Resilience Restored Psychotherapy

Trauma & PTSD Therapy

Healing after trauma with AEDP, DBT & EMDR in Montclair, NJ and throughout NJ & NY via telehealth. Compassionate, integrative care to help you feel safe again.

Have You Experienced Trauma or Are You Experiencing PTSD?

Trauma and PTSD are not the same thing. I will explain that further below. But you may be here because you are experiencing symptoms of trauma or traumatic stress. These can include:

reliving painful or overwhelming memories
repeated nightmares
feeling very distracted and unable to concentrate
a sense of feeling unsafe (even in safe environments)
a deep distrust of others
avoidance of certain places, people or triggers
difficulties in current relationships based on past traumatic situations.

Or you may not feel much at all. This can happen when people numb themselves emotionally. Sometimes people experience the consequences of trauma in more physical ways. For example, you may be feeling:

anxious or vigilant all the time
rapid heartbeat
digestive issues
difficulty sleeping
changes in appetite
chronic muscle tension
exhaustion

Trauma can be a one-time really big event, something professionals refer to as “Big T” trauma. Or you may have experienced a lot of “litte T” traumas. These are smaller events, often involving being too alone with very challenging experiences and are usually more chronic and cumulative. These include things like emotional neglect as a child, being bullied, etc. While not life threatening or terrifying, especially when there are a number of these, they can add up and have as much of an impact as one Big T trauma. We at Resilience Restored Psychotherapy are here for you. We have worked with people who have experienced all kinds of trauma and have seen people heal and get their lives back.

Through Integrated Trauma Therapy in Montclair, NJ, we help you learn to find calm and be in your present life. Visit us for in-person Trauma therapy or attend online across New Jersey & New York.

Trauma therapy in montclair | Online Across NJ & NY

You’re Not Crazy: Your Nervous System is Doing its Job- Overtime!

At RRP, we work with your resilience from the start of therapy. What has helped you survive has made you strong, and can be transformed to help you heal.

“Trauma” comes in many shapes and sizes. Our understanding of what may be experienced as traumatic has evolved over time from what used to be a very confined definition. While sometimes overused now, trauma is more broadly defined as “any disturbing experience that results in significant fear, helplessness, dissociation, confusion, or other disruptive feelings intense enough to have a long-lasting negative effect on a person’s attitudes, behavior, and other aspects of functioning.” (https://dictionary.apa.org). These events can be caused by humans or by natural disasters. And, importantly, one reliable consequence of trauma is that it often significantly changes a person’s view of the world as just, safe, and predictable or of the self as basically good and worthy.

Our nervous system has evolved over millennia to help us detect, respond to, and recover from threats in our environments. By now most people have heard about the fight/flight/ freeze mechanisms we all have built-in. What this means is that in conditions of threat our sympathetic nervous system gets active and it either helps us fight, flee (e.g., escape) or, in more extreme circumstances, freeze. This latter response is a wired in mechanism to help keep us safer when neither fleeing nor freezing seem to be real options. We just kind of collapse. And the wisdom of this is that sometimes it actually does reduce the harm we might experience in the moment. The problem is many people experience a lot of shame about “not doing anything” after the threat is gone.

In trauma reactions, it seems and feels like the nervous system is still activated and is not resolving or returning to normal now that the traumatic event has passed. In some cases, trauma (like neglect or abuse) is ongoing and this can be quite damaging, hence the term “chronic trauma.” This is also most relevant if trauma started early in life and persisted for a long period of time through different stages of childhood and adolescent development. [https://www.resiliencerestored.com/child-therapy-play-therapy-and-aba/]

Through therapy for trauma and complex trauma in Montclair, we help you regulate your nervous system, focus on the present, and process memories and experiences from the past in order to integrate them into the whole narrative of your much bigger life.

Trauma therapy montclair | Online Across NJ & NY

How We Work Together: An Integrative, Experiential Approach

At Resilience Restored Psychotherapy, we take an integrative approach to trauma, as we do with most things. This is because different approaches offer different healing benefits, and combining them is more powerful and lasting than being rigid about any one particular approach.

Our central organizing approach is AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy)[AEDP]. AEDP focuses on establishing a safe therapeutic relationship, modeled on what we know about health-promoting relationships from Attachment Theory. Within that safety, emotions are explored and processed in a way that frees up energy, clarity, forward movement and new meaning. AEDP focuses on the past to the extent that that it may influence what you are experiencing or trying to sort through in the present. It is also very experiential– it will help you slow down to really notice, mindfully, what is happening in the present, and make room for your own choice and agency in determining how you would like things to be different going forward. In some cases, we may introduce EMDR sessions for a high degree of focus on particular traumatic experiences. Many people with trauma benefit from learning DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) [DBT]. DBT is a skills-based approach that helps people who have experienced trauma regulate intense emotions and reduce any self-destructive forms of coping. Psychoeducation and somatic/ body awareness are also part of our holistic approach to trauma. When you are reeling from trauma and don’t understand what is happening to your body and mind, psychoeducation helps you appreciate what is happening, how your nervous system is trying to protect you, and helps you bring in your wise mind to reassure and refocus you.

Together, we’ll unlock your inner strength and guide you toward lasting transformation.

Start your journey to emotional healing & growth with Trauma Therapy in Montclair.

Fill out our contact form to schedule a free consultation or book directly online at Resilience Restored Psychotherapy in Montclair, NJ and NYC. We’re here to help you unlock your inner resilience and transform your life.

ABOUT US

Why Work With Resilience Restored Psychotherapy

We are all wiser and more resilient than we know.

At Resilience Restored Psychotherapy in Montclair, we believe that resilience is your birthright, ready to be awakened.

No matter the challenges you’ve faced, there’s an inner strength within you waiting to be unlocked. We understand that during times of struggle, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or stuck. But we also know that when you’re supported by someone who holds space for your process, helps you reflect, and asks the right questions, healing and growth become possible.

Our focus is on guilding you from survival mode to a place where growth, hope, and thriving can take root. With years of experience in resilience, trauma, and personal growth, we use evidenced-base approaches like AEDP, IFS, EMDR, DBT and psychodynamic work to help you reconnect with your true self, heal from the past, and create the meaningful connections you deserve.

The values behind Resilience Restored Psychotherapy

Your Questions

Addressing Your Questions and Concerns

We approach Trauma therapy with empathy, warmth, and a deep belief in your capacity for healing and growth.

1. How do I know if I have PTSD or Complex Trauma?

You and your therapist can discuss the number and severity of your symptoms to see if you have PTSD. Complex trauma is not an actual diagnosis, but is a way of describing the sometimes varied and troublesome set of symptoms that can result from childhood abuse or neglect or the accumulation of many traumas over a lifetime. Whether you meet criteria for an actual diagnosis, however, your treatment can be trauma-focused if your symptoms seem to be related to traumatic experience.

2. Will talking about trauma make me feel worse?

This is a great question! Simply recounting traumatic memories without first working to build a safe container in which those memories and experiences can be held and processed with another caring person, can, in fact, be re-traumatizing. At RRP, we work hard at this first part before diving into traumatic material. We work collaboratively so that you set the pace and feel able to integrate traumatic material into a new sense of yourself as resilient and solid. We also help you deepen self-compassion so that traumatic memories no longer trigger self-destructive behaviors. Your therapist will regularly check in with you to see how it is going and to make sure that you are not flooded by traumatic memories, reeling, numbing, or relying on unhealthy coping mechanisms. These are all signs that the work needs to slow down.

3. How long does therapy take to help?

This really depends on a number of things. If you experienced a single-incident trauma, therapy could be just several sessions to a couple of months, depending on what your goals for therapy are. If you are dealing with a very severe traumatic incident, such as something that was life threatening to you or someone else, it may take a little longer. Complex trauma can sometimes involve a few to several years of therapy, again, depending on how severe or ongoing the traumatic experience was, how young you were when it happened, how severe or debilitating your symptoms are, etc. People also sometimes opt to do “rounds” of therapy. Once you have established a good relationship with a therapist, you may do a round of work for a few months to a year, feel considerably better, and stop treatment, knowing that if things come up again or at a deeper level (this sometimes happens as we mature and are able to see and understand our trauma from a different perspective), you can always return.

4. What if I have never felt safe sharing my story?

There is no pressure to share your story. You may come into therapy to work on many other things related to trauma without ever really talking about the details. That is ok. We hope that we offer you enough safety that over time, you may determine that it would be healing for you to share the story. But in our experience a lot of the processing, the building skills and healthy coping mechanisms, the repairs in relationships, the increase in self esteem and competence that therapy offers are not dependent on focusing on the story of the trauma itself. You are bigger and more whole than your trauma. And we know you are more resilient than you feel.

5. Can therapy really change the physical symptoms, like sleep, tension, chronic pain, etc.?

Yes, it can! This happens in two ways. First, processing feelings related to traumatic experiences, even if we are not focused on the details of the trauma, frees up the body of some of the protective tension that it often carries in the muscles (leading to pain/ soreness) and in the digestive system. This can lead to many physical benefits. Second, we will advocate with you to learn and find ways to take care of your mental and physical needs and to find outlets for your body that can help restore calm and regulation to it.

Trauma therapy montclair | Online Across NJ & NY

What Trauma Therapy Can Bring to Your Life

As you progress through therapy for trauma, complex trauma and PTSD in Montclair, you may begin to notice profound shifts, such as:

Feeling calmer overall; more grounded and in the present
Reduced anxiety and depression, allowing for greater emotional ease
A stronger of sense safety in yourself, in the world, and in important relationships
Rediscovering joy and vitality in your daily experiences
Greater emotional balance and resilience in difficult moments
Fewer intrusive memories and nightmares
An ability to think or talk about traumatic experiences without numbing or feeling flooded

Trauma therapy montclair | Online Across NJ & NY