Trauma and PTSD therapists in Clydebank, Scotland Scotland, United Kingdom GB
Trauma and PTSD
Sara Aicart-Pendlebury
Art Therapist, Human Givens Practitioner (HG.Dip.P), Member of Human Givens Institute, IFS therapist Levels 1&2, Narm Practitioner
PHOBIAS, PANIC ATTACKS AND POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS
The brain has an emotional alarm system designed to keep us safe. When people suffer from panic attacks, phobias or post-traumatic stress, it is because the system has gone into overdrive.
What happens is this. There is a small, structure in the brain, known as the amygdala (Greek for almond, which is its shape), that has access to our emotional memories and learned responses. It evolved in the distant past and its job is to match new circumstances to what is already in the store and alert us to anything that previously represented a risk and might do so again. In the distant past, this might have been a movement or flash of colour that could have signified an approaching predator. The amygdala would then have triggered changes to help the body get ready to fight or flee the danger – pounding heart, racing pulse, quick, shallow breathing, etc.
Now imagine this. A young woman, who has had a highly stressful day, is waiting in a long supermarket queue, worrying whether she’ll be out of the shop in time to catch the bus to school to collect her little girl. It is one pressure too many. The amygdala responds as if she is under threat and she starts to feel her heart pounding strangely and her breathing quickens. She becomes terrified that she is having a heart attack and that makes the symptoms escalate – her palms sweat; her chest feels as if it is bursting and she struggles to breathe. Soon she feels overwhelmed and may collapse or run out of the shop. The amygdala, fearful that this could happen again, files away the fact that there were bright lights and lots of people queuing when the ‘threat’ occurred. Then, when the woman is queuing in the post office the next day, the bright lights and queue may be sufficient for the over-vigilant amygdala to trigger another panic attack to deal with the new ‘threat’.
Phobias start the same way – the amygdala makes associations with what was going on when a person first felt threatened, not all of which may be relevant. So, while it is understandable that someone who is attacked by a vicious dog may well develop a fear of dogs generally, it could equally be the case that someone develops a fear of broken glass because, on a previous occasion, when they had had a panic attack, there was broken glass lying near to where they collapsed. Agoraphobia develops when someone is too frightened of panic attacks even to leave the house.
In the case of post-traumatic stress, someone who was in the back seat of a car when a collision occurred may find it frightening to travel in the back seat again but there may be other, unconscious, connections with the accident too, such as the smell of petrol. So the person may experience seemingly inexplicable panic when filling up their own car with petrol.
Fortunately, human givens practitioners are taught a simple and effective way to deal with all these circumstances. If a traumatic memory is causing panic attacks, phobias or post-traumatic stress, they can use a powerful, painless visualisation procedure, known as the rewind technique, to take the emotion out of the memory and enable the memory of the event to be stored away as history, instead of as one that continues to intrude on the present. The memory remains, and always will remain, a deeply unpleasant one but no longer is it emotionally arousing. This method can work swiftly and reliably even in the most extreme of cases.
15 Years Experience
Trauma and PTSD
Peter Dutton
Registered Psychotherapist, Counsellor/Therapist, Life Coach, Sports Psychologist. Registered BACP Member
I understand that a traumatic event can constantly trigger thoughts of fear, shock, anger, restlessness, and sometimes horror. This often feels out of control. I will offer support and help on how to understand and manage this
12 Years Experience
Trauma and PTSD
Vanessa Abraham
Registered Psychotherapist, BSc (Hons) Pharmacology, Pg Dip Psych, UKCP registered, Cert. Supervision
I work with a lot of people through trauma and PTSD. Most of the people that I have seen have had some major traumas and if not then they have suffered from a develomental trauma. I am attending a training in November 2019 to learn further how to help -people in processing their traumas further and healing from them.
10 Years Experience
Trauma and PTSD
Janine & ComposurePsychology Team
Psychologist, Chartered Clinical Psychologist, HCPC & BPS registered, DClinPsy, CSAccred.(AAC), MPhil (cantab)
All of our Clinical Psychologists at ComposurePsychology are experienced in working with and sensitive to people living trauma and PTSD. We help you to identify how and why trauma and PTSD may be continuing to impact your life and how you can learn new strategies to lower the distress and impact any trauma has contributed to. We draw from evidence based therapies including; CBT, ACT, CFT, SFT, DBT, EMDR, systemic, narrative, psychodynamic and others.
11 Years Experience
Trauma and PTSD
Dr Ian Anderson
Psychologist, Consultant Clinical Psychologist (HCPC registered), PhD, MSc, MSc, MSc, MA (Econ), BA (Econ) Hons
Sometimes human beings are faced with truly horrible situations: threat, a fear of death, or witnessing such events. A normal response to these situations is severe psychological disturbance. However, such disturbance usually remits within weeks. Unfortunately for some people the psychological disturbance lasts months, years, and sometimes a lifetime. These disturbances include nightmares, intrusive thoughts, avoidance of situations that resemble the trauma, difficulty relating to other people, withdrawal from social life, and in extreme cases dissociation from reality. The two most common psychological conditions associated with this disturbed response are Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Adjustment Disorder. Psychologists have had more than a hundred years of experience in dealing with these difficulties. In the First World War it was described as shell shock. In the Second World War it was known as combat fatigue. We now know that it is not only those who engage in combat who suffer from these disorders. What we are increasingly understanding is that posttraumatic experiences are a disturbance of memory: the disturbance is that we simply cannot forget the horror we have experienced. Psychologists have developed clear treatment pathways to assist the victims of trauma.
44 Years Experience