Trauma Therapy
Can you provide therapy for trauma?
We uniquely offer a focused and holistic Trauma Therapy Program, which is approximately 12 sessions, after the Trauma Assessment is completed and if it shows the presence of trauma / PTSD. Our Trauma Therapy Program can be offered face-to-face or remotely via telehealth, preferably 1-2 sessions per week for maximum benefit.
Traumatic experiences can create coping responses in hurting people that may seem unusual or extreme. Traumatized people carry trauma almost as if it is frozen in time. Trauma left untreated can devastatingly impact the entire life of a person who has experienced it, as well as those they love. It plays a part in their everyday life, coloring how they perceive the world, as well as in how they assess threat. They are also amazingly resilient, strong, creative, having learned countless ways to survive. One of our core principles at Sincera is that "all parts are welcome" - every part of you is instinctively geared to survive, protect, cope. No matter how you did it, even maladaptively, it was your attempt to survive.
We value your resilience and the ways you have managed to survive trauma. In fact, the human being is amazingly equipped both mentally and physically in ways of "fight, flight, or freeze", to cope with what is perceived as threat. These are ways the human being over the eons was able to ensure survival of the species, so these responses actually contain an evolutionary component. In some ways it can be hyperarousal, hypervigilance, physical readiness for defense. In other ways, it can be by what we often think of as "numbing out" or "checking out", which clinically can be a form of dissociation.
We have completed postgraduate courses in trauma at ULM, a rewarding practicum at a nationally-recognized treatment center focusing almost exclusively on trauma, as well as provided adults, children's & adolescents' trauma therapy with their families, completed formal training, as well as mandatory doctoral-level, trauma-specific consultation in the areas of children's and adult trauma and PTSD. We are also qualified to provide all of these proven trauma therapies remotely, including EMDR. We are a member of the International Association of Trauma Professionals, as well as of the most respected EMDR organization in the world, EMDRIA. We continually year-round practice continuing education in trauma.
We are a Certified Grief Counseling Specialist, which can be very helpful with issues surrounding trauma. We are trained at ICEEFT-approved EFIT, Level 1, one of the most respected treatment modalities, emotionally focused individual therapy, specifically with an emphasis on attachment and trauma.
We also completed training with a nationally-recognized leader in DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) Lane Pederson, PsyD, LP, DBTC, a core therapeutic skill in emotional regulation and coping strategies, foundational principles of any legitimate trauma therapy.
We are trained in BCBT-SP (brief cognitive-behavioral therapy - suicide prevention).
We are honored to have earned a formal specialization in trauma from the Arkansas State Board of Examiners in Counseling & Marriage & Family Therapy.
I suspect I may have PTSD but I don't know where to start. Can you "test" me for this?
PTSD is always trauma, but not all trauma may be PTSD. We can administer a Trauma / PTSD Comprehensive Assessment for children or adults, and, if warranted, provide a DSM-V diagnosis. This assessment objectively assesses for any trauma symptoms, and includes critical resources and psychoeducation, as well as systemic resources for your partner and family. The Trauma Assessment is up to two hours and is $350. If your trauma symptoms meet the DSM-V clinical criteria for a formal diagnosis of PTSD, we can provide optional written clinical objective documentation for you to provide to your physician, which may be beneficial if you need to apply for certain benefits or special services for yourself or your child.
If there is a presence of trauma / PTSD, we can provide our own Trauma Therapy Program. It is approximately 12 sessions; sometimes less, or more. Each trauma therapy session is $200 per session as a part of the entire program ($2,400 total for 12 sessions). One-half ($1,200) is required by session one, with the balance of $1,200 due by session six. Our trauma training is solely in EBT (evidence-based therapy) practices.
Do you provide trauma therapy for active military / veterans?
It is a privilege to provide caring individual and family trauma therapy for our military who have courageously sacrificed so much for us. We are an approved provider for our military, vets, and special forces and their families, as well as providing trauma therapy for MST (military sexual trauma) on the Headstrong platform (https://getheadstrong.org/). Go to the Headstrong website directly and get connected with us. CPT, BCBT-SP, EMDR are all solid EBT (evidence-based therapies) widely used with the military. We also provide CPT-SA, which is a specialized version of CPT specifically for sexual assault trauma for males or females (military or not).
I'm concerned that trauma therapy will be very expensive. Is this really going to make a difference?
When we truly understand just how catastrophic and deeply invasive the effects of trauma are, it becomes all too easy to see what the real cost is, and it is far beyond economic. Living with untreated trauma not only costs you, but it costs your partner, children, family and friends, your career, your community. It's the gift that keeps on giving....it can result in legal charges from behaviors surrounding trauma, can destroy marriages, parenting, peace, dignity, hope, result in substance abuse, violent behavior, depression, suicide. It alarmingly trickles into the next generation of your family, and on and on. It is a devastatingly steep price to pay.
Living with untreated trauma costs you and everyone around you. We passionately believe that whatever the cost of professionally treating trauma, it is still exponentially less than the devastating cost of living with it untreated. Can you truly afford not to seek trauma therapy?
Can you offer intensives in trauma therapy?
In most cases, we can. We do a thorough assessment first, then the treatment plan is personalized to your individual needs. A trauma intensive can shorten your time in trauma therapy, and the research is showing that trauma intensives can be very effective and well tolerated by most individuals. This can be very practical and helpful if a client is travelling from another area and may require a nearby hotel stay during their trauma therapy. If so, let us know and we will be happy to help you with these arrangements, which can include licensed massage therapy, yoga, and other restorative services in our quiet, scenic and calming resort community at the lake. You can build this experience to be a healing and restorative journey with a hotel stay, good meals, outdoor walks, scenic water activities, hiking on Sugarloaf Mountain, relaxing fishing, rest.
Is the pain of trauma forever?
It doesn't have to be! Everyday, there are wonderful stories of how people are healing, reprocessing their agonizing traumatic memories into ways they can live with and that no longer rule their lives.
Trauma literally changes the brain. Trauma is stored somatically (in the body), and this is why traditional "talk therapy" can't quite reach real trauma effectively. One of the most common misconceptions about trauma is that simply talking through it can resolve it. This is not entirely accurate.
Trauma and PTSD require far more than traditional talk therapy, as well as the ability to manage abreactions, or emergencies, and ethically demand both specialized and competent recognized safe training and treatment.
If you are considering trauma therapy, please ask your provider what their training is in trauma therapy, and ask if they are trauma-trained. If considering EMDR, make sure the training was from an EMDRIA-approved source; there is unfortunately a wide proliferation of "EMDR" and not all of it is legitimate - or safe. Dr. Elyssa Barbash penned an excellent article that encourages clients to know what they are getting, "Working With A Real Trauma Therapist" (Therapy With a Real Trauma Therapist: Part One | Psychology Today).
According to the Trauma Informed Care Network,
"Q: What is the difference between trauma-informed and trauma-trained?
A: Trauma-Informed Providers are providers who have developed a basic understanding of the impact and prevalence of trauma, possible treatment, and resources and appropriate referrals for in-depth trauma treatment.
Trauma-Trained Providers are providers who have received specific training in research-supported trauma recovery modalities. These providers are capable of understanding and [providing] in-depth trauma therapy through the use of supported protocols that produce reliable reduction of trauma related symptoms."
We are both trauma-informed, as well as trauma-trained in not one but four evidence-based trauma therapies for both children and adults - EMDR, TF-CBT, BCBT-SP, and CPT. Each separate professional training required an additional biweekly mandatory consultation process over at least six months each. Our EMDR training is EMDRIA-approved, and our TF-CBT and CPT training is by UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute / ARBEST (Arkansas Building Effective Services for Trauma).
EMDR - This is "eye movement desensitization and reprocessing", and is considered one of the most effective trauma therapies in the world today, and is for traumatized children and adults. This goes beyond alot of talking, and literally shifts and reprocesses the memories in the brain. In trauma, the traumatic memories are not stored correctly. Think of it like this - when you go to a large but chaotic store, you might find the socks stored with the fresh bananas, shoes stored on the shampoo aisle, diapers in the garden section. That's like "your brain on trauma", so to speak. EMDR can help reprocess those memories, and it can be done fairly quickly, without having to do alot of painful talking about the original trauma, which research is showing sometimes can itself be retraumatizing. People of all ages, backgrounds, and traumatic experiences the world over are showing long-term results with EMDR.
TF-CBT - This is "trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy", and is for traumatized children, adolescents and some adults. https://tfcbt.org/about/ . It takes a systemic focus on not only helping the child, but the safe, supportive parent/caregiver family system as well. It can help the family help the child. When a child has been traumatized, often that adult caregiver suffers trauma as well and needs their own help to recover.
A side note - - Please do not automatically assume that the therapy your child may be receiving at school is the same as trauma therapy. While some therapies at school can be very helpful with behavioral and other issues, this should not be confused with specialized highly-trained trauma therapy. Our position is that ethical trauma (or other) therapy for children should ideally involve a safe, supportive family/caregiver whenever realistic and possible for maximum life benefit, not just in the school setting. We encourage families to ask questions about any mental health therapy their child is receiving in the school and how effective it is purported to be if it has no treatment plan to directly involve the safe and supportive parent/caregiver, if it does not address how the issue inevitably impacts the family / the family impacts the issue.
BCBT-SP - This is "brief cognitive behavioral therapy - suicide prevention", and proactively assesses for baseline strengths or risk factors, and helps with emotional regulation, self-efficacy, safety, and is widely used with the military, veterans, special forces.
We are honored to have reached a Tier III level of a 3-tier structure and have completed a long process of training, and mandatory biweekly consultations over months, with the StrongStar Training Initiative, providing some of the best high-quality training in EBT PTSD trauma therapies today, and are included as a part of their national directory of approved providers as a Tier III provider.
CPT - This is "cognitive processing therapy", and is for traumatized adults and some older adolescents. We were trained by Dr. Kathleen Chard, one of the three original developers of CPT, in the first group of therapists in Arkansas to receive this training. CPT has been used across the nation in VA systems with very good success. We can also provide CPT-SA, ...CPT, but with an emphasis on sexual assault trauma. Dr. Alana Siegel describes CPT and Dr. Chard's work in this excellent article, "Got PTSD? Try CPT" (Got PTSD? Try CPT | Psychology Today).
We have a saying at Sincera Wellness...."Your Life is Waiting On You." Your health, dignity, peace, restoration, joy, laughter, love, relationships, connection....your life....are waiting.
No trauma in this world is worth denying yourself this.