Trauma Informed Practice: Benefits of Getting Help from a Trauma Informed Counselor

What is trauma?

Trauma is what happens inside a person, restricting their ability to do what they want and know what they should do. This article will explain briefly the pathology of trauma and ultimately the benefits of getting help from a trauma-informed practice.

Trauma can be relative to the meaning and interpretation a person gives to their experiences. Depending on how the trauma is downloaded into a person’s brain and body, the trauma survivor may not remember details or even have a narrative. Science explains the physiology and pathology of trauma.

God-given defense mechanisms

Christian practitioners understand that God amazingly designed humans to survive. The minds of children lack the capacity to store the trauma so they will disassociate and leave their bodies. This type of trauma puts children on a path where by God’s grace they may find healing and realignment through trauma-informed practice.

Trauma-informed practice will understand trauma soon after meeting someone who is currently experiencing or has experienced unresolved trauma during their lifetime and is currently experiencing painful emotional or physical symptoms that are ruining their lives, relationships, and ability to maintain healthy connections.

The reason that trauma is so painful for the survivor and those involved with the traumatized person is that while the person can appear stable in certain situations, be highly educated, and achieve pretty amazing accomplishments, at the same time they may experience inner turmoil that results in a loss of connection with others and in intimate relationships.

The traumatized person creates trauma-drama that does not make sense to others nor even always to themselves, since they may not have a narrative or a solution. Traumatic experiences are painful for the Christian who is genuinely trying to live out their faith but continually experiencing spiritual bypass, feelings of failure, shame, and distress in relationships with others.

Trauma-informed practice will provide a safe space where the trauma survivor will eventually feel cared for, seen, heard, and loved, and will enable them to open up and find the answers and a narrative for the storm inside them. The trauma-informed practice will also help the survivor understand the power of understanding trans-generational trauma, epigenetics, and staying rooted in God’s word.

The pathology of trauma response

The Christian trauma-informed therapist understands the truth in Deuteronomy stating that the sins of the fathers pass to the third and fourth generations of those who hate God, but will find freedom in the promise that He will bless a thousand generations of those who honor Him.

Trauma-informed practice explains that we were born into our parents’ sins (and the level of forgiveness they experienced), showing how just deep the well was from which they drew in parenting us.

Through the use of psychoeducation, you will learn the pathology of trauma and the amazing trauma survival mechanism the Lord built into you. You will come to understand the parts of the brain and its trauma response where the corpus callosum – the connector of the two sides of the brain – shuts down during the traumatic event stopping the right side (which captures the emotion of experiences) from connecting with the left side (which captures the narrative).

This information will help explain why some people have a narrative of a frightening event with no emotion connected to the experience, or contrarily, why a person may not have a narrative or any memory associated with a traumatic event, but instead experience strong, intrusive somatic sensations in the body.

The unwanted symptoms are what M. Scott Peck, MD describes as God’s grace to the individual of an illness deep within – a message from the unconscious. These sensations in the body present as symptoms such as anxiety and depression, trust issues, and rage which manifest themselves in intrusive trauma responses, low self-worth, shame, eating disorders, nightmares, OCD, health problems and disease, and a deep feeling that all is not right even in the best of times.

How trauma-informed therapy can help

Trauma-informed practice helps the survivors ground themselves in the fact that they are having a normal reaction to non-normal experiences. You may hear phrases such as “if the amount of emotion exceeds the circumstances, then history entered the equation” or “if it’s hysterical, it’s historical.”

This is where the expertise of a trauma-informed practitioner will identify the specific modality to begin treating trauma specific to the client whom they have come to understand, and with whom they have traveled in the space created through therapy. The trauma-informed practice is familiar with attachment theory, EMDR, and TF-CBT, and is not merely limited to Lifespan Integration therapies.

Finally, the trauma-informed practice will understand the intellectual, spiritual, and emotional effects of self-protection, walls built around individuals’ hearts, and the explanation and ramifications of unhealed trauma which is beautifully outlined and explained in The Wounded Heart by Dan Allender.

Allender points out that the only thing more heinous than childhood trauma is what it brings into adulthood, where the sin done to us becomes our sin, infecting how we relate to others whom we connect with out of brokenness, and the next generation.

This explains why individuals can experience great achievements in areas of expertise, teach and mentor others, and impart wisdom they have gained, while at the same time failing to experience the mind-body connection.

Knowledge gained is internalized, but stays in the brain or gets pushed down on top of the trauma deep within the high-functioning traumatized person, where the symptoms become somatic in nature, or expressed through the trauma responses interpersonally, causing painful life experiences, and disrupting connection with others.

Further, t-he Christian trauma-informed practitioner understands the words of Isaiah:

Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of his servant? Let the one who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on their God. But now, all you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, o, walk in the light of your fires and of the torches you have set ablaze. This is what you shall receive from my hand: You will lie down in torment. – Isaiah 50:10-11, NIV

Trauma is awful and it changes a person and robs individuals, couples, and families of connection, true intimacy, and the joy that life holds for each of us like an unopened gift.

The trauma-informed practice understands that traumatized people come when they are ready to begin the awesome and sometimes strenuous journey of putting pieces together and discovering meaning in their life and experiences (which have sometimes been in reaction to trauma) and bringing alignment in order to experience true inner peace and the gift of experiencing God’s plan for their lives and relationships.

My name is Pamela Gallagher, and I am an LMHC working with the Seattle Christian Counseling community. My practice is currently in the Spokane Valley office on Mondays and Tuesdays from 9:30-2:30 and in Spokane on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9:30-2:30. I also see clients in the evening, Saturday mornings, and virtually as requested.