Trauma
"When people suffer psychological trauma, they painfully experience things that until then they thought were impossible in their world. They lose their ground, their trust in the world and in themselves, and sometimes even their language." (Ottomeyer/Peltzer 2002:7)
You have experienced something terrible and threatening and since then you feel insecure, anxious, have trouble concentrating, can hardly sleep and images of this terrible experience keep popping up?
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a reaction to a traumatic event. Traumatic events are extremely threatening or terrifying situations that threaten the life and/or safety of oneself or others and cause deep distress in almost everyone. PTSD can cause symptoms immediately after a trauma or delayed (after weeks, months, or years), such as difficulty concentrating, nervousness, anxiety, jumpiness, flashbacks, nightmares, irritability, and more.
Many relatively mentally healthy people have had experiences in the course of their lives that their brains have not processed optimally. For example, one may have been humiliated by a teacher and not been able to process this properly. 20 years later, you may have a supervisor in your job who somehow reminds you of the teacher from back then. Thus, it can happen that you unconsciously feel like the helpless student and react accordingly less competent than usual.
EMDR is also an excellent way to "re-treat" emotional wounds, which can lead to a reduction in overall stress levels in everyday life and an increase in well-being.
In addition to EMDR, I have also intensively studied the ImTT method. This has proven to be even more effective in trauma treatment and particularly gentle for the patient, as I have been able to observe in my practice every day for several years now.
How I can help
Treatment with EMDR can be extremely helpful here by making it clear to the brain that the bad situation is now over. The stressful events can be integrated into one's own life story. Often, after just a few sessions, there is a significant improvement, even the complete disappearance of symptoms.
ImTT, on the other hand, relies on an imagination exercise that involves the entire body. This method enables the patient to process the experience on a physical level as well.
In many cases, depending on the individual symptoms, I combine the two methods and achieve impressive results.
Case study PTSD from my practice
Ms. C.: "When I was just under 27 years old, I had panic attacks for the first time and subsequently also long-lasting anxiety attacks. It was only in therapy that I learned that these panic attacks were due to a terrible experience in my early childhood, which I can only remember in fragments. By treating this event with EMDR, the panic attacks and anxiety disappeared."
