Dear Cat:

Wikipedia’s entry on Psychological Trauma states: “Psychological trauma is damage to the mind that occurs as a result of a distressing event. Trauma is often the result of an overwhelming amount of stress that exceeds one’s ability to cope, or to integrate the emotions involved with that experience… The person may not remember what actually happened, while emotions experienced during the trauma may be re-experienced without the person understanding why… This can produce a pattern of prolonged periods of acute arousal punctuated by periods of physical and mental exhaustion… Emotional detachment, as well as disassociation or ‘numbing out’ can frequently occur.. Exposure to and re-experiencing trauma can cause neurophysiological changes like slowed myelination, abnormalities in synaptic pruning, shrinking of the hippocampus, cognitive and affective impairments”.

You may want to read the part under Treatment, there is a list of “psychotherapy approaches .. designed with the treatment of trauma I mind- EMDR, progressive counting  (PC), somatic experiencing, biofeedback, Internal Family Systems Therapy and sensorimotor psychotherapy”- I don’t know what these are, but Wiki has an entry on each one.

I hope you let me know how your search for trauma therapy goes. I hope “Everything” gets better soon!

anita