The term trauma goes back to the Greek language and means “wound.” Trauma therapy treats mental or psychological trauma or psychotrauma.
What is trauma therapy?
In psychology, trauma is referred to as a mental wound. Trauma occurs as a somatic reaction to overwhelming events. In psychology, trauma is referred to as a psychic wound. Trauma occurs as a somatic reaction to overwhelming events. People who experience extraordinary situations such as abuse, violence, accidents, life-threatening illnesses, surgeries, and states of war may develop trauma symptoms or post-traumatic stress disorder. Trauma therapy seeks to bring affected people out of the spell of their traumatic experiences and to effectively treat the typical stress symptoms associated with them, allowing them to live free and largely unencumbered lives again.
Function, effect and goals
The World Health Organization refers to trauma as a soul-straining event resulting from a catastrophic, extraordinary situation or threat, which may be long-lasting or temporary. These experiences almost always cause lasting upsets in those affected. However, not all stressful situations result in trauma. Whether or not this condition occurs depends in many cases on the personal nature of the affected person and their social environment, how they experience the traumatic event and whether or not they are able to process it. People perceive a traumatic experience as a situation of physical or mental nearness to death to which they are either apparently or actually at the mercy. This situation comes about due to external circumstances and/or fellow human beings over which the affected person has no control. One example is the rampage of a teenager in the Albertville Realschule in Winnenden in 2009, who killed several students, teachers and passers-by before executing himself. The survivors are still undergoing trauma therapy treatment today because they are unable to come to terms with this inconceivable event, from which they only accidentally escaped alive. Almost all trauma victims instinctively protect themselves through a mechanism of internal splitting, dissociation, with which they are able to separate different areas of the traumatic experience from each other. Some trauma victims deal with it openly and feel the need to talk about it. They are overwhelmed with a flood of thoughts, images and dreams in which they relive the event over and over again. These flashbacks can be prompted by sounds, smells, colors, places, images, movies, people, or specific situations. These triggers are referred to as triggers in technical language. Even decades later, they can trigger a chain reaction of somatic reactions without the affected person attributing them to the trauma. The traumatizing event is indelibly stored by the brain. This protective mechanism is intended to enable the affected person to react immediately to the same or similar events in the future in order to ward off the danger. Other affected persons completely split off the experience from their lives and ignore everything that is connected with it. They rely on the strategy of denial, ignoring and emotional withdrawal in order to suggest normality in this way, because they see their trauma as a disruption in the regular course of events. This behavior is a protective mechanism that victims have built up over years to avoid repeated traumatization. At some point, they perceive this behavior as normal and natural, and this is how they are also perceived by their social environment, which, without knowing it, reinforces them in their understanding of their role. People who have abruptly witnessed extreme situations without being victims themselves may also develop traumatic stress symptoms.
Risks, side effects, and dangers
Traumatic experiences always put one’s identity to the test, because the people affected have no control over these events that affect their lives from the outside. Unprocessed traumas can have serious consequences, as protective mechanisms become increasingly independent.The consequences can be depression (dysthymia), inability to work, addictive disorders, dissociative disorders, emotional coldness, behavioral problems, attachment disorders, extremely controlled and controlling behavior, avoidance (avoidance), aggressiveness (hyperarousal) and post-traumatic stress disorder. This is where trauma therapy comes in. It begins with general counseling, which can take place over a short or long period of time. With short-term counseling, the victim deals with only some aspects of what they have experienced. Long-term counseling works through what has been experienced step by step and also provides victims with assistance to return to normal daily life. Trauma-therapeutic counseling starts at different points. In the case of acute symptoms, in addition to trauma therapy, drug therapy using psychotropic drugs, tranquilizers and antidepressants is also indicated, even though the administration of these drugs is not without controversy. These drugs reliably reduce anxiety, mediate states of calm, and block the reuptake of serotonin through “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.” Although these substances are often the first drug of choice, they combat only the concomitant symptoms of post-traumatic symptoms; they do not eliminate the cause. The use of psychotropic drugs only makes sense in combination with trauma therapy. This follows different approaches. The psychotherapeutic procedure helps to process the traumatic experiences in an orderly manner, to limit them or to dissolve them. The psychoanalytic procedure works with transference and fixation of the traumatic experiences from patient to therapist. The imaginative method uses the deeper levels of consciousness and works with dream-like processing images. The narrative approach accommodates the patient’s need to piece together what he or she has experienced into a story through conversation. Other important approaches include behavioral therapies that confront victims with what they have experienced (confrontation therapy) and the exposure and restructuring approach. This trauma-focused therapy aims to make the distressing memories manageable and to diminish them. Gestalt therapy relies on an isolated approach to the mind, spirit, and body. Creative approaches (art therapy), can also be useful. Trauma victims who show some psychological resistance to what they have experienced exhibit resilience.
