Talk therapy can help people in a variety of ways. It can help build coping skills, reframe thought patterns, improve your relationships, and reduce the intensity of things like depression over time.
But for many adults, trauma can be difficult to name and talk about, even in therapy. Unresolved trauma symptoms in adults don’t always match post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) criteria or involve things like flashbacks and nightmares.
When trauma is the underlying driver of mental health challenges, treating the symptoms without treating the source can result in feelings of stalled progress. This article will explore how trauma can impact your progress in treatment, including:
Typical mental health care treatment is usually crafted around what’s apparent: depressive symptoms, experiences of anxiety, and other specific diagnoses. The entire diagnostic process is designed to identify presenting symptoms and to try to match them with evidence-based interventions.
However, trauma can block therapy progress from happening even when you’ve received an accurate diagnosis and the appropriate care. You could fully participate and gain new insights, but still find yourself not making progress because of the trauma underneath that hasn’t been touched on.
Most standard treatment approaches (even for trauma) weren’t inherently designed to account for or process traumatic memories. They were designed to address the symptoms that traumatic memories can produce.
In the sections below, we highlight the different ways trauma can hide and how this relates to the nervous system.
Childhood trauma and adult mental health connections aren’t always obvious. Adults who experienced early adversity in life don’t always realize they went through it – it was just the way things were.
Experiences like neglect, instability, and unpredictability might have seemed normal to them. However, the developing nervous system adapted to these situations and built patterns that could be driving mood, behavior, and relationships even decades afterward.[1]
When these patterns show up in the adult years, they can sometimes be noted and treated as symptoms of depression or anxiety, instead of the aftereffects of unprocessed experiences. Examples of this include:
Traumatic memories are actually stored and processed differently from regular, ordinary memories. These memories live in the body as well as the mind, in patterns of muscle tension, autonomic arousal, and threat response that can become active even faster than conscious thoughts.[2]
Talk-based therapy can help people to better understand the effects of trauma, but it can’t always treat where it lives in the body. This is why trauma’s impact on therapy outcomes can be so pronounced. It’s also why those with major trauma histories often plateau with treatment approaches that don’t address both body and mind.
PTSD and unresolved trauma can run beneath:
This can happen with so much frequency that the absence of a trauma-informed approach from a treatment plan could be why therapy isn’t working optimally.
A nervous system shaped by trauma operates in a constant state of low-grade activation. Stress hormones staying elevated and disrupted sleep work hand-in-hand with a threat detection system firing at stimuli that wouldn’t register as dangerous to most people.
Ultimately, this can actually create the symptoms of other distinct disorders. And when this happens, these disorders may be targeted separately, independent of what is really going on.
In the sections below, we take a closer look at what can happen when this becomes the case.
Trauma and treatment resistance can look the same from the outside. An adult who doesn’t respond well to medications or cycles through therapists without progress could start to think of themselves as “treatment-resistant.”
In other words, PTSD recovery challenges for adults can present themselves when trauma isn’t part of the clinical conversation. A psychiatrist who isn’t aware of your experiences isn’t working with the full picture. Similarly, a therapist treating panic disorder without exploring whether these responses have a trauma trigger isn’t getting to the root of the problem.
Trauma triggers and relapse, or the idea of recurring symptoms after a period of recovery, are often related. If an adult has stabilized and their symptoms have been reduced, they might become destabilized by a sensory cue or life event that activates their original trauma response.
Treating the underlying causes of someone’s difficulties can be imperative for the long-term healing and recovery process, and thankfully, there are several modalities and approaches designed to do just that.
Trauma-informed therapy for adults is a treatment approach that shapes how the clinician approaches your care. A trauma-informed framework changes the questions, shifting the emphasis to what happened to you in life and how your body and mind have adapted to it.
This shift in framing can change the entire lens of therapy. Safety always comes first, and a trauma-informed therapist understands that an adult with a significant trauma history might perceive a therapeutic relationship as threatening at times. So, pushing too hard never happens in order to guard against the potential of retraumatization.
Pacing also matters in healing trauma, since the process isn’t always linear. Becoming flooded and overwhelmed in sessions can prevent progress, so your clinician will build in stabilization work before any direct trauma processing begins.
Additionally, a clinician trained in trauma will use things such as breathwork, grounding techniques, and attention to physical sensations for a holistic approach. Therapy for unresolved trauma that ignores the body is missing a vital component of the work.
As a result, treatment moves with intention and at a pace you’re comfortable with. For adults who’ve been in treatment without feeling safe, this difference can be immediately apparent and beneficial.
AMFM is here to help you or your loved one take the next steps towards an improved mental well-being.
When it comes to trauma treatment, the field has expanded its research base a lot over the past three decades. There are now several unique approaches that have a strong body of evidence for their efficacy in working with trauma, both for PTSD and the broader range of effects of trauma on adult mental health.
Trauma therapy options for adults include:
No single approach works for everyone, so the most effective trauma treatment for you is likely the one that speaks most to your circumstances. A clinician or team can help you decide which of these approaches would be best in the work to come for healing.
For some, there comes a point in complex trauma work where weekly outpatient sessions just aren’t enough. Complex trauma treatment tends to require more intensive support, especially if co-occurring mental health disorders are also present.
Residential treatment can give you or your loved one a place to address multiple conditions simultaneously. It provides a supportive environment and structured treatment options throughout the day to help you stabilize and work on the recovery process.
This consistency itself can be incredibly therapeutic for adults whose early lives were defined by instability and whose present lives feature ongoing instability from mental health challenges.
A Mission For Michael (AMFM) provides treatment for adults experiencing various conditions. Trauma support is a phone call away – call 866-478-4383 to learn about our current treatment options.
See our residences in Southern California’s Orange County & San Diego County.
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AMFM (A Mission For Michael) Mental Health Treatment offers the full spectrum of care for those looking to improve their mental health, including residential treatment programs that use trauma-informed care and research-backed interventions for trauma.
Across every level, our clinical approach is always coordinated and individualized, built around your history, diagnoses, what hasn’t worked before, and your goals for going forward. Our team of expert clinicians believes in treatment persistence and will personalize your treatment plan so you can achieve lasting, life-changing outcomes.
Our locations in California, Minnesota, and Virginia accept insurance and are in-network with most major providers. To check your insurance coverage for mental health care, simply complete our confidential online verification form or call us at 866-478-4383.
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If unresolved trauma symptoms are affecting your response to treatment, you might, understandably, have concerns about why this is happening and what you can do. The following answers to FAQs on the topic may help provide some extra clarity.
They can, which catches some people off guard. You can go through years of life with trauma that feels under control, and then find that a new relationship, job, life transition, or even a period of unfamiliar safety brings old responses back to the surface.
Safety, counterintuitively, can actually allow the nervous system to finally work through what it couldn’t when under constant stress. If trauma symptoms have emerged later in life, then it’s worth reaching out to AMFM Mental Health Treatment to let us help you find out why.
You can ask them directly. But bear in mind that it’s not the same for someone to say they’re generally oriented to working with trauma instead of having specific clinical training.
Inquire about whether they have training in things like EMDR or somatic experiencing and have any formal education, training hours, or continuing education in these approaches.
Yes, and this could be preferable for many. Several trauma modalities listed on this page don’t require you to directly verbally recall the details of your traumatic memories. This is because forcing someone to do so before the nervous system is ready can increase the distress felt in the body and the mind.
At AMFM, we strive to provide the most up-to-date and accurate medical information based on current best practices, evolving information, and our team’s approach to care. Our aim is that our readers can make informed decisions about their healthcare.
Our reviewers are credentialed medical providers specializing and practicing behavioral healthcare. We follow strict guidelines when fact-checking information and only use credible sources when citing statistics and medical information. Look for the medically reviewed badge on our articles for the most up-to-date and accurate information.
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