Trauma
When What Happened Is Still Affecting You
Sometimes you come to therapy knowing that something you lived through is still affecting you.
And sometimes that isn’t where you want to start.
You come because you’re having panic attacks. You can’t sleep. A relationship is affecting you more than you understand. You’re constantly paying attention to other people’s moods. You know you’re reacting strongly to something, but knowing that doesn’t make the reaction go away.
Trauma can come from something that happened once or from experiences that continued over time. It can happen while you’re growing up or much later in life, including in relationships that became frightening, controlling, or abusive.
What you’ve lived through can affect what you expect from other people, how you respond when something feels wrong, what you believe about yourself, and what happens in your body.
When you understand where a reaction is coming from, it can start to make a lot more sense.
What You Learn to Expect
We learn from experience what to expect from other people and from the world around us.
You learn whether people can generally be trusted. Whether someone will help when you need them. Whether disagreement can happen without becoming dangerous. Whether affection comes with conditions. Whether it’s okay to have needs, set limits, make mistakes, or say no.
When you learned some of those things through abuse, neglect, violence, coercion, or relationships where you had to pay close attention to another person to know what was coming next, those expectations don’t simply disappear when the situation ends.
You can find yourself watching someone’s expression while you talk, noticing the smallest change in their voice. You apologize quickly. You replay an interaction afterward to figure out whether you did something wrong. You can know that someone is trustworthy and still find yourself watching closely for signs that they aren’t.
And some of the hardest things to believe can be the good things about yourself.
Someone tells you that you’re kind, capable, or a good person, and your mind immediately supplies the exception.
She has to say that.
He doesn’t know me well enough.
They wouldn’t think that if they knew everything.
Yes, but…
When Your Reaction Doesn’t Seem to Fit the Moment
Trauma doesn’t only affect you when you’re consciously remembering it.
Your heart pounds before you’ve figured out why you’re upset. Your muscles tighten during a conversation. You freeze and can’t find the words you know you have. You feel disconnected from yourself or from what’s happening around you. You can’t sleep even though you’re exhausted.
Sometimes you know exactly what set something off. Sometimes all you know is that your reaction feels much bigger than the situation in front of you.
Experiences that were frightening, overwhelming, or harmful can continue to affect memories, emotions, relationships, and physical responses long after they’re over.
Understanding those connections can make reactions that once seemed inexplicable feel a lot less mysterious. And that gives us more useful ways to work with what’s happening.
Trauma Is More Than Fear
Fear is only one part of trauma.
When a lot of your attention has gone toward getting through difficult things, watching for problems, managing other people, or doing what needs to be done, discerning your own wants and needs can be hard to do.
You can be capable in a crisis and also have no idea what you want to do with an unscheduled Saturday. Interest, pleasure, curiosity, or simply becoming absorbed in something because you enjoy it don’t always come readily.
In therapy, we spend time getting to know how to tell what you want, how to know what interests you, and how to sense what you enjoy.
Working With Trauma in Therapy
We start with what brings you in. You get to decide what you want to talk about and when you’re ready to talk about it.
You get to have privacy here. We can talk about what happened, what’s happening in your life now, and what becomes important along the way.
How we work together can depend on what you need and what we’re working on. Sometimes talking and thinking things through is useful. Other experiences respond better to a different approach.
I also use Brainspotting, a somatic therapy that gives us another way to work with emotional, physical, and memory-based experiences that aren’t always easily reached through talking and thinking alone.
You don’t have to produce the “right” feeling or tell your story a particular way. We can work with what matters to you as it comes up.
Over time, therapy can help you build more trust in yourself – in what you feel, what you need, and what you want.
What happened to you is part of your life. It doesn’t have to be in charge of how you understand yourself or what you expect from the life ahead of you.
Trauma took some choices away from you. Therapy can help you get more choices back.
Get started here
Complete the secure inquiry form below and I’ll personally respond within one business day. We’ll schedule a brief consultation call where you can share a general sense of what brings you to therapy, ask questions about my approach, and decide whether working together feels right for you.
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Licensed Professional Counselor
Cheryl Zandt
Telehealth Counseling in Washington DC and Virginia
Cheryl Zandt is a Licensed Professional Counselor providing online therapy for women in Virginia and Washington, DC. For more than 20 years, she has helped her clients face anxiety, burnout, panic, relationship challenges, and life transitions with greater understanding, self-trust, and choice.
Thoughtful, collaborative, and grounded in research, curiosity, and genuine human connection, her approach helps clients make sense of experiences that have felt confusing, frustrating, or overwhelming for far too long.
Your questions, answered
What counts as trauma?
Trauma can come from a single frightening or overwhelming experience or from things that happened repeatedly over time. Abuse, neglect, violence, coercion, frightening or controlling relationships, and other experiences in childhood or adulthood can continue to affect how you feel, respond, relate to other people, and understand yourself.
You don’t have to decide whether something “counts” as trauma before bringing it to therapy. We can talk about what happened and how it is affecting you now.
Do I have to talk about everything that happened in trauma therapy?
No. You get to have privacy in therapy and decide what you want to talk about and when you’re ready to talk about it.
Trauma therapy also doesn’t have to mean spending every session talking about the past. We can work with what’s happening in your life now and with what becomes important along the way.
Can trauma affect me even when I’m not thinking about what happened?
Yes. Trauma can affect memories, emotions, relationships, sleep, attention, and physical responses even when you aren’t consciously thinking about what happened.
You can find yourself reacting strongly to something without immediately understanding why. Part of trauma therapy can be making sense of those connections so that your reactions feel less mysterious and you have more ways to work with them.
Can Brainspotting be used for trauma therapy?
Yes. I use Brainspotting as one option in trauma therapy. Brainspotting is a somatic therapy that gives us a way to work with emotional, physical, and memory-based experiences that aren’t always easily reached through talking and thinking alone.
It isn’t something every trauma client has to do. How we work together depends on what you need and what we’re working on.
How do I know if trauma therapy might be helpful for me?
You don’t have to come to therapy already certain that trauma is the problem. Sometimes people start therapy because of panic attacks, difficulty sleeping, relationship patterns, strong reactions they don’t understand, or a sense that experiences from the past are still affecting their lives.
We can start with what brings you in and figure out together what deserves our attention.