I feel it is important to offer a perspective from the lens of Trauma.  As many of you know, this is my area of specialty and I often work with Survivors who have not come forward.  

Our life experiences can sometimes take hold of us and start to affect our everyday life. It is usually at this point that we decide we have had enough and reach out for help, hoping to find the magic pill that will take everything away. Why wouldn't we?! I decided to write this blog because I have had many people ask me what steps they can take to get rid of this life affecting experience. Often when I tell them that there are many steps that have to be taken and there is a process to be journeyed, they look at me in annoyance. There isn't a magic pill that I can just take?! 

Have you ever experienced a smell, sight, sound, touch, or taste that reminds you of something from the past? One example would be the smell of a specific recipe that reminds you of your grandma and the wonderful memories you have with her. The smell brings about warm emotions and the love you have for her. 

The same is true of memories that don’t hold such wonderful feelings. We call these triggers -  when you experience something in the present that pulls you back to the past. Usually if a trigger is occurring, there has been an event(s) that left a lasting impact. We would label these events trauma.

A traumatic event is any event experienced as a threat to one’s safety. These threats bring about our subconscious defense responses and move us into a state of fight, flight or freeze.

When we experience these threats, they often are not coming about from a logical perspective, but rather our body is responding from a subconscious level and is signaling us that we are in danger and we need to protect ourselves. When we go into this state, the thinking part of our brain - the frontal cortex - switches off, making it difficult to think logically. Our bodies are responding to potential threats before we have the chance to think about responding in such a way to keep us safe.

When we experience traumatic event(s), our body can get stuck in a state of fight/flight/freeze, leaving us constantly responding to perceived “threats”. Often, this starts to come out through our relationships: perceiving that our significant other will hurt us so we hurt them first, struggling to trust friends/family/significant other with vulnerable emotions, or struggles with intimacy.

The wisdom of our bodies is so incredible AND it’s imperative that we are able to acknowledge the impact of trauma(s) that have occurred in our lives. Without acknowledgment, our bodies never receive rest and leave us feeling anxious, experiencing panic attacks, and in a constant state of preparing. This comes in the way of us living in the present day and therefore missing out on the present experiences with those around us.

While it can be scary to acknowledge such painful experiences, the hope and peace that comes from allowing your body and mind to heal is worth the investment into yourself.

Are you ready to give yourself a chance?

https://www.nurturedheartscounseling.com/contact

What happens if I don’t think about what happened?

If I don’t make space for or ignore the emotion or bad memory when it comes up, it will go away, right? I wish I could tell you yes. It is natural to desire the easiest way out, to not feel any pain. However, I have a sign in my office that reads: “Its about the journey, not the destination”. The growth and understanding of yourself that comes from going through the journey rather than immediately getting to the destination is what it is all about.

By pushing emotions down or ignoring them all together, you are unfortunately creating the opposite effect of what you are hoping. While in the immediate moment, your goal of not experiencing pain is possible, emotions have to come out at some point. I’ll give you a few examples of what this looks like if you push them down and don’t make space for them as they come up:

If you push down on a springboard far enough, it is going to reach its limit. It becomes impossible to push down any further and once you let go, it will come back up. Imagine that in the sense of emotions, if everything comes flying back up at once - that quickly becomes overwhelming and dizzying.

The second example is, if you imagine a jar that has a screw on lid, you are only able to fill that container so full until the lid no longer screws on. If we all have an internal jar, there are only so many emotions that can be stuffed down until they start spilling over. We start to see this spill over through irritability, constantly feeling stressed, crying at the drop of a hat and not understanding why, anger outbursts and more. This often causes confusion, because you are unsure of the cause.

The last example brings us all back to our science experiment days as a kid. Do you remember what happens if you put mentos into a bottle of coke? This is very similar to what happens if emotions are suppressed for long enough. It takes one thing to happen or a trigger to be felt for EVERYTHING to come shooting out like a sticky geyser. Emotions start flooding out and can often cause panic attacks, anxiety, and overwhelm. We aren’t meant to handle everything all at once.

Emotions are a lot like a bell curve. If we make space for emotions, they have a natural process that they go through. We feel them coming, we take the opportunity to acknowledge them and then they naturally dissipate - ultimately bringing relief. If we allow that process, it feels less overwhelming and the emotions aren’t as large and rocky. When we get stuck in the process of suppressing emotions, they start to look like large mountains that we have to climb each time. This makes us resistant to feeling them and we give up at the base, yet the mountains never go away.

Emotions can be very manageable to cope with when we don’t give them so much power. When we begin to see them differently and allow them space and attention as they come up, we don’t have to worry about the tidal wave that hits us in the face because the springs can’t hold any more, or the leaking out that occurs when we stuff our internal jars too full or lastly the sticky mess that comes when the last straw hits and the emotions geyser all over our life.

You deserve a happy and fulfilling life. You and your relationships will benefit greatly from you investing in yourself.

Originally Posted On 10/27/2025

Talk therapy is beneficial and serves a great purpose. There is much benefit in being able to say out loud the things that have been spiraling around in your head. However, when it comes to memories that exist around Trauma, this can often be re-traumatizing to talk in detail about what happened. 

People who have experienced a traumatic event experience many of the following symptoms:

• Anxiety/Panic Attacks

• Depression

• Elevated responses to situations

• Flashbacks (vivid memories that pop up randomly) 

• Nightmares

• Intrusive thoughts (thoughts that trigger anxiety, fear, or intense emotion)

• Difficulty sleeping 

• Outbursts of Anger

• Shame (blaming self for what happened) 

• Distancing themselves from relationships, even relationships that once felt safe. 

People often downplay their experiences and may not realize or classify their experience as traumatic, which is often accompanied by the thought “what I experienced isn’t as bad as…”

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a highly effective treatment for resolving traumatic memories. To better understand EMDR, I often give the analogy of understanding our brains as a filing system. Because of the way that our brain stores memories, similar memories often get filed away together. However, there isn’t a file system that holds trauma. In fact, our brain doesn’t know how to cope with traumatic memories. This often leaves the brain in a constant state of survival, trying to process the memory, but is often unsuccessful - therefore causing the side effects above. 

EMDR encourages clients to stay in the present while touching their toe in the past. They are simply noticing the memory, instead of being part of, or reliving the memory. EMDR is effective in taking the “charge” out of a traumatic memory, leaving it feeling less vivid and allows for a reduction in the emotions attached to it. 

Starting in 2026, Nurtured Hearts Counseling will begin offering EMDR Intensives. Intensives differ from typical processing sessions in that they are often longer sessions focused on processing. If you think of a typical session (50 minutes), an intensive EMDR session ranges from 3 hours to multiple days. This allows for a consistent focus on the memories and therefore brings resolutions more quickly.