If you have experienced a traumatic event and worry about how you will get over it, you are like millions of others in the same group.  The tendency to relive horrific events and consequently avoid reminders of them is a hallmark of PTSD, but only an effective trauma therapy like Image Transformation Therapy (ImTT) can identify what makes them so complex and confounding.

How Widespread Trauma Is These Days

Trauma is a problem that is ever-increasing and potentially devastating.  You only need to read the headlines in the newspaper on any given day to understand these kinds of events and their consequent devastation is accelerating.  I have cited statistics in a recent blog on the same topic.  It doesn’t take a super-genius to realize how severe trauma is these days, and likewise are the various aspects of it that often escape peoples’ awareness.  This can even be the case with the one who suffers from it, who may unconsciously reach for substances to relieve the emotional pain and/or terror that result from it.  

The More Common Layers of Trauma

1. Feeling Frozen:  Many people who suffer from trauma may feel like they are frozen or unable to move when triggered by the memory of traumatic events.  This is a reaction that at one time may have helped spare trauma victims from a worse fate than if they chose fight or flight instead.  For example, if a child was being sexually abused by an adult, to have screamed or fought back may have resulted in them being killed.

2. Shock:  This happens when a sense of disbelief is triggered in a person who is a trauma victim.  If a trusted adult is abusing a child, this can cause a sense of disbelief and can lead to someone feeling shock.  This feeling can be related to dissociative reactions in people in which they have a sense of unreality or not being in their bodies when the traumatic event happens.  

3. Disgust:  While not always a part of a traumatic experience, many people who suffer from sexual abuse or other similar trauma can have this often overlooked reaction.  It can be very powerful as a part of peoples’ memory however, and is often identified as a ‘bad taste’ in one’s mouth in relation to thinking about a traumatic event.    

4. Feeling Dirty:  This often accompanies sexual trauma or abuse and is a feeling of denigration in relation to the abuse.  No one should have to endure this feeling, and yet so many people do through no fault of their own.  

5. Fear/Terror:  This forms the emotional core of most peoples’ traumatic experience and is what all the others revolve around.  Getting rid of the fear and/or terror people feel when they suffer a tragedy or catastrophe is the essence of what good trauma therapy is focused on.  

6. The Negative Core Belief or Traumatic Image:  This is some idea that gets lodged in peoples’ minds and hearts when they have experienced a traumatic event, and often involves some image related to it.  Getting rid of this is of prime importance in eliminating any vestige of what happened, although the memory is not wiped clean.  If everything else has been addressed, it will have no emotional punch to go with it if it is resolved.  

How Image Transformation Therapy Heals the Layers of Trauma

ImTT is the only actual trauma therapy I am aware of that specifically targets each of the particular layers of trauma that tend to afflict people.  Through its breathing and visualization protocol each of these particular layers is identified and processed in much the same way.  With the focused attention on each layer, along with the combination of breathing and visualizing, the feelings and images are literally processed out of the body. Unless a therapist knows to assess for these particular layers of trauma, one or more could get overlooked and continue to bother you.  For example, if someone has untreated shock, emotional numbness could continue to bother them despite processing numerous troubling experiences.  Many of my clients want to feel alive and well, but if someone is still emotionally numb they can still be feeling and functioning at a suboptimal level.  

How I Can Improve Your Situation

I’ve been treating people affected by trauma for 11 year now, and I have helped so many of them to recover and heal from it that I feel confident in encouraging you to seek treatment if you’ve been similarly affected.  I am fully trained in both EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and ImTT, and can attest to both being effective in treating trauma. You can call me at the number above or fill out an inquiry form at the bottom of the page to get a free 20-minute phone consultation.  You don’t have to take my word for it, and can see for yourself by listening to a free audio recording of the precursor to ImTT to find out whether it might help you as well.  Just indicate this on the form at the bottom and I’ll be happy to send you this to listen to, absolutely free as well.  In any case, please do get the help you need and deserve, because you don’t have to suffer under the layers of trauma if you don’t want to.  

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

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 14 and up in private practice. His new e-book is entitled The 5 Pillars of Addiction Recovery and is available for purchase on Amazon.