6 Best Therapeutic Techniques for Trauma: Navigating the Healing Journey

Trauma can come from many sources — from war and natural disasters to abandonment, abuse, and anywhere in between. Unresolved trauma from these experiences may affect several areas of your life, including your relationships and mental well-being. But while trauma may feel overwhelming, help and healing are within reach.

Therapy can provide a safe space to work through trauma with the guidance of a supportive mental health professional. With the right therapeutic approach, you can recover and reclaim your life. 

Below, we’ll help you better understand the effects trauma can have. We’ll also explore the benefits of therapy for addressing trauma and introduce different techniques therapists may employ to support you.

Understanding trauma and its effects

Everyone experiences unpleasant events or situations, but these don’t necessarily lead to trauma. So, what exactly is trauma? 

Trauma is an emotional response to a severely upsetting or disturbing event, like a natural disaster, serious car accident, sudden death of a loved one, domestic violence, or any number of other harrowing situations. If you’ve experienced trauma, you might have a hard time feeling safe, especially in triggering situations. 

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health disorder that may develop in response to trauma. You might develop PTSD after living through a disturbing event or witnessing one, and it may cause frequent nightmares or flashbacks about the traumatic event. PTSD might also cause you to startle easily, experience feelings of detachment, or go out of your way to avoid situations that remind you of the traumatic event. 

Common sources of trauma 

Not everyone who experiences trauma ends up with PTSD. But, trauma may still have long-term effects that interfere with your daily life. 

As mentioned earlier, trauma can come from many different types of experiences. However, some of the most common events that may cause someone to experience trauma may include:

• Physical or sexual abuse: Physical or sexual assault may have several long-term effects and affect relationships.  
• Emotional or psychological abuse: Threats, constant criticism, humiliation, and other forms of emotional and psychological abuse may have a lasting impact on mental health. 
• Accidents and injuries: Being in or witnessing car accidents, work injuries, and other accidents and injuries may result in serious trauma, especially if these events affect loved ones. 
• Natural disasters: Hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, floods, and other natural disasters can lead to the loss of homes, lives, and belongings, which can be severely traumatic. 
• War and conflict: Living in a war-torn region or serving in the military in these areas can cause severe trauma.  
• Childhood neglect or abandonment: Being neglected or abandoned may cause childhood trauma that leads to long-term symptoms well into adulthood.  

Why therapy is beneficial for addressing trauma 

Navigating past traumatic experiences may seem daunting — especially on your own. However, as a trauma survivor, therapy can provide evidence-based treatment to support you in many ways, including: 

Processing traumatic events 

Thinking about past trauma you’ve experienced may be triggering. You might avoid it or try to bury memories of it deep down. However, the path to healing involves processing what happened. 

Therapy gives you the skills to confront and reframe traumatic memories in a safe environment with guidance. This helps you heal emotionally, integrating those experiences into your life story and allowing you to move forward. 

Managing symptoms

Trauma may cause a wide range of symptoms that affect your mental health and your day-to-day life. Anxiety, flashbacks, irritability, sleep troubles, and other symptoms can be debilitating. With therapy, you don’t have to try and manage these on your own. 

Therapy can help reduce trauma-related symptoms. In fact, research shows that trauma-informed therapy is effective in easing anxiety and other symptoms. As you work on processing traumatic memories and understanding them, you can work toward healing from them.

Developing coping strategies 

Trauma survivors often try to avoid triggers, like certain places, people, images, activities, or conversation topics. Having trouble regulating emotions due to the effects of trauma is also common. 

Part of the healing process involves managing your emotions and exposure to triggers — which are valuable skills you can learn through therapy.

During trauma treatment, you may work on developing more adaptive coping mechanisms. These methods of coping help you regulate your emotions and handle exposure to triggers. For example, you might learn mindfulness, deep breathing, or progressive muscle relaxation to cope during exposure to triggers rather than avoidance. 

Rebuilding trust and relationships 

Traumatic experiences may put a strain on your relationships. You might avoid getting close to others due to trust issues or become extremely anxious about losing your loved ones. Trauma-related symptoms, like irritability, might also lead to other relationship problems, like arguments or miscommunications. 

Therapy offers an effective way to help restore trust and improve interpersonal relationships. It may also help you improve the skills needed for more secure, adaptive relationships, such as communication and conflict resolution. 

6 therapeutic approaches for dealing with trauma 

Everyone experiences trauma differently, and there are many forms of therapy that your therapist may employ to help address your unique triggers. Trauma-informed care helps ensure that you work with a therapist who specializes in trauma to guide you along this path. 

In the sections below, we’ll walk you through several types of therapy commonly used to address trauma to give you an idea of what you may expect during therapy. 

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) focuses on your thoughts and behaviors. You might not realize that you engage in maladaptive thought patterns related to trauma. For example, you might blame yourself for what happened. Or you might ignore positive things in your life, making negative experiences or moments seem bigger than they are.

Through CBT, you can learn to recognize unhelpful thought patterns and behaviors. Instead of accepting them, you can challenge them and replace them with adaptive ones. This helps promote recovery and resilience as you heal. For example, you might learn to notice and appreciate positive things in your life, giving the negative ones less power and influence over your wellness. 

Prolonged exposure therapy (PE)

Trauma may cause you to do everything possible to avoid triggering situations or memories. But this may have a serious impact on your life. For example, you might distance yourself from others or avoid going to certain places. Prolonged exposure therapy (PE) offers a safe way to face these fears. 

PE involves controlled exposure to feared situations and memories. You’ll learn more about trauma to begin with. You’ll then learn to manage and confront fears about shortness of breath or other physical symptoms related to trauma. 

PE might also have you practice confronting what you fear in person with help and guidance from your therapist. Or you might be asked to imagine what you fear and talk about those memories and thoughts. PE helps reduce trauma-induced anxiety and avoidance, so you can process trauma and move on with your life. 

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy

This type of therapy is often used for PTSD, but it may also be used for treating other trauma-related disorders. 

EMDR therapy involves bilateral stimulation while thinking about traumatic memories or events. This stimulation helps you reprocess traumatic memories. It’s based on the idea that your brain hasn’t received the signal that you’re not in danger anymore from the traumatic event that occurred. 

EMDR aims to reduce the distress of traumatic memories, allowing you to reshape past events so that they no longer seem like a threat. 

Cognitive processing therapy (CPT)

When you experience trauma, you develop certain beliefs about what happened. These beliefs may be unhelpful, keeping you stuck in a pattern of fear, anxiety, or anger. You might believe the world is a dangerous place filled with constant threats to your safety, for example.

Cognitive processing therapy, or CPT, helps you identify these beliefs and understand how they affect your emotions. During CPT, you learn to challenge these beliefs in adaptive ways. This involves psychoeducation or learning about PTSD or other conditions that affect you, writing an impact statement, learning coping skills, and modifying unhelpful beliefs.

Doing this allows you to move past those “stuck points” and heal from trauma. It helps you form new ways of thinking that are more beneficial. 

Narrative exposure therapy (NET)

Narrative exposure therapy, or NET, is often used for treating complex trauma due to multiple traumatic experiences or prolonged trauma. Traumatic events lead people to create stories in order to try to make sense of what happened. However, these stories may be unhelpful, resulting in trauma-related symptoms. 

NET helps you rewrite the narrative or story your mind has about traumatic events. During therapy sessions, you construct a chronological narrative of your life events, while placing the traumatic experiences in context. 

For example, say you experienced emotional abuse during childhood. You now struggle with low self-esteem and trust issues. With NET, you might focus on other times in your life when people treated you with kindness. This can help increase your sense of self-worth and allow you to learn to trust others. 

Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR)

Experiencing trauma might lead you to dwell on the past or worry excessively about the future. But staying in the present can help reduce stress and trauma-related symptoms — which is where mindfulness-based stress reduction (MSBR) therapy comes in. 

MSBR doesn’t typically involve the usual components of talk therapy, like talking about what you experienced. Instead, it has you participate in activities that promote mindfulness and stress reduction. You might learn breathing techniques, keep a gratitude journal, do yoga, practice meditation, or a combination of these activities. 

These exercises help you focus on the present and experience thoughts and emotions in a non-judgmental way. This helps ease stress and improves emotional regulation. Keep in mind that MSBR is often done alongside other, more traditional forms of trauma therapy.

Explore the road to recovery with SonderMind

Recovering from trauma takes time. Remember to give yourself grace as you work toward healing — it’s not an overnight process. But with help from the right therapist, you can look forward to healing and gaining a better understanding of yourself and your experiences. 

With SonderMind, you have access to experienced therapists who can help you determine the most suitable treatment options for your unique trauma. Simply tell us a bit about yourself and your therapeutic goals, and we’ll connect you with a therapist who can help you get there. 

Get started with SonderMind today to take your first step toward healing.