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healing resources from trauma and abuse

Trauma & Abuse

What is Trauma?

Trauma comes from a Greek word for wound or wounding.
So, trauma is a wound. 

The important distinction to make is that trauma is not what happened to you, it’s what happened inside of you, as a result of what happened to you

Gabor Maté

People react to trauma in various ways, which can include shock, denial, flashbacks, emotional numbness, anxiety, and depression. Over time, untreated trauma can affect mental and physical health. Understanding and addressing trauma is crucial for recovery and wellbeing. Recognizing that recovery is a personal journey and finding the right support can make a significant difference.

Common traumatic events can include, but are not limited to:

  • Domestic violence, witnessing domestic violence
  • Physical/emotional abuse or neglect
  • Sexual assaults
  • Natural disasters
  • Car accidents, work incidents, etc.
  • Sudden loss including deaths of family/friends or severe injuries or illness
  • War, combat, refugee experiences
  • Witnessing, but not directly being involved in a traumatic event

Symptoms of trauma:

  • Intrusive memories: flashbacks or reliving the traumatic event, nightmares, distressing thoughts
  • Avoidance: avoiding places, activities, people that remind someone of the trauma
  • Loss of interest in activities that were once enjoyed
  • Hyper arousal: being easily startled or frightened, difficulty sleeping, irritability or outbursts of anger 

Untreated trauma can lead to:

  • Developing PTSD
  • Depression and anxiety
  • Substance abuse
  • Suicidal thoughts
  • Relationship difficulties, including trust and intimacy issues
  • Chronic health issues and a weakened immune system 

Types of Trauma

Emotional Abuse

Includes criticism and put-downs, threats, and bullying. The emotional abuser can have outbursts of temper, and show controlling behaviors. They can exhibit gaslighting, which involves manipulating a woman, man, or a child to doubt their perceptions, memories, and their reality.

Resources for Getting Help

Physical Abuse

Is defined as deliberate behavior that results in physical injury. It includes hitting, slapping, pinching, shoving, kicking, or using physical restraints.

Resources for Getting Help

Sexual Abuse

Involves sexual acts that are forced upon a woman, man, or child. It includes inappropriate touching or comments, body-shaming, forced intercourse or oral sex, indecent exposure, revenge porn, and pornography that a person submits to without consent.

Resources for Getting Help

Satanic Ritual Abuse

& other forms of Ritual Abuse

Ritual abuse is a mix of physical, sexual, emotional, and spiritual abuse that mostly involves multiple perpetrators. The perpetrators use their belief system to justify this abuse. They employ sophisticated torture and extreme abuse in an attempt to break children, women, and men. This lessens the chance that the abuse will be disclosed.

Resources for Getting Help

Sex Trafficking

The definition from the U.S. Department of Justice Website: “Sex trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purpose of commercial sex acts in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such acts has not attained eighteen years of age. (22 U.S.C. 7102 (11) (A))

Resources for Getting Help

Trauma Recovery Stories

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The Trauma of Witnessing

  • By: Kat Robey
We were flying into New York while the wreckage was still burning. Our 10-person Crisis Debriefing team was deployed to train and support counselors in the New York City. The city was quiet. The iconic skyline was gone. The air was filled with ash and smoke. While the world saw . . .
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Understanding Trauma and How It Affects Your Life

  • Julie Miller, MC, LPC, LISAC, CCTP-II
Trauma isn’t limited to life-threatening events. It’s any experience that overwhelms your ability to cope. When something is too intense for our mind and body to process, it can get . . .
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From the Chair to the Couch

  • Daniel Orozco, LPC and Jonathan Statt, LMFT
12 of the most helpful tips Daniel and Jonathan like to share in counseling: Self-compassion is the healthy way to peace. Forgiveness is different than reconciliation. When you feel overwhelmed, . . .
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When Helping Hurts: Vicarious Trauma in Frontline Work

  • Melissa Kaiser
If you’ve spent any amount of time working with clients, survivors, or on heavy cases, whether as a social worker, advocate, law enforcement officer, medical professional, military personnel, or part . . .
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The Business of Being Well

  • Lisa Jane Vargas
Take away: The use of some tools grounded in psychology can help us enhance self-awareness for better performance, business culture and personal well-being. . . .
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Grief, Ambiguous Loss, and Trauma: A Puzzle with Pieces Missing

  • Amy Tilley
Grief can be complicated, confusing, physically, mentally, and emotionally draining. Grief can be difficult to work through. It can also provide a sense of closure and bring a sense of . . .
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The Trauma of Witnessing

  • Kat Robey
We were flying into New York while the wreckage was still burning. Our 10-person Crisis Debriefing team was deployed to train and support counselors in the New York City. The . . .
Read More