Stabilisation Therapy

The first stage of my trauma therapy approach is helping to establish safety and stabilisation. This is crucial in beginning to rebuild ourselves from the ground up.

Attempting to carry out trauma processing without the underlying processes of stabilisation often causes more harm and damage in the long run. This is because we open up the pain associated with our trauma before we have any skills in place to be able to withstand the emotions associated. Sometimes this may be the first time we have let these feelings out and consequently our system feels flooded and out of control.

Therefore we have to start by learning how to manage the overwhelming emotions associated with the traumatic experiences.

If you have experienced any form of trauma it may have left you with;

  • Overwhelming emotions

  • Panic attacks

  • Feeling unsafe and afraid

  • High anxiety or anxiety attacks

  • Agoraphobia

  • Lack of trust towards self and others

  • Outbursts of anger

  • Feelings of guilt and shame

  • Numbness

All of these are completely normal responses to an abnormal situation. The numbness we experience is our body and minds was of shutting down what happened to try to keep us safe. If we can’t feel it then we don’t have to deal with it.

However, often this means it pops up in other ways and we are less prepared for them.

What does Stabilisation Therapy involve?

The purpose of stabilisation therapy is to help you cope with the day-to-day impacts of your trauma by learning skills and strategies to manage your emotions.

Key elements of stabilisation therapy include;

  • Emotional regulation

  • Managing overwhelming feelings

  • Anxiety management strategies

  • Learning grounding skills

  • Establishing internal feelings of safety

Learning these skills can give us the strength to manage the impacts, even without telling the story of what happened. My focus in stabilisation isn’t about what happened, it is about how you are coping at the moment. Teaching you new and healthier coping strategies and together we can create a toolbox of skills to help you move forwards and feel more in control of yourself.

In stabilisation therapy we do not need to discuss or touch on what happened, it is about focusing on where you are today and how we can make today more tolerable.

If you have previously had counselling or therapy for trauma but feel like it didn’t work, or it left you feeling worse then stabilisation therapy maybe a better option, for now.

If you want to discuss of learn more about how stabilisation therapy could help you, reach out to me today for an informal chat about how we could work together.

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Trauma Therapy