Trauma & Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders

If you’ve experienced a traumatic event, you may feel a wide range of emotions, such as:

  • Anxiety
  • Anger
  • Fear
  • Depression
  • Confusion
  • Dissociation

There is no right or wrong way to react to trauma.  Your reactions can affect your functioning at home, at your workplace, in your intimate, family and social relationships, and your overall quality of life

A traumatic event(s) can fall anywhere on a continuum:

  • Ranging from situations that happened specifically to you personally to being affected vicariously and indirectly,
  • Ranging from large-scale and dramatic events to unacknowledged incidents
  • Ranging from most recently to a lifetime ago

You have the ability to move toward healing from your experience, and uncover your own capacity for resilience, growth, and recovery.

At Spiler Psychotherapy, we recognize that, in addition to individuals in the general population, those who are at highest risk of experiencing trauma include:

  • Police Officers
  • Military
  • Firemen
  • Critical Incident First Responders
  • Emergency medical service workers
  • Hospital and clinic staff (nurses, doctors, medical aids)

This highest-risk segment of the population is particularly vulnerable and requires specialized attention and support, as they are themselves ‘trauma responders’.

When is Trauma-informed treatment and EMDR a useful option?

EMDR Therapy is a psychotherapy approach based on standard procedures and protocols.  This approach enables our mental health therapists to incorporate EMDR Therapy into their case conceptualizations and treatment plans while working with your issues related to trauma and stressor related conditions.  We use the three-prong protocol (past memories, present triggers, and future templates) and the 11-step procedure to create an effective outcome.

Our Mental Health Treatment Approach

The rigorous standards of clinical practice at Spiler Psychotherapy, aimed at the highest level of competence and integrity requires:

  • that our therapists adopt a trauma-informed clinical orientation
  • Are EMDR Certified
  • keeping up to date with the latest clinical and research developments in the field of Trauma and EMDR
  • maintaining professional accountability through ongoing professional supervision and affiliation with regulated-approved organizations

What is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder that may occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event such as a natural disaster, a serious accident, a terrorist act, war/combat, or rape or who have been threatened with death, sexual violence or serious injury.

Source:  American Psychiatric Association American Psychiatric Association. 2013. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth edition. (DSM-5)