You’re anxious often. You’re easily startled at times. You think about awful things that happened in the past. You often feel tired and unhappy. You relive events in your mind, and it sucks your energy.

Unresolved trauma can affect every part of your life. It affects how you feel and think, it affects your work and relationships, and how you feel about your place in the world.

For many people, it feels like the safest way is to try and deal with it yourself. We get that. But unfortunately, trying to recover from trauma alone usually doesn’t work. If trying to do it alone isn’t working, there are ways to feel better.

Trauma experiences vary greatly. Your trauma could be a single, terrible event or repeated traumatic experiences. Either way, you know it can take hold and rob you of many good things in your life.

Our Trauma and PTSD Therapists Are Here to Help

We’re here to help you change that. A counsellor enables you to increase your sense of safety and stability and reduce anxiety. Using Trauma-Informed Therapy techniques, our therapists help you work through the memories and pain you carry. This decreases the impact of trauma in your life, giving you more mental space and energy to focus on what you want for yourself.

Healing is Possible Through Trauma Counseling

Healing from trauma is challenging work; the rewards are increased resilience, greater flexibility towards life’s challenges, and a deeper appreciation of things in life.

The good news is that trauma and PTSD are treatable. But it takes time and commitment. Our therapists understand that and are here to help you through the process.

Common Symptoms of Trauma

There are differences between trauma and PTSD. PTSD is a psychological reaction where the traumatic event is experienced over and over again through flashbacks, intrusive thoughts and nightmares. PTSD occurs after a traumatic event, but not all traumatic events cause Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Even without PTSD symptoms, past traumatic events can still be very painful and psychologically and emotionally damaging. Any form of trauma that interferes with your daily activities, your relationships, or how you feel about yourself is very serious and deserves attention.

  • repeated thoughts about the trauma

  • disturbing dreams or nightmares

  • intense guilt or shame

  • feeling in danger or always on guard

  • taking drugs or alcohol to cope with the distress

  • constantly tired, fatigued

  • difficulty with attention and focus

  • forgetful

  • difficulty with memory, or remembering

  • difficulty making decisions

  • difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep

  • avoiding others, isolating

You May Need to Seek Treatment for Trauma or PTSD

If you have any of these trauma symptoms for an extended period of time and they’re interfering with you living your life, then you may need to seek help from a qualified therapist. Dealing with trauma doesn’t have to be a life sentence. Our therapists can help you learn skills and techniques to work through this.

Common Types of Trauma we Treat

Trauma arises from an experience that causes a strong negative emotional response. A traumatic experience can last a brief period, such as a few days or weeks, or it can last months or even years. What makes an experience traumatic is the negative experiences that impact a person’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Trauma does not necessarily cause post-traumatic stress disorder, a more severe form of trauma. (see below for a definition of PTSD).

Nonetheless, trauma experiences can profoundly impact someone’s life, how they feel about themselves, their sense of trust and safety and their ability to form positive relationships. All of these factors have a long-term negative impact on someone’s mental health. Untreated trauma can lead to problems like depression and  anxiety.

Short-term acute distress happens when we experience a traumatic event and have distressing thoughts, images, and emotions related to the event. The intense thoughts, feelings, and images of the traumatic event rise in you, and it feels like you’re reliving it over and over.

Things that remind you of the trauma can trigger intense reactions. You can feel numb, agitated, exhausted, and disconnected from others. Also, you can experience distressing dreams or nightmares of the traumatic event.

These intense and distressing emotions, thoughts, and body sensations occur within the first month of the traumatic event or up to 6 months later. Following the onset of this trauma-related distress, some people can manage this intense experience because of their resilience by seeking help early from significant others or seeking help from a professional. They experience improvements within the first month.

If these intense, unpleasant symptoms last longer than a month, it is considered post-traumatic stress disorder.

Someone with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder has many similar symptoms as someone with Short-Term Acute Distress. A person with PTSD experiences flashbacks and nightmares of the traumatic event. They can feel numb, exhausted, agitated, and disconnected from others.

What is different is that the symptoms do not appear to decrease over time. Instead, they can persist for a long very time.  The horrible feelings, thoughts, and body sensations keep recurring and become a long-term problem. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a challenging mental illness to manage without help. It leaves your mind and body in constant worry, agitation, and fear.

When PTSD goes untreated, you can develop various other problems like alcohol and drug addiction and social isolation. PTSD can also lead to secondary mental health like depression, generalized anxiety, social anxiety and panic. Unfortunately, these distressing symptoms last a very long time, often a person’s entire life.

Unexpected events that threaten our sense of safety or endanger our lives can be traumatic. Unfortunate events like a car accident or experiencing an assault, or being in a war can cause trauma.   Witnessing these horrific events can also cause a traumatic reaction. Natural disasters and witnessing these events can also be a cause.   All of these events can lead to PTSD in some people.

What is different with Complex PTSD is that it involves a relationship with another person, which usually includes trust and familiarity with the person. This type of trauma can happen over a brief period, months, or years. C-PTSD can happen between adults, an adult and child, siblings, and people in positions of power and authority.

Unfortunately, there are various ways that people can harm others and cause C-PTSD. People with this form of trauma have experienced emotional, physical, and verbal abuse, sexual abuse and neglect. Prisoners of war and people living in war zones for an extended period can also have C-PTSD.

Our Approach to Trauma Therapy

Is There an Effective Treatment for Trauma?
We know from decades of research that counselling helps people work through their trauma. Whether you decide to take therapy with us at My Winnipeg Therapy or not, we want you to understand one thing. Your mind and body can respond in ways that seem out of your control. And that can feel pretty confusing to you. You’re not crazy—this is how a sane person responds to an insane situation.

 

Our Approach to Trauma Counselling and PTSD Therapies

Trauma Focused Therapy

Therapy at My Winnipeg Therapist helps you understand your thoughts, feelings, and memories about your traumatic experience. Our therapists are trained in Trauma-Informed Therapy. They teach you tools and techniques to help you learn strategies to increase your sense of safety, manage intense emotions, and reduce feelings of distress. After learning ways to feel grounded and safe, we help you ‘process’ and make sense of what happened. There are various approaches to this, and we work to find what works best for you.

We want to help you process and find ways to release the pain. Deepening your understanding of what happened and how it affects you today is essential to healing and creating distance from the Trauma.

CBT for Trauma

My Winnipeg Therapist uses several evidence-based treatments that are proven effective in treating various forms of Trauma. Our trained therapists use Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), mindfulness therapy, and other proven treatments that may be effective for you.

CBT for Trauma is one of the leading, scientifically validated treatments for reducing the distress of post-traumatic stress disorder. With CBT, we teach you skills to manage the pain more effectively and how to minimize trauma-related thoughts, feelings and sensations. The treatment starts with learning techniques to help you manage upsetting thoughts, anxiety and unhelpful behaviours.

Mindfulness to Overcome Trauma

In counselling, we use mindfulness techniques and training to help you build a stronger sense of safety and calm. Mindfulness techniques we teach allow you to focus on what’s going on with you in the present. This helps you get out of your head and out of your trauma memories. The treatment allows you to move through the process safely, feeling supported. Always at a pace that feels ok for you.

 

PTSD Counselling Takes Time

Successful clients realize the real benefits of this therapy work. It’s a gradual process. Being anxious drains your energy. Doing the work and going through the therapy steps to reduce your anxiety can make you feel less worried, maybe even calm.

Clients who succeed in therapy know that getting the change you want requires two crucial ingredients: commitment to the process and attending regularly.

Committed clients gain benefits like feeling less anxious, letting go of guilt and shame, and feeling more comfortable around others. This and many other vital changes help you feel better about who you are.

And many of our clients who are committed to the work have shared the changes they made, like “being more motivated,” “able to sleep,” and “life just seems better, somehow.”

How do I start trauma counselling in Winnipeg?

If you’re ready to start counselling for trauma, we’re happy to help you. You can book online, fill out the online form, or call us. Our Client Care Coordinator can answer your questions, see if one of our therapists might be a good fit, or help you start as soon as possible.

Other Services Offered at My Winnipeg Therapist

In addition to counselling for trauma, My Winnipeg Therapist also offers a variety of mental health services. Our therapists offer specialized counselling for men and male youth, relationship counselling, marriage counselling, anxiety treatment, PTSD treatment and trauma counselling, and low self-esteem counselling. Contact our Winnipeg counselling clinic today to get the help you need to move forward with confidence.