Have you ever had something happen to you and said “I can’t believe that just happened!”  If you have, then you’ve experienced the feeling of shock. It can be a negative or a positive feeling, but it can keep you from getting over events unless you’ve dealt with it in a constructive way.

What Is Shock Anyway?

If you look on the internet under the search term of ‘shock’ you get a lot of medical terminology and hits.  This is because most people are concerned with the physical experience of being shocked, and not the emotional experience of shock.  These two can and do often go together, but when people have been traumatized and experience this feeling as well, this can make things more complicated.  Just knowing that any sense of disbelief is often accompanied by a feeling of shock lets you know just how common this experience is, so you’ve got plenty of company as far as that’s concerned.  And in our day and time, there are so many shocking events every day in the news that people are frequently experiencing it to the point of being numbed to it.

What To Do About It

Not all feelings of shock are the same and not all need to be treated.  The main thing to understand is that if you’ve been traumatized and have also had this feeling, not all forms of treatment are created equal.  Numbness is a common response to trauma, but it’s not good to stay numb to the events in your life. A lot of people use EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) to treat trauma, but this method doesn’t typically treat shock as an emotional reaction to an event.  Most people talk about feeling mad, sad, scared, or have other feelings in relation to traumatic events in their life, but very few can identify shock and process it. Image Transformation Therapy (ImTT) is actually a preferable alternative to EMDR in cases of shock, because a trained clinician will be more likely to identify this feeling and specifically help you process it out of your system.  ImTT uses a breathing and visualization protocol to help achieve this and is simpler to use for most people than EMDR.

How I Can Help

I’ve been helping my clients overcome shock for years and am skilled at using ImTT to help people overcome other negative experiences that involve trauma, terror, guilt, and shame, among others.  If you are wanting to find out if I can help you, I hope you will call me at 512-648-3053, or fill out the form below and I will try to contact you to set up a free 15-minute phone consultation to help you decide.  In any case, I certainly hope you do seek out some kind of professional help to counter the effects of trauma and other intensely negative emotional experiences.  You owe it to yourself, your friends, and your family to get the help you need.

About the author:  Scott Kampschaefer, LCSW is a private practice therapist in Frederick, Maryland.  He has an extensive background in working with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder at a clinic for older adults with these disorders in Austin.  He now works with adults and adolescents of all ages in private practice. He is a regular contributor for the Practice of the Practice website.

Visit our page on trauma therapy to learn more about how Scott can help you with trauma.