The Beyond in Trauma and Beyond ® has a dual meaning. Getting Beyond Trauma and into a life that is not controlled by symptoms is one of the meanings. This is the meaning of symptom reduction. A common reason we seek treatment is to reduce symptoms to “feel better.” Another meaning of Beyond has to do with our belief that trauma is the root cause of many other psychological problems. Our therapists are highly trained in treating substance abuse, addictions and mental health disorders such as mood and anxiety disorders, relational issues, codependency, sex and love addiction and other process addictions.
Everyone would like to feel at ease and content. When our emotional life is out of balance or unregulated we often find ourselves repeating patterns that become self-defeating. In turn these self-defeating patterns leave us feeling anxious, unsatisfied, or depressed, and often lead to low self-esteem. We may feel shame, the feeling that something is deeply wrong with me or that I am defective, different, or not good enough. When these emotions are left untreated we may in turn isolate or continuously seek relationships in the hope that they will make us feel better.
We have found in our work that generally when a person experiences different types of trauma, the distress and dysregulation caused by the trauma can lead to other manifestations of the pain including addiction, depression, anxiety, self-harm, attachment difficulties.
We may compulsively eat, use drugs or alcohol, spend, or over work. We may find that we are walking through life always ready for the other shoe to drop, full of tension and anxiety or even experiencing panic attacks. Or we may find that we have lost interest in things that once brought us joy and live our lives feeling sad or numb.
With Trauma and Beyond ® treatment, we support our clients to explore and work through these self-defeating and survival based patterns, however, we also work with the “beyond.”
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In this third meaning of Beyond, we work with clients to identify and deepen their aliveness, their joy, their connections and intimacy with something beyond themselves. We support our clients to move towards growth of the life force, and embrace their creativity and passions.
In the words of Dr. Laurence Heller and Dr. Aline LaPierre, “The spontaneous movement in all of us is toward connection and health. No matter how withdrawn and isolating we have become, or how serious the trauma we have experienced, on the deepest level, just as a plant spontaneously moves towards the sun, there is in each of us an impulse moving toward connection. This organismic impulse is the fuel of The NeuroAffective Relational Model™.
