Trauma Therapy in Roswell, GA
Do You Ever Feel Like You’re Just Not Good Enough?
Have you struggled with low self-esteem and lack of confidence for as long as you can remember, but you’re not sure why? Are you having trouble:
Relaxing or feeling safe in your own body?
Trusting others and building healthy relationships?
Breaking free of old, unhealthy patterns?
Maybe you have trouble staying present in your life and feeling connected to your body. Perhaps you continually turn down new opportunities for growth and connection because you’re paralyzed by fear and anxiety. There may be painful experiences that taught you to feel vulnerable, unsafe, and dysregulated. As a result, you might suffer from PTSD symptoms like nightmares, flashbacks, and intrusive thoughts. For the first time, maybe you’re thinking of seeking trauma therapy.
Trauma Often Goes Hand In Hand With Profound Loneliness
The hallmark of trauma is avoidance. Because it keeps your nervous system in a state of fight, flight, or freeze, you might find yourself avoiding any person or place that elicits fear or overwhelm. Small daily frustrations create panic, anger, and irritability, causing you to withdraw entirely—saying no to social outings with friends, passing up new promotions, and sabotaging relationships before they can even really begin.
After a while, this kind of life can lead to profound loneliness and disconnection. Even if things seem good on the surface and you’ve achieved success in your career, deep down, your life may lack intimacy and closeness.
Thankfully, there is another way to live. At Renovating Hope, our therapists specialize in helping trauma survivors like you put the pain of the past behind them. Our compassionate, EMDR-based approach to therapy can empower you to overcome your PTSD symptoms, reestablish safety in the body, and build a more fruitful and connected life.
Have questions about trauma therapy?
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Many People Don’t Realize How Much Trauma Impacts Them
The truth is that most people with trauma in their lives don’t think of themselves as trauma survivors. They simply think “I’ve just always felt like I’m not good enough” or “I’ve always believed that I’ll never find love,” without connecting these negative core beliefs to trauma.
Oftentimes, therapy is the first place that they’ve ever come to terms with the possibility that they’ve experienced trauma. Many of them don’t recognize that trauma is a spectrum, and that many traumatic experiences are fairly mundane in nature, including:
Bullying
Childhood neglect
Chronic illness
Grief and loss
Parental substance abuse
Separation from caregivers
Chronic familial conflict
As humans, we depend on relationships for safety and development. This is especially the case when we’re young. So if we experience relationships that are harmful, toxic, or neglectful in our childhood, it’s only natural that these relational wounds will impact us later in life.
In trauma therapy, we have the chance to mend these wounds through a relationship that is safe, empowering, and rooted in the belief that we are all capable of healing.
Trauma Survivors Often Avoid Getting Help Because Of The Stigma Around Painful Emotions
People who work in dangerous or high-stakes professions—such as first responders and military personnel—generally have the highest rates of trauma. Sadly, it’s these very same work environments that often dissuade trauma survivors from getting help. Many cops, EMTs, and military vets are pressured to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and work through painful emotions alone. They’re taught to value mental toughness over vulnerability.
Unfortunately, trauma doesn’t discriminate based on “toughness,” “grit,” or other idealized character qualities. It can affect anyone. And the more you delay getting help and avoid working through trauma, the more powerful it often becomes. It takes courage to be vulnerable, but when you take that bold first step of reaching out for support, a life that’s free from the pain of the past becomes a real possibility.
Recovery Is Possible Through The Healing Power Of Trauma Therapy
When you have too many tabs open on a computer, it creates bugs that slow down your computer and affect its functioning. In a way, living with trauma is like having too many tabs open—painful memories that haven’t been “closed” or fully processed still affect your functioning, impacting your ability to feel safe in your body and build healthy, trusting relationships.
Therapy can help you close the tabs that are causing bugs and resolve the memories that are holding you back from living your best life. The things that you’ve been avoiding your whole life don’t have to feel so scary or threatening anymore, and instead of feeling like you’re not good enough or you have to prove something, you can find contentment exactly as you are.
Whether your trauma took place in early childhood or just last week, our therapists are here to help you feel more grounded, present, and connected through our compassionate, evidence-based approach to therapy.
What To Expect In Trauma Counseling Sessions
The main approach our practice uses to treat trauma and PTSD is EMDR, which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. At its core, EMDR seeks to replicate what happens to the brain during REM sleep, which is when your brain naturally processes memories. By using a series of gentle stimulation techniques like tapping and side-to-eye movements, EMDR enables your brain to process difficult experiences so that they no longer trigger fear, anger, or overwhelm.
You and your trauma counselor will use a rating scale from one to ten to measure your progress with EMDR treatment. If your PTSD symptoms start out at 9/10, you might work on bringing your distress down to, say, 3/10. Over time, memories that once felt “stuck” or triggering can begin to feel distant and more manageable. You can notice drastic shifts in how you relate to yourself and others, empowering you to:
Cultivate a greater sense of safety
Reduce anxiety and depression
Engage with life instead of avoiding it
Reestablish trust in your relationships
Reconnect with your body
Explore your hopes and dreams for the future
In the end, the beauty of EMDR is that it works much faster and more efficiently than standard talk therapy. Many of our clients come to us after having been in therapy for years with little progress to show for it. Once they try EMDR therapy with us, the complex traumas that burdened them all their lives no longer have the same grip on them, and they are finally able to get in touch with the person they were before their trauma happened.
You May Have Some Questions About Trauma Therapy...
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While the process will bring awareness to difficult memories, EMDR is not about reliving painful experiences. The goal is to help you process them in a way that feels safe, supported, and manageable. A helpful way to think about it is “having one foot in the present and one foot in the memory.” Rather than becoming immersed in the past, you'll stay grounded to the safety of the therapy room while gently processing the experiences that left you vulnerable.
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Most people don’t identify their experiences with the word trauma. Yet when they dig deeper in therapy, there usually comes a point when they realize that their present-day challenges are rooted in past suffering. The truth is that traumatic experiences don’t have to be earth-shattering to qualify as traumatic—as long as an experience still impacts your ability to feel present in your life, there’s a good chance that you could benefit from trauma therapy.
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There is no definitive answer, as everyone’s timetable for healing is different. If you have PTSD symptoms because of a single event that took place recently, you may only need short-term therapy; if your trauma happened in your childhood and it’s deeply impacted your entire life since, long-term counseling may be best. Either way, we encourage you to be patient with yourself and remember that your journey is uniquely yours.
In fact, a big part of the process is regularly checking in to talk about how much we need to meet. Although it’s best to start with weekly sessions, it’s okay to adjust the frequency of sessions as time goes on and you come closer to meeting your goals.
Are You Ready To Heal From The Past Once And For All?
This is your opportunity to step out from the shadow of the past and create a future that’s defined by confidence, freedom, and an unwavering belief that you are good enough exactly as you are. Our therapists would be honored to help you get there—at whatever pace is right for you. Fill out the contact form to learn more about our trauma-informed approach to counseling. We look forward to working with you!
