Trauma recovery - keep it simple

Trauma is one of those emotional health areas that can impact our lives unexpectedly. Many of my clients have been in the armed forces and experienced active service; they may have witnessed or been subject to an act of violence; some clients may live (or have lived) with ongoing emotional abuse within a significant relationship. Whatever the issue, the knock-on effects of trauma can present in many ways. Here are some examples:

anxiety and panic attacks

hyper vigilance (where you pay attention to your surroundings at an exhausting level of awareness)

eczema and other skin complaints

breathing difficulties

challenges with meaningful relationships

outbursts of anger (recognised as too big for the incident that's just occurred)

difficulty sleeping (tired and irritable each day)

This above list would been traditionally treated in 2 ways: firstly you may be offered medication (sleeping pills, emotion suppressants, anti depressants) to manage some of the physical symptoms ; and secondly you may be offered a series of counselling to talk through your trauma experience and to try to make more sense of it (which is good assuming it doesn't require you to re-live those past experiences).

In Human Givens psychotherapy (which is the only therapy we'll offer our clients at Healthy Chat) our approach is simple and it's also 2-fold:

de-sensitise the trauma so that a client is no longer hijacked by their past experiences impacting their present reality. We do a powerful (and quick) piece of work on the very first session.

re-equip the client to move on positively with their life. Here we work for 2 or 3 further sessions reviewing the parts of their life they'd now like to rebuild and move forward with – relationships, career, fitness, etc – and get on with designing and practicing some practical strategies to support that

Traumatic events are experienced by millions of people every year. Some a person may be fully aware of, and some may be blocked out of their mind for reasons of emotional (and sometimes physical) survival. In most cases a dramatic experience can't be kept in check forever, so if you, or someone you know, is experiencing increasing difficulty in thinking clearly, managing overwhelm, or has unexpected outbursts of anger, it's worth having a first conversation with a Human Givens therapist to explore whether a recent or old traumatic event might be the reason.

I've often found that the more simple a process is, the more we can trust it. Like:

Food: fruit, vegetables, meat (or not) & carbs in their natural form (if you're reading dozen's of ingredients its probably not a great choice) – keep it simple

Fitness: run, swim, walk, dance, move, enjoy. Step out of your house and get your heart rate up for 20 minutes. That's it – keep it simple

Friendships: this feels good – do more of it; this feels like a chore – do less of it – keep it simple

Simplicity is the hallmark that a product or service can be accessed by many – a 'more for all, less to none' approach.

With trauma recovery, there is now enough scientific evidence to show that Human Givens therapy is the simplest, fastest solution for those who want relief from their trauma experiences. At Healthy Chat our success comes from having you living happy, fulfilling, motivated lives in as short a time frame as possible.

Trauma recovery – book at Healthy Chat now. And keep it simple!

Jennifer Broadley is the founder of www.HealthyChat.co.uk. Since 2012 she has worked full time delivering therapeutic, life-changing conversations from her private practices in Aberdeen, Dundee and the north of Scotland. She additionally works with UK clients by phone and European clients by skype. In 2002 Jennifer set up an executive coaching company supporting the continued high performance of business leaders and entrepreneurs working for medium and large companies – she is still active in this sector through www.JenniferBroadley.com.