Arizona Trauma Therapy and Treatment

Trauma is not only a mental disorder. It can affect you in multiple ways, including:

1. Physical Trauma: Injury or harm to the body, such as from accidents, falls, or physical assaults.
2. Psychological Trauma: Emotional responses to distressing events, such as abuse, witnessing violence, or experiencing a life-threatening situation.
3. Emotional Trauma: Involves feelings of helplessness, fear, or sadness caused by experiences like emotional abuse or neglect.
4. Developmental or Childhood Trauma: Trauma experienced in early childhood, such as physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, or neglect, which can significantly impact emotional development.
5. Complex Trauma: Repeated or prolonged exposure to traumatic events, often in situations where the individual feels trapped, like ongoing abuse or living in a war zone.

A person can have trauma, but not have PTSD. Trauma refers to an experience, while PTSD is a mental health disorder caused by extremely traumatic situations. 

Learn more about PTSD.

Trauma responses are the emotional, physical, and behavioral reactions that occur after an individual experiences a traumatic event. Some people may experience a temporary distress period, while others may struggle with lasting effects. 

They can include:

• Fatigue
• Shock
• Disbelief
• Guilt
• Shame
• Anger
• Sleep disturbances
• Hypervigilance 
• Avoidance and social withdrawal
• Depression
• Anxiety

Anyone can experience trauma, though how they handle it depends on their ability to cope. There are some risk factors, however, such as demographic factors like female gender, minority status, low income, and social isolation can increase your risk for trauma. 

Individuals with prior mental health conditions, substance abuse, and a history of adversity in childhood tend to have lower resilience reserves as well. 

Trauma severity directly correlates with the event—sexual abuse, violence, and combat involving actual or threatened death/injury most often cause severe trauma and/or PTSD.

Diagnosing traumatic stress conditions requires structured clinical interviews assessing event exposure history plus ensuing emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and physical disturbances. Our team will identify your trauma types and key details to gauge the severity of your experience  while ruling out pre-existing issues versus precipitated conditions. 

We delineate symptom profiles across PTSD criteria like flashbacks, avoidance, hypervigilance, dissociation, and mood changes to measure persistence, frequency, and level of disruption. Co-occurring major depression, panic disorders, substance abuse, and somatic complaints may surface as well.