Trauma Therapy

Help For Trauma
In Edmonton

Have you experienced something that overwhelmed or shocked you and now you’re finding it very difficult to get past it?
Do you find yourself regularly watching over your shoulder wondering when the next bad thing is going to happen?
Does what happened to you rarely leave your mind and even haunt you in your dreams leaving you sleep deprived and chronically exhausted?
Do your emotions feel “chaotic” and “uncontrollable?
Do you feel on edge, irritable, snappy, constantly angry, or like you might explode at any moment?
Do you feel disconnected from life or even “numb”?
Do you feel like you have no sense of control over your life?
Are you no longer able to be the person you used to be or who you want to be?
Does what happened to you now make it hard for you to be close to your loved ones?
Do you find it hard to experience joy or laughter? To enjoy the good things that happen now?
Do you find that your health is deteriorating and that you have many physical complaints such as stomach aches, racing heart, backaches, headaches, or digestive issues?
Are you using drugs or alcohol or other destructive behaviors just to cope or numb the pain?
Has it gotten painful enough that you have even considered suicide or that you would be better off dead?
Do you experience an immense amount of shame about what happened and how you now are and are afraid that even a counsellor will judge you?

If you have answered YES to one or more of the above questions, then you may be suffering from traumatic stress.

Most Recent Trauma Blog Posts

Facing Racial Bullying: Strategies for Coping

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What is Trauma and What Causes Traumatic Stress?

Trauma can be caused by any experience that you were unprepared for or which you found overwhelming.

When this happens, these types of experiences can create high levels of emotional and physical stress, which can continue to impact you and have lasting negative effects - even when the experiences are over and the actual danger is gone.

Shortly after a traumatic or stressful event, you may find yourself:

In a state of shock
feeling disconnected from others or finding it hard to relate to them anymore
having difficulties in falling or staying asleep
finding it difficult to relax
feeling at times like panic is setting in
experiencing moments of grief or guilt

Often, these experiences can shake your beliefs about yourself, others, and the world. If you already held negative beliefs about yourself, others, or the world, then these adverse experiences may serve to only strengthen your negative beliefs. For example, you may now firmly believe that you are a bad/worthless person, that others can’t be trusted, or that bad things will always happen. If so, then it is likely also very difficult for you to believe or have any hope that that you will ever feel better or that there is any good left in the world.

Some life experiences that can lead to traumatic stress include (but are not limited to):

Physical, mental, or emotional abuse
Domestic violence/abuse
Rape
Kidnapping
Losing a loved one/unexpected or expected death
War, combat exposure, concentration camps
Witnessing atrocities and/or being a part of them
Serious illness, major surgeries, or near death experiences
Serious accidents
Natural disasters
Helping others who have experienced personal tragedy
Learning about a shocking/terrifying event that is hard to digest and understand
Being robbed/mugged
Invasive dental work or major surgeries
Complicated birth experience or loss
Separation from a parent or abandonment
Bullying

When these types of experiences occur, they can cause you to have a surge of emotions and physical reactions (like an adrenaline rush) or to “shut down” and go numb.

Your body’s natural responses to these types of events are protective and can even be life-saving. When these responses continue after the event has passed, however, they can disrupt your ability to recover, understand what has happened to you, and also prevent you from moving forward with your life.

Although these experiences can be traumatic, they do not necessarily lead to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in all people. When someone has PTSD, they often experience high levels of anxiety, phobias, nightmares, flashbacks, and difficulties functioning at home and at work. They can also begin to have a sense of a foreshortened future, feeling like there is not much time left or that they won’t live for much longer.

If you have survived an adverse experience, you may notice that you are unable to respond appropriately to your life’s demands, the people you interact with, and perhaps even find it hard to manage work stress. Some people agree that when this happens, it can almost feel like a double wounding….the “events already hurt you once before, in the past, and now those events continue to keep hurting you in your everyday life, not giving you any freedom to leave those experiences behind.”

After any of the potentially traumatizing events listed above, most people will feel stressed and experience some of the trauma-related stress symptoms (i.e., feeling fearful, having bad dreams, finding it difficult to stop thinking about the event, etc) associated with PTSD as these are normal reactions to abnormal or unexpected events. For most people, however, these symptoms will eventually begin to resolve on their own. If these symptoms haven’t begun to resolve for you, and it’s been at least one month since you experienced a potentially traumatizing event, then you might have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

When to seek professional support?

Having difficulty functioning at home or at work
Experiencing significant anxiety, fear, or depression
Finding it difficult to trust others and to be close to them
Can’t get what happened off of your mind
Avoiding anything that reminds you of the traumatic event (people, places, or things)
Experiencing intense physical reactions when reminded of the event (pounding heart, rapid breathing, nausea, tensed muscles, sweating)
Experiencing flashbacks (feel like it’s happening all over again) and nightmares
Becoming disinterested in life or activities you used to enjoy
Using alcohol or drugs or other non-helpful ongoing behaviors just to cope
When your symptoms don’t seem to be getting better and you are starting to feel even worse

Types of Trauma

Big “T” Trauma

Big “T” traumas typically involve a threat to yours or someone else’s life, integrity, heath, and well-being. Big “T” traumas are the negative experiences that most people readily think of being traumatic, such as abuse or natural disasters.

In its most severe form, it can often lead to the development of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Little “t” Trauma

Little “t” traumas are more common and are usually experienced just because they are a part of living life, even if they should not have happened (i.e., non-abusive but still unsupportive parental care as a child).

The term little “t” traumas is not meant to imply that these traumatic events are any less painful or frightening. Rather, these traumas are classified as little “t” traumas more because the average person is not likely to easily identify them as experiences that could have a traumatic impact.

Both big “T” and little “t” traumas have less to do with what the event was and more to do with your subjective experience of it. It’s about how the event(s) impacted you, rather than what the actual event was. Therefore, the same negative experience may be experienced as traumatic by one person and not by another.

To say it another way, small “t” traumas are not minor or insignificant and they do NOT feel small to the person who experienced them. These experiences tend to be insidious and like the big “T” traumas, little “t” traumas can change how you think about yourself, your self-esteem and level of confidence, your ability to connect comfortably with others, and your ability to pursue and/or reach your goals. They can reduce the quality of your life and overall functioning.

It is possible to experience small “t” traumas and big “T” traumas.

Some examples of common little “t” traumas are:

Ongoing bickering between parents
Being ridiculed or picked on
Sudden break up with a significant other
Discovering an affair
Being embarrassed publicly
Unexpectedly losing a job/career
Not being accepted or being left out
Small non-life-threatening injuries
Feeling unwanted
Feeling you are a burden and you are just being tolerated
Incarceration of a parent

Case Examples

Here are three case examples to illustrate what I am trying to describe above.

Example 1 – Being Rushed Example 2 - Humiliation Example 3 - Being Bullied Example 4 - Unmet Needs

Example 1 – Being Rushed

Let’s say that as a child, maybe 4-6 years of age, you were struggling to put on your shoes. One of your parents came back inside the house and barked at you to hurry up. You tried to say that you were trying but that you need help getting your shoes on. In your parent’s frustration, he or she yelled back,

“I don’t care what you need, what’s important right now is getting into that car and doing it fast. Let’s go!”

So you scrambled as fast as you could and in a clumsy fashion, you moved towards the car with that one shoe feeling like it is not quite on right. As a child, you don’t have a lot of life experiences to make sense of what just happened, plus due to your young development and your age at the time, you had egocentric thinking and were prone to believe that what happened was your fault. As a result, this experience, which really upset you, was stored in your body with all the sensations, emotions, and thoughts that arose at that time. The sensations may have been feeling rushed, feeling tension in your chest, or a gulp in your throat. The emotions may have been frustration, sadness, feeling alone or feeling unheard. The thoughts that arose may have been:

“What I need is not important,”

“No one listens to me,”

“I’m not good at what I try to do,”

“I can’t get things done…fast enough.”

Over the years, experiences that cause similar sensations or emotions may serve to strengthen these negative beliefs about yourself thus building an unhelpful network of many memories, a network that gets triggered whenever you feel “less than.” Alternatively, this memory may be locked into its own capsule and not consciously remembered as you move through life until a later experience happens to ignite it…leaving you to wonder why you are over-reacting to this new experience.

Example 2 - Humiliation

If you were humiliated in front of your class when you were young, then you may have thought at the time "I'm stupid" while also feeling high anxiety and tension in your belly and torso. If this experience overwhelmed you, then it may have been stored in its own memory network with little opportunity to connect with other adaptive memory networks. Information stored in other adaptive memory networks may be all the other experiences you had in being able to successfully present to groups, being well-liked by peers, being accepted even though you made a mistake, or being recognized for a job well done. As mentioned above, since this experience of being humiliated is isolated in its own memory network, it has little opportunity to update itself. Therefore, when you find yourself in a situation that seems similar, even mildly similar, to the original humiliation experience, you might find yourself getting triggered and reacting in the same way you did when you were younger. It will likely feel like you are overreacting to the current situation or you may not understand why you are reacting the way you are.

If we were to keep with the above scenario, getting triggered may lead you to feel like you are utterly stupid and worthless because you received one negative comment about your performance. For whatever reason, it may be just too difficult for you to recall or pay attention to the other supportive comments received or to respond appropriately.

If the initial humiliation experience was stored and connected with your other adaptive memory networks, then when you received the negative comment, it would have been easier for you to respond rather than react. For example, you would have been able to review your other memory networks for times you received positive feedback, when you completed your work successfully, your knowledge about the audience's frustrations and their own perspectives, and then been able to decide how you needed to respond to this particular criticism. Your response may have been to approach the person directly and ask for further feedback or to note if the comment was valid and to revise your work according.

Example 3 - Being Bullied

Let's say you grew up being bullied. You may have developed the belief that “something is wrong with me” or “I’m not likeable.” Once you entered university or the workforce, and you began to associate with people who were a better fit for you and whom liked you for who you were, you may have begun to revise your beliefs to be something closer to “being bullied hurt at the time, but that is done and over with. I now know I am likable and that I'm fine the way I am.” Additionally, as your new experiences are connected with your past hurtful experiences, you may start to notice that you no longer feel nervous around groups of people and that it feels easier for you to get to know others. This is assuming that the AIP system is working well and that adaptive connections between your previous distressing experiences and your new positive or neutral experiences are being made.

If there is a hiccup in the AIP system and adaptive connections are not made, then the healthy adaptive associations needed to learn from do not occur. Instead, these distressing experiences are locked away in their own memory networks or capsules with the emotions, thoughts, sensations, and images that that occurred at the time of the distressing event. When this capsule is triggered by a similar experience (i.e., meeting new people, having to introduce yourself, having someone flirt with you, receiving negative feedback from your boss, etc), the old experience can be relived as though it were happening again.

Example 4 - Unmet Needs

Unfortunately, for some people, their needs may have not been adequately met while growing up. If this was the case for you, you may have learned to shut off your need to be connected with others, your sense of feeling alone, and learned you needed to “be strong and independent.” These beliefs were helpful to you while you lived in an environment that required them in order to not get hurt.

Later on, you may have gotten married, lived life fairly successfully, and then found yourself having to deal with a distressing circumstance. At this point, you may have called your spouse to ask for their help, but since they were about to go into a meeting, they cut you off and said they would call you back later. Somehow, an old wound from the past got triggered and you hung up quickly; immediately declaring that you would never ask them for anything again and that you never needed them anyway.

The current event was unexpectedly coloured by the past experiences (even ones that had not caused you trouble for awhile) of not being supported when distressed. All of a sudden, it felt like you were experiencing all the same emotions, thoughts, self-beliefs, and sensations you had then. If you were able to stay conscious enough to notice this, then you would likely have been bewildered as to why you were acting like this when it made no sense.

Put simply, when our distressing memories and experiences are not connected with our adaptive memory networks, we can find ourselves having a hard time “letting things go,” moving “past our past,” and getting repeatedly triggered by current events or life stressors. This often leads to us continuing to use ineffective coping strategies, such as yelling, shutting down, avoiding certain situations, over- or under-eating, excessive exercise, or using alcohol or drugs, to name a few.

I have heard of a term called “Complex Trauma.” What is that?

Complex trauma is also known as developmental trauma. Although it is not an official diagnosis (according to the newly revised DSM-5), it is a term first coined by the prominent psychiatrist, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, and which has now been adopted my many trauma therapists to describe the impact of ongoing trauma or adverse experiences that occur during childhood.

Often, these negative ongoing events occur within the care-giving system, and lead to insecure attachments. This means, that while you were growing up, you were not able to consistently rely on the adults in your life to protect you and to meet your needs. You could not trust those who you needed to trust the most.

By using the term complex trauma, instead of PTSD (which is more appropriate for separate and distinct traumas), the cumulative impact of these adverse experiences on the development of the child is captured. Unlike one-time traumas or trauma that occurs later on in life, ongoing adverse experiences in childhood shape the development of children. It shapes the development of their brains, thier neurology, their nervous systems, how they think about themselves (self-concept), how they respond to other experiences in their lives, their ability to trust others and the world, and their ability to regulate and calm themselves.

Often, these children are identified as having emotional or behavioral problems, when in fact, they are simply responding to the world and their experiences from the traumas that have shaped them. If we understand the ongoing traumas a child has endured, then often their negative and seemingly inappropriate behaviors begin to make sense as it is usually these behaviors that have helped them to survive and make some sense of their worlds.

For example, a child may act in such a way that it can be difficult to enjoy them or even to like them, yet this behavior makes sense if the child has learned over time that it’s not safe to get close to others and risk getting attached and hurt again.

Negative childhood experiences that can lead to complex trauma include all forms of abuse (emotional, physical, mental, and/or sexual abuse), neglect, lack of caregiver warmth or support, absent or dismissive care-giving, abandonment, and multiple changes in caregivers. It can also result from lack of educational or intellectual stimulation, not being provided with the basic necessities of life, and repeated medical or surgical procedures.

As a teen or adult, complex trauma can leave you wanting to reach out for help but also being scared to do so, not trusting that help actually exists or that others can actually be trusted. It can be very difficult for you to know how to calm yourself (i.e., re-regulate), cope with stress, and to understand who you are or who you want to be. It may feel like you simply exist, living life more as a robot than as a full human being feeling the full range of healthy emotions.

You may also experience difficulties in being able to connect your thoughts, feelings, and body sensations. It can be very difficult for you to move from “being the emotion” to “having the emotion,” and therefore, you usually end up being completely overwhelmed and flooded or you are only aware of a few of your reactions (i.e., what you’re thinking) and not others (i.e., your bodily sensations, such as an increased heart rate or shallow breathing).

It is not uncommon for many clients to be unaware of their bodily reactions while discussing a recent or past negative event, such as barely breathing, using a quieter voice, clenching their fists, or talking faster and louder. At other times, clients are so acutely aware of their bodily sensations that it becomes important to do some calming and relaxation exercises before we continue with therapy. This is called staying within the “Window of Tolerance,” a term brought forth by the writings and teachings of a prominent trauma therapist and educator, Dr. Pat Odgen.

If you have experienced ongoing negative events throughout your childhood, then you also likely find it difficult to understand why you react to certain things the way you do, why you find it difficult to calm yourself down effectively, why you find it difficult to feel whole and grounded, and why you find it difficult to know what to do and who you can go to for help to solve a problem.

As a result, you may have learned to shut yourself off and ignore what you feel or what you think. Although coping this way helps to reduce the overwhelming pain you experience when you don’t know how else to reduce the pain, it doesn’t help you in the long-term.

When people have had generally safe and predictable lives and then they experience a traumatic event, it can take less time to treat the trauma and reduce the associated symptoms. The treatment of complex trauma, however, due to the pervasive nature of ongoing and multiple negative experiences, usually takes longer and is more comprehensive. Therefore, it will be very important to find a therapist that you are comfortable with and who you can work with for a while. Treatment of complex trauma will not be a short-term endeavor.

Remember – Trauma is not what’s wrong with you but what HAPPENED to you!

How Many People Does it Impact?

Approximately 70% of the population will be exposed to a traumatic event within their lifetime.

Although most people recover from a traumatic event, about 20% of those impacted by stressful or traumatic events will experience symptoms that worsen and result in PTSD. If there is a history of repeated exposure to traumas and/or childhood exposure, then the risk of developing PTSD is higher, in addition to the likelihood that recovery will take longer.

Although it still remains unclear as to why, women appear to be more susceptible to PTSD than men, and about one in ten women will experience symptoms that meet the diagnostic criteria for PTSD in their lifetime.

Note: Statistics are based on American findings (Kessler, et. al., 1995 & Kulka, et. al., 1990) for both war veterans and civilian populations).

(References: Epidemiological Facts about PTSD, National Center for PTSD, 2002 @ www.ncptsd.org & Myths about PTSD, PTSD Alliance @ www.ptsdalliance.org).

How do I know if my kid has been traumatized?

Sometimes this can be obvious, especially if you are aware of the negative experience your child has had. At other times, however, it can be less obvious and all you can run on is that your child and his or her behaviors or level of functioning has changed.

Some questions you can ask yourself to help determine if they have been traumatized are

Has your child lost skills they were previously able to do (i.e., toilet training)?
Does your child experience sleep difficulties or nightmares?
Is their play intense or compulsive or lacking joy?
Is your child acting out parts of the trauma through their play, artwork, or through the stories that they tell?
Does your child now have increased fears and anxieties?
Are they now noticeably more irritable or aggressive?
Does your child now have lots of fears from being separated from you or being alone?

If you answered yes to one of more of these questions, then it is possible that your child has experienced an adverse event that they are having difficulty overcoming. This could be true even if their symptoms do not meet the diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder. By assisting your child now, you can reduce the likelihood that their difficulties continue and become worse.

Treatment from a therapist would include supporting your child with their own healing while also supporting you as a parent and teaching you how you can effectively help your child at home. By doing so, you will also be in a better position to help your child if they experience future struggles or your child experiences another unfortunate event.

Things Can Get MUCH Better and Effective Treatments do Exist!

Fortunately, effective treatments do exist that can help treat traumatic stress reactions. By tailoring treatment strategies to your specific needs, we can help you to:

Bring the emotional charge of memories down to a tolerable level; thus reducing the power they currently have over you
Retrain your body (and nervous system) so it operates effectively and “for” you, rather than “against” you
Learn new ways of coping that are healthy and which match your goals
Gain a new perspective on what happened to you and change what it means for you
Learn how thrive in life and not just survive
Learn how to talk about and explain what has happened to you so you can explain it to loved ones (if you choose to do so)
Regain the parts of yourself you thought you lost and create a new and improved you
And last but not least, learn how to end the pain in your life without having to end your life.

Can a person have another disorder in addition to trauma?

Yes. Often people who have experienced trauma may meet the diagnostic criteria for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, in addition to another mental health disorder, such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse or dependence, bipolar, etc. This is also known as co-morbidity. If this is the case for you, then it will be important for you and your therapist to assess which diagnosis or problems are causing the most difficulties for you right now and to have these addressed first. Therefore, treatment may not address trauma first, but rather, address the trauma once some stabilization and healthy coping skills have been established.

There is help!

Through our West side office we offer counselling for people and families who want to feel better and end their struggle with overwhelming stress or trauma reactions.

If you are struggling with trauma and feeling like your emotions are in complete chaos, you may also be feeling like you can’t rely on or trust your body and its reactions any longer, finding it hard to trust others or are worrying that things will never get better. It may be extremely difficult to get past events off your mind. These events may even haunt you while you’re trying, unsuccessfully, to sleep.

By learning how your body is trying to help you and what you can do to start living life more peacefully again, we can make what happened to you become just a part of your life story, rather than being “the” story of your life. There is hope!

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Questions and Answers

What if I feel too ashamed about myself or to tell you what happened? That’s my biggest fear in going to see someone.

This is a very common concern for clients thinking about entering therapy, especially if they haven’t done any therapy before. As therapists, we have heard about the many struggles that people have experienced, and there is not much left that surprises us. This understanding enables us to suspend judgement and to see the person sitting in front of us for who they truly are, to see their pain rather than ignore it, and to see the possibilities of their personal growth.

Many of the therapists at PsychSolutions have worked with clients held back by extreme shame. They have helped clients to crawl out from their dark places of shame and move from false beliefs of “I am bad” and to more accurate beliefs or truths such as something “bad happened to me.” If they did something “bad” themselves, then we have worked on how to be accountable for past behaviors while also learning how to be self-compassionate and accept who they are now. This self-acceptance is often a challenging task but is also often necessary for true psychological growth and personal healing.

Although it may feel like you are the only person who has shameful secrets or a “dark side,” the truth is that we all have a dark side or negative characteristics that we wish weren’t a part of us, even if the parts we wished weren’t there are as non-threatening as being highly irritable or occasionally jealous.

If you are still concerned about what a therapist may think about you and if you can trust working with one, then we encourage you to “test us out” by meeting with one of our therapists for one or two sessions and getting a feel for who you they are and who they work. An in-person meeting is often the best way for you to really know if you will be able to work well with any particular therapist.

What if I feel traumatized but I don’t meet the diagnostic criteria for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Then effective help is still available. Just because you don’t meet all the diagnostic criteria for PTSD does not mean that you haven’t experienced something traumatic or that trauma-informed strategies wouldn’t help. This is precisely why we use the term “traumatic stress reactions” throughout most of this article. We don’t want people thinking that just because they don’t have all the symptoms connected with PTSD that somehow their pain is less, not as painful, or not appropriate for treatment.

Within the last decade, therapists and researchers are becoming more aware that traumatic events are not necessarily always the big “T” traumas (think war, rape, car accidents, abuse), but also the little “t” traumas that can happen to all of us while living normal everyday lives. Little “t” traumas still shock us and they can cause traumatic stress reactions, leaving us to feel lost and unsure about how to move forward with our lives.

As stated above, little “t” traumas can be one-time incidents or cumulative (occur over time). They may not necessarily threaten your sense of safety or life, but they can threaten your sense of self, your beliefs, and your ability to feel safe in the world. What one person experiences as a big “T” or a little “t” trauma can differ and there is no right or wrong in this. Categorizing traumatic events into big “T’s” and little “t’s” is more of an intellectual or professional attempt to understand what has happened.

How Do I Know This will Work? Why Bother?

We understand the doubt you are experiencing and the concern you may have about whether therapy will be worth the emotional, financial, and time investments that will required from you. Many people are concerned about these and these concerns can be especially true when your past experiences have taught you that it is risky to trust others or to trust that help is available.

In working with many clients who have experienced traumatic events in their lives, we know that therapy is effective and has helped many people overcome their struggles and begin to live life without their pasts continuously chasing them. We have seen people who initially found it very difficult to wind down and feel a sense of calm, learn how to relax their bodies and minds, begin to sleep better, regain their ability to focus and handle the stresses that arise in their lives, and to begin to reconnect with their loved ones as a result of therapy and the strategies they put into place.

Although therapy cannot erase the memories of what happened, it can help to reduce the “emotional charge” of these memories so they no longer control you or how your body reacts to things. It is possible to make your past memories just a part of your life story, and not “THE” story of your life.

In our experience, many of our clients leave stating they were glad they came, even though they were doubtful or nervous before they arrived. Sometimes, clients have thought about coming for awhile but didn’t feel like they could or that they weren’t yet ready. Usually, however, after starting counselling, clients begin to experience a sense of calm, increased hope, and even the ability to touch in to an old part of themselves that they thought they had lost.

We have personally seen people walk into our office, convinced that their life will never improve, and then watch them regain hope and learn the skills needed to begin living life more fully and with less pain. When working with clients who have experienced trauma, they have been able to gain control over their reactions and begin to live life again, rather than continuing to re-experience the pain and torment of what happened to them.

How Would You Know? Have Your Ever Been a Client or Do you Just Dish out the Advice?

This is a question that not every client asks, but when they do, it is often because it is really important for them to know if a therapist can relate to what it feels like to be a client and have to trust someone they barely know with their private concerns.

Although our life stories will be different from yours, we are human too and we have experienced our own struggles. At PsychSolutions, one of our core values is delivering quality service. We hold a strong belief that this cannot be provided if a therapist has not done his or her own personal work as well. Therefore, the therapists at PsychSolutions collectively value and commit to their own personal therapy when needed. Through our personal experiences in receiving therapy and also our professional experience in providing it, we know counselling is effective and well worth the personal investment.

At PsychSolutions, we deeply believe that therapists need to “earn” their way into the chair of the therapist, not only by obtaining the required education and licensure, but also by obtaining their own therapy and sitting in the chair of a client. Without experiencing our own therapy and truly getting to know ourselves, we don’t think therapists should ethically provide therapy to clients.

What if there is no hope for me? What if the only way to end the pain is through suicide?

Often, when people are asking this question, it’s because they can no longer see any other viable options to end their pain. It is as though their perspective, their ability to see “the bigger picture” has slowly closed in on them, like a paper rolling up into a small tunnel, and the only solution now visible to them as at the end of the tunnel…suicide.

It’s not that other viable solutions are no longer available or possible, however, but that hopelessness and a narrowed perspective have closed in to the point that the person now only has what can be called “tunnel vision.” They can only see down to the end of the tunnel and the only thing visible at the other end is the option of suicide. They can no longer see all the other options that are around the outside of that tunnel and out their tunnel vision view.

Ask yourself a very serious question. Let your heart speak without letting your head and all its objections getting in the way. Here is the question:

Do you really want to be six feet under or do you just want the pain gone?

Pause…and seriously think about this question. If the pain could lessen or even go away, if you had the tools to do this and the support you needed, would suicide still be a consideration for you? Do you really want to be dead or do you just want the pain to end?

Many of the clients we have worked with have stated that suicide only became an option for them when they could no longer see any other way of ending the pain. We have supported clients out of this dark place and back into living life again and we can also help you.

Although we cannot end the pain you are experiencing immediately, we can teach you the tools that will help you to begin easing this pain and move towards living your life. We cannot give you a magic pill to end the pain, but we can teach you the skills.

How do I know who will be the right therapist for me?

This can be hard to know until you have actually met with a therapist. What we would suggest is read some of articles and watch some of the videos on this website and then check out some of the therapist bio's. This will give you a good idea about how we work and our different styles and personalities and help you to decide which therapist may seem like a good match for you. If you are still not sure, then give us a call and we can discuss what your preferences may be. Once you meet with the selected therapist, it will be easier to tell if you match each other. If not, then we can help you find a different therapist.