Traumatic experiences are incredibly frightening, awful incidents, the memories of which get stored in a part of the brain that holds them as if they are happening now, and not past incidents that can be recalled with relative calm. Some examples of traumatic experiences are: childhood abuse or neglect, bullying, accidents, rape, assault, and incidents in war. The goal of trauma treatment is to process traumatic memories so that they are stored in the same way that regular memories are stored and no longer affect the person who was traumatized in his/her everyday life.

Sometimes clients come to therapy for help with symptoms that have developed after a recent trauma. If no prior trauma history exists, substantial improvement is sometimes possible in one or two sessions.

In other cases, clients have been exposed to a number of traumas throughout their lives, or an extended period of trauma (such as during childhood), and there is a kind of interactive accumulation effect that necessitates a longer treatment process during which the therapist and client work in a careful, collaborative fashion that resolves trauma, and current life difficulties related to trauma, without re-traumatizing.

In my treatment of trauma, I use Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) (Les Greenberg, Sue Johnson, Leanne Campbell) and a version of parts work (from Internal Family Systems Therapy) that was pioneered by trauma expert Janina Fisher.

To put it in less jargony terms, traumatic experience gets stuck in the body, and these are ways of letting it out.  Additionally, by transforming view of self and other through trauma treatment, it becomes possible to help clients resolve issues related to shame and trust.