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    PO Box 40 Shawnigan Lake, BC Canada V0R2W0

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    positivecounselors@gmail.com

Online Trauma Therapy

Emotional and psychological trauma is the result of extraordinarily stressful events. Accidents, natural disasters, or sexual abuse are some issues that can shatter your sense of security. The result makes you feel helpless, hopeless and like you are living in a dangerous world. Immediately after the event, shock and denial are typical. Longer term reactions include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea. While these feelings are normal, some people have difficulty moving on with their lives. Trauma counseling and therapy can help these individuals find constructive ways of managing their emotions.
Trauma symptoms typically last from a few days to a few months, gradually fading as you process the unsettling event.
At times trauma symptoms don’t ease up or can become worse. While emotional trauma is a normal response to a disturbing event, it becomes PTSD when your nervous system gets “stuck”. You may remain in psychological shock, unable to make sense of what happened or process your emotions. The defining difference is based on the person’s response, more than by what caused it.
Emotional and psychological trauma can be caused by many things. Events, such as an accident, injury, or a violent attack, especially if it was unexpected or happened in childhood, creates emotional trauma. Ongoing, relentless stress, such as living in a crime-ridden neighborhood, battling a life-threatening illness or experiencing traumatic events that occur repeatedly also induces trauma. In addition, behaviour such as bullying, domestic violence, or childhood neglect, even commonly overlooked causes such as surgery, the sudden death of someone close, the breakup of a significant relationship, or a humiliating or deeply disappointing experience, especially if someone was deliberately cruel, can all cause traumas.
Experiencing trauma in childhood can result in a severe and long-lasting effect. When childhood trauma is not resolved, a sense of fear and helplessness carries over into adulthood, setting the stage for further trauma. However, even if your trauma happened many years ago, there are steps you can take to overcome the pain, learn to trust and connect to others again, and regain your sense of emotional balance.
Emotional & psychological symptoms for trauma are many and varied. They can include shock, denial, or disbelief, confusion, difficulty concentrating, anger, irritability, mood swings, anxiety and fear, guilt, shame, self-blame, withdrawing from others, feeling sad or hopeless, as well as feeling disconnected or numb. Other symptoms include insomnia, nightmares, fatigue, being startled easily, difficulty concentrating, a racing heartbeat, edginess, agitation, aches and pains, as well as muscle tension.
Healing from trauma benefits greatly from online counseling and therapy. It can be complemented by exercise, sleep, healthy nutrition, mindfulness and mediation. In addition, support from friends and family is important. Getting involved in community service has positive effects. Avoiding drugs and alcohol and limiting stressful situations is also helpful.
However, talk therapy has proven valuable in helping people overcome the distress, pain, and dysfunction that come from having lived through the most overwhelmingly threatening experiences. In fact, there is evidence that CBT and other forms of trauma focused therapy can change the way your brain works after trauma, through Neuroplasticity.
Many studies exploring the efficacy of online therapy for a range of conditions, such as anxiety, depression, trauma and PTSD, mood disorders, phobias, found internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy (ICBT) to be just as effective as in-person therapy. From the comfort of your own home you have an internet connection. This also helps remove some of the barriers in place with traditional therapy, such as social anxieties or negative stigma associated with going to therapy.
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Online Intergenerational Trauma Therapy

We can identify both historical and intergenerational trauma. These sometimes overlap and have similar symptoms but not always the same causes. Historical Trauma refers to traumatic experiences or events that are shared by a group of people within a society, or even by an entire community, ethnic, or national group. It is known to have widespread effects and caused collective suffering.
Intergenerational trauma, sometimes referred to as transgenerational or multigenerational trauma, is defined as trauma that gets passed down from those who directly experience an incident to subsequent generations.
Examples of this type of trauma can be the descendants of holocaust survivors, indigenous people of the Americas and Australia, the slavery of the African American ancestors, various historical genocides such as the Armenian people, Rwanda, Bosnia, or Darfur. Other forms of this trauma yet to be understood are the effects of the recent health pandemic, widespread parental incarceration, large numbers of children in care of the state, the displacement of millions who have become refugees due to seeking security, the persecution of people due to their race or religious beliefs, and widespread substance abuse that is so prevalent today.
Intergenerational trauma may begin with a traumatic event affecting an individual, traumatic events affecting multiple family members, or collective trauma affecting larger community, cultural, racial, ethnic, or other groups/populations.
Yael Daniele proposed the following types of survivors of intergenerational trauma. Some become numb and seek silence by self-isolating. They have a very low tolerance for stimulation of any kind; they are minimally involved in raising their children. Others feel as victims and fear and distrust the outside world, trying to remain inconspicuous, yet are frequently depressed and quarrelsome. While others act as fighters and focus on succeeding at all costs, retaining an armor of strength, making them intolerant of weakness or self-pity. Some who can be referred to as those that “made it” are characterized by their pursuit of socio-economic success but also by the ways in which they intentionally distance themselves both from their experience of trauma and from other survivors.
Indigenous communities in Canada suffered from sustained trauma. For generations, Canada tried to forcibly assimilate Indigenous people by placing them in residential schools, removing children from their families, and generally attempting to eradicate their culture and traditions.
The effects of this prolonged trauma have impacted First Nations groups on individual and collective levels. This trauma includes markedly high rates of depression and self-destructive behaviors compared to the non-Indigenous population. It particularly created towards mental health professionals, a well-earned mistrust of outsiders. Furthermore, recent studies demonstrate that traumatic events can induce genetic changes in the parents, which may then be transmitted to their children with adverse effects.
Some common symptoms of intergenerational trauma may include but are not limited to: depression, fixation on trauma, low self-esteem, anger, self-destructive behaviors lack of trust of others, depersonalization, isolation, anger, irritability, memory loss, nightmares, domestic violence, fearfulness, psychic numbing, hypervigilance, inability to connect with others, identification with death, unresolved grief, substance abuse, and suicidal thoughts.
Moving forward in a way that is healthy for families is important to stop the cycle of intergenerational trauma.
The mechanisms of transmission of intergenerational trauma remain unclear. Traumatic experiences can be transmitted physiologically, environmentally, and socially. Children experience and understand the world primarily through direct caregivers and are, therefore, profoundly affected by their parents’ modeling. Children both mimic their parents’ behaviors and learn to navigate future relationships based on how they learned to relate to their parents.
Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is an evidence-based treatment modality for children and adolescents who have symptoms related to trauma. This method of treatment combines psychoeducation and cognitive techniques to teach children and adolescents how to express themselves, learn cognitive coping skills to deal with stressors, develop relaxation techniques, create, and process trauma narratives, and manage behaviors that could be detrimental to their overall mental health. The goal of treatment for traumatic experiences is to reduce the overall frequency, intensity, and severity of symptoms so that one’s daily function is not impaired and to make the symptoms manageable.
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Online Therapy for Dissociative Disorders

Dissociative disorders occur more often in women and involve problems with memory, identity, emotion, perception, behavior and sense of self. Dissociative symptoms can potentially disrupt every area of mental functioning. Sometimes the diagnosis and symptoms can appear associated with disorders such as post traumatic stress, borderline stress, substance abuse, depression, and anxiety.
There are three types of dissociative disorders:
  1. Dissociative identity disorder,
  2. Dissociative amnesia
  3. Depersonalization/Derealization disorder
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)
Also previously known as multiple personality disorder. About 2% of the population in the USA will experience DID and 90% of them are victims of childhood repetitive, overwhelming trauma and or sexual, physical abuse and neglect. Furthermore over 70% of those who suffer DID have attempted suicide.
Symptoms of dissociative identity disorder include: The existence of two or more distinct identities each of which can have distinct behavior, personal preferences for food, clothing, language, memory and thinking, which can shift suddenly and then shift back, involuntarily. The signs and symptoms may be observed by others or reported by the individual. People with dissociative identity disorder may feel that they have suddenly become observers of their own speech and actions, or their bodies may feel different, they may suffer ongoing gaps in memory about everyday events, personal information and/or past traumatic events.
Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder
This disorder involves ongoing feelings of detachment from actions, feelings, thoughts and sensations as if they are watching a movie (depersonalization). Sometimes other people and things may feel like people and things in the world around them are unreal (derealization). A person may experience depersonalization, derealization or both. This rarely happens after the age of 20.
Treatment typically involves psychotherapy. CBT therapy can help people gain control over the dissociative process and symptoms. The goal of therapy is to help integrate the different elements of identity. Therapy may be intense and difficult as it involves remembering and coping with past traumatic experiences. Recent studies show that online therapy can be a useful method of treating symptoms of trauma, one of the primary causes of dissociative identity disorder. Online therapy is a way of circumventing treatment barriers by increasing accessibility and providing remote counseling to those who need it.
Left untreated, DID can last a lifetime. While treatment for DID may take several years, it is effective. Persons with DID may find that they are better able to handle the symptoms in middle adulthood. Stress, substance abuse, and sometimes anger can cause a relapse of symptoms at any time. As a good standard of care, persons with DID should be treated by a mental health professional with specialized training and experience with dissociation.
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Developmental Trauma, Emotional, Physical and Spiritual Abuse.

Trauma from childhood or due to physical and emotional abuse are often showing similar signs in adults. Various therapies have helped when the patient realizes the need for counseling. However spiritual abuse or children who may be subjected to abuse show the signs which will often come to the attention of their loved ones, who will then consult with a trained therapist.
Signs of trauma can include anger, aggression to self or others, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, fear, self-isolation, panic attacks, changes in eating or sleep patterns, problems of intimacy and normal relations, irritability, sadness, mood swings, guilt, hopelessness, headaches, substance abuse, dis-interest in social, school or work activities, among others.
Childhood Trauma can have a lifelong effect and can be caused by disasters, serious illness, serious neglect, accidents, sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, and other life-threatening events affecting the child directly or those in their family.
Among the most common forms of emotional and physical abuse, is that suffered by women. It is estimated that one in five have been sexually abused in childhood, often by a family member or friend of the family and half of all women report to have experienced attempted sexual assault as adults.
Trauma caused by domestic or intimate partner violence also affects women and children and is a pattern of abusive behaviors that include physical, emotional, and often sexual abuse and it is estimated to affect over 10 million people in the United States every year.
Trauma Caused by Spiritual Abuse takes many forms and can be from an intimate partner, your family, a religious organization, your community, or the society where you live. It takes place when you are prevented through physical, emotional, or spiritual coercion to practice a spiritual path of your own choosing and are forced to do things that are against your free will.
Examples of such abuse are those we observe in cults, pseudo religious organizations and mainstream faith communities that include being silenced when you disagree or want to report an abuse, being shamed, intimidation, forced to attend or do some rituals against your will, being punished, when using scripture to justify the superiority of men over women or a harmful or abusive behavior, when you are isolated from those outside your faith traditions, sexual and physical abuse, when you are prevented from leaving your faith community, when an authoritarian leader tries to control or manipulate their members, when forced to pay to receive spiritual enlightenment, when diversity is not accepted or one is made to accept a hierarchical elitism.
Extreme cases of societal abuse can also include the persecution of people due to their faith, such as for instance antisemitism, Islamophobia, the persecution and the cultural and economic genocide of Bahais in Iran, or the discrimination of Christians in some Muslim and Communist countries.
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Online Therapy for Compassion Fatigue, Vicarious Trauma, Burnout

It is estimated that between 40% to 85% of the “helping professionals” are at some point affected by secondary traumatic symptoms such as compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma. The professions include social workers, mental health professionals, doctors and nurses, lawyers, law enforcement agents, members of the military, immigration judges, and child welfare and protection workers among others.
The symptoms can include physical exhaustion, alterations in sleep and eating patterns, headaches, behavioral changes with substance abuse, addictions, anger, social distancing, absenteeism, and psychological changes such as loss of self esteem, anxiety, hopelessness, cynicism, problems with intimacy, irrational fear, lack of empathy, blaming others, impatience, apathy or lack of interest, among other such symptoms.
Compassion fatigue affects those who have a strong empathy with their clients and refers to emotional exhaustion from repeated exposure to their traumatic situations and stories. Vicarious trauma occurs when the helper has a profound shift in their worldview because of a long term and repeated exposure to the first-hand traumatic experiences of their clients. Unlike the two previous situations, burnout need not be a consequence of secondary trauma and can affect anyone who feels overwhelmed, physically, or emotionally exhausted due to work conditions and can often be resolved by changing jobs.
It is not always possible to separate these conditions. They can co exist and overlap. Therapy can help determine the treatment appropriate for each case. Those working in the helping professions need to take measures for self care, participate in wellness activities such as healthy nutrition, exercise, meditation, and mindfulness, as well as developing and maintaining a strong social support at home and at work. Most of such professionals at risk believe in the need for self care strategies but very few report actually practising such measures.
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