Trauma

The number of people who have experienced psychological or physical traumas is high in every social stratum. Especially psychological abuse is often not taken seriously, as it is invisible and does not leave any visible marks. Sexual abuse during childhood, rape, verbal abuse and manipulation in relationships with destructive or paranoid narcissists, the loss of beloved ones, accidents, wars and natural disasters are only a few examples of fate that can happen to us. It takes great therapeutic experience to avoid re-traumatizing.

Trauma belongs in the hands of specialists. At the CALDA Practice, you are in the right hands.

I define trauma in very broad terms. A trauma is an inundation of the organism through stimuli across all our sensory channels. Be it then repetitive over a long period of time, that is, chronic, or a one-time event. With a PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder), our brain is momentarily unable to correctly process all these sensory impressions and information, meaning, to store it in the conscious, explicit memory, in the cortex. Instead, individual fragments are split up and remain stuck in the unconscious, implicit memory. This primarily covers our limbic system, old brain portions such as the hippocampus and the amygdala.

For this reason, these contents can be triggered; there are both conscious as well as unconscious triggers. These cannot be controlled or regulated. We often see flashbacks and so-called hyperarousal. On the one hand, we revert to the emotional state from the time of trauma for a few seconds or longer. On the other hand, our head is so full of thoughts that we can barely concentrate on the everyday.

Not everyone develops trauma disorders. This depends on the genetic predisposition and the experiences that we have in the course of life. Even personally witnessing trauma, such as someone else being traumatised or simply hearing about it can be sufficient. This functions through mirror neurons.

Especially severe or repeated or continual traumatisation, for example, as a result of and mental, physical or sexual violence experiences or even experiences or physical or emotional neglect in childhood can cause significant impairment to experiencing, thinking, feeling and even interacting with the environment. Complex PTSD to disassociative identity disorder can result. In outpatient therapy, they usually require several years, and in stationary therapy, several months.

Mental trauma are more subtle and therefore no less dangerous than physical trauma. These wounds cannot be seen from the outside. For this reason, the affected individuals are often not taken seriously by professionals. In addition, there are few professional, experienced trauma therapists. If the client expresses traumatisation, it is not rare for it to spread to helplessness, overload or ignorance. People prefer not to broach these “taboo topics”.

Type I Trauma

A type I trauma is a unique, terrible event. This includes, for example, accidents or experiences with violence, war or disasters. The recollections with type I trauma are usually clear and lively.

Type II Trauma

Type II trauma refers to a chronic, longer-lasting traumatisation, such as captivity, torture, repeated sexual, physical or emotional violence. With Type II Trauma, sometimes only scattered, vague memories exist, usually also dependent on the age when these events took place. The affected individuals tend towards dissociations. Heightened negative basic convictions often exist.

The longer lasting traumatisation of type II have overall a higher risk of PTSD developed than the one-time traumatisation of Type I. Furthermore, an interpersonal, intentional trauma caused by people (for example, violence, torture) usually has further-reaching consequences than if it is an accidental, coincidental, unintentional trauma (for example, natural disaster, car accident).

Trans-generational Trauma

The symptom carrier is found in one of the following generations, e.g. the grandchild with traumatisation in the grandmother.

Comorbidity

In approx. 90% of borderline personality disorders and eating disorders, you can find trauma in the individual’s past. Eating disorders are today included among the groups of addictions (anorexia). We believe differently. With borderline personality too, we go so far as to ask whether it is not one of the many trauma phenomena and therefore belongs to this group. The majority of sufferers are women, highly-intelligent, internally strong women who are not aware of their strength. They are often good at disassociating themselves. It is a quality that has allowed them to survive in the past but is now no longer helpful. This prevents them from activating and experiencing their feelings in therapy.

Inward tension spirals lead to auto-aggressive actions, self-harm with scissors or knives, pulling out hair, etc. Binge eating followed by vomiting is also highly self-harmful and destructive.

Trauma-specific Psychotherapy

Through the direct use of trauma techniques and processing core trauma, the split fragments can be reassociated again, integrated and forwarded to the explicit memory. I primarily work with clinical hypnosis and EMDR, with complex PTSD also with the Enactive trauma therapy. With eating disorders, many disorder-specific cognitive behavioural therapy elements such as exposure in vivo, food lists, work with the distorted body image, etc. are added. With borderline personality disorder, skills training, mindfulness training and elements of DBT (dialectical behaviour therapy) are used.

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