Treatment Specialities

What is Trauma?

Here’s an interesting and informative video clip from our friends in Australia:

Emotional and psychological trauma can result from extraordinarily stressful events that impact your sense of security, often leaving you feeling helpless in a now dangerous world. Psychological trauma can lead to upsetting emotions, memories, and anxieties that do not seem to go away. You can also be left feeling numb, disconnected, and unable to trust other people.

While traumatic experiences often involve a threat to life or safety, any situation that leaves you feeling overwhelmed and isolated can lead to trauma, even if physical harm is not directly involved. It is not the objective circumstances that determine whether an event is traumatic, but rather an individual’s subjective emotional experience of the event. The more frightened and helpless a person feels, the more likely they are to be traumatised.

Emotional and psychological trauma can be caused by:

One-time events - such as an accident, injury, sexual assault, rape, or other violent attack, especially if it was unexpected or happened in childhood.
Ongoing, relentless stress - such as living in a crime-ridden neighborhood, battling a life-threatening illness or experiencing traumatic events that occur repeatedly, such as bullying, domestic violence, sexual abuse, childhood neglect, or lack of affection from caregivers. Ongong stressors such as these can lead to Complex PTSD (see below).
Commonly overlooked causes - such as surgery (especially in the first 3 years of life), medical treatments (e.g. chemotherapy), the sudden death of someone close, miscarriages, infidelity, the breakup of a significant relationship, or a humiliating or deeply disappointing experience, especially if the perpetrator was deliberately cruel.

What is PTSD?

The main symptoms of PTSD are:

Reliving the traumatic event through distressing, unwanted memories, nightmares or flashbacks. This can also include physical reactions when the memory of a traumatic event comes to mind, for example, heart palpitations or feeling unable to breathe.
Avoiding reminders of the traumatic event - including activities, places, people, thoughts or feelings that bring back memories of the trauma.
Negative thoughts and emotions - such as fear, anger, guilt, or feeling flat or numb. A person may blame themselves or others for what happened during or after the traumatic event, feel cut-off from friends and family, or lose interest in day-to-day activities.
Feeling on edge or wound-up - this might mean having trouble sleeping or concentrating, feeling angry or irritable, taking risks, being easily startled, or being constantly alert for danger.
It is common for people with PTSD to experience other mental health problems as well, such as depression or anxiety. Some people may overuse alcohol or drugs as a way of coping.

What is Complex PTSD?

Complex PTSD may be diagnosed in adults or children who have repeatedly experienced or witnessed traumatic events, such as violence, neglect or abuse.

Complex PTSD is thought to be more severe if:

the traumatic events happened early in life
the trauma was caused by a parent or carer
the person experienced the trauma for a long time
the person was alone during the trauma
there's still contact with the person responsible for the trauma

Adults with complex PTSD may lose their trust in people and feel separated from others.

What are the Symptoms of Complex PTSD?

The symptoms of complex PTSD are similar to symptoms of PTSD, but may also include:

feelings of shame or guilt
difficulty controlling your emotions
periods of losing attention and concentration (dissociation)
physical symptoms, such as headaches, dizziness, chest pains and stomach aches
cutting yourself off from friends and family
relationship difficulties
destructive or risky behaviour, such as self-harm, alcohol misuse or drug abuse
suicidal thoughts

Anxiety

We like to say that anxiety is largely about “fake news.” The person is in a situation that is not a threat to their life, yet their brain is sending out the message that there is such a threat – and it releases hormones that put the person’s body into flight or fight mode.

The most common treatment for anxiety in the UK is CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy). However, this tends to have only limited success for many people. We believe that there are two main reasons for this

1. There may be an underlying problem (possibly a trauma) that is feeding the anxiety, and until this is addressed the anxiety is likely to return or continue.
2. Anxiety is often illogical; you act as if there is a life-threatening situation, when there is none. As it is often llogical, it frequently does not respond well to the logical arguments of CBT. Instead, you need to use counterintuitive methods to combat anxiety.

At The TRANSFORMATION Centre, we have been trained both in counterintuitive approaches to anxiety and in innovative, modified CBT techniques – and these can even be combined to more effectively address a person’s anxiety.

In addition, we recommend that clients use an electrotherapy, neuro-stimulation device to help reduce anxiety, depression and insomnia – and so we sell the excellent Alpha-Stim range of products.

Depression

Depression is a complex condition; its causes are not fully understood. However, various contributing factors can lead to depression. These can include biological factors (for example, genetics or experience of physical illness or injury) and psychological or social factors (experiences dating back to childhood, unemployment, bereavement, or life-changing events such as pregnancy). Having a long-standing or life-threatening illness, such as heart disease, back pain or cancer, has been associated with an increased risk of depression.

Approximately 1 in every 6 people (more than 15%) living in England Scotland and Wales experience a common mental health disorder each week, [1] with 3.3% of adults (16 and over) estimated to experience depression each week.[2]

Symptoms:

Depression symptoms may vary among people but generally encompass a feeling of sadness or hopelessness. These can include:

Tiredness and loss of energy
Persistent sadness
Loss of self-confidence and self-esteem
Concentration difficulties
Loss of pleasure in things that used to be pleasurable
Feeling anxious
Avoiding other people, sometimes even your close friends

[1] Stansfield, S., Clark, C., Bebbington, P., King, M., Jenkins, R. & Hinchliffe, S. (2018) Common mental disorders. Retrieved from the UK Parliament Website: https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN06988

[1] NHS Digital (2016) Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey: Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing, England, 2014. Retrieved from: https://files.digital.nhs.uk/pdf/t/6/adult_psychiatric_study_ch2_web.pdf

Feelings of helplessness and hopelessness
Sleeping problems – difficulties in getting off to sleep or waking up much earlier than usual
Feelings of guilt or worthlessness
Finding it hard to function at work/university/school
Changes in appetite
Loss of sex drive and/or sexual problems
Physical aches and pains
Self-harm

Depression symptoms can vary in severity, from mild to moderate to severe depression. Many people who have depression also have problems with anxiety. And as with anxiety, underlying issues can lead to depression being unresponsive to typical treatments.

Pain

It has been said that “pain is not pain until it reaches the brain.” While pain is not all in your head, part of it is. Advances in brain imaging technology are resulting in a better understanding of pain – and how complex the process pain is. It is affected by all kinds of changes in the brain, including sensory, structural, chemical, cognitive and emotional changes.

Chronic pain can change how the brain processes pain, and this, in turn, can lead to an increase in its intensity. The brain’s ability to transform in response to chronic pain helps us to understand that our reactions may also be altered due to changes in our brain – so it is partly in our heads!

Pain, whether new or chronic, can make life very difficult at times. Pain is an invisible and subjective experience – there are no objective tests to measure pain. This can make it difficult for doctors, family and friends to understand your experience.

Treating pain, like any other ailment, requires understanding the cause, how you experience symptoms, and how you respond to treatments, activity level, emotions and stress. When in pain, we automatically react in a way to try to minimise it. We may move less, protect the affected area more, socialise less, and stop participating in life as we know it. While these responses make sense, they tend to make the pain worse. If we don’t move, we get stiff and weak. If we guard certain areas, we become imbalanced, and this can lead to further injuries. If we isolate ourselves because it’s too hard to go out or focus on something else, we spend more time thinking about the pain, which makes it all-consuming.

How can you break this cycle? Doctors frequently recommend psychotherapy in conjunction with other treatment modalities. Psychotherapy can help you take control of your pain, as opposed to pain being in control of you. The goal is to break the cycle and not have pain consume so much of your energy. Pain likes to be in control which can lead to stress, anxiety and depression. One of our therapists can help you take control of your life by implementing strategies to reduce your pain. These could include learning how to monitor your body, adjusting your activity levels and finding more effective ways to cope with stress, as stress tends to intensify pain. Guided visualisations can also be an important weapon against your pain.

In addition, we strongly recommend utilising a specialised electrotherapy machine, such as the Alpha-Stim M, which can be used in several different ways to help alleviate chronic pain. Click here for more on the Alpha-Stim M.

Together, we can work to reduce the impact of pain on your quality of life. Call today for an appointment.

Treatment recommendation

In addition to psychotherapy, we recommend that clients use a neuro-stimulation device to help reduce anxiety, depression and insomnia without additional medication. If you are already taking medication, research indicates that neuro-stimulation will enhance its effectiveness.

We sell the excellent Alpha-Stim range of products through our braintherapy.co.uk affiliate;