalm 145:18, “The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.”

Inviting God into the process of Trauma Informed Care makes sense because he is the Great Counselor who desires for us to experience freedom from our trials. We believe that the Lord will bring full restoration and fulfill his promises.

Hope Begins Today

Getting support as you seek to overcome traumatic experience is a powerful step toward healing you can make. Your past pain and experiences do not need to define your reality or where you are going. Don’t let trauma rob you of joy, leaving you with anxiety and fear about the future.

Trauma Informed Counseling seeks to develop compassion for yourself, give you a deep empathy for others, and help you understand how God sees and loves you. If you want to recover and move beyond trauma, choosing this approach is a decision that can help you navigate the rest of your life.

The first step to receive Trauma Informed Counseling is finding a trained, certified trauma professional who can begin leading you down the road to recovery. They will be committed to providing this specialized sort of care.

They want to make sure their clients are seen, heard, and known, so they can tackle the challenges caused by trauma. It won’t be an easy journey, but through it, you will learn how much God loves you, even in the midst of your brokenness where you feel the most shame.

Contact us to schedule a risk-free evaluation today to begin your road to recovery from trauma and discover God’s leading for your life. Your well-being is worth every second and penny devoted to counseling. By dedicating time, effort, and money to your recovery, you will be able to get out from underneath the weight of trauma and find peace in Christ.