This is a great question. Another way to ask this question is, can men heal if you experienced a traumatic event? The word trauma in the mental health arena is an umbrella term that encompasses Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Men don’t need to be diagnosed with PTSD in order to benefit from trauma therapy. A trauma therapist in Milwaukee, WI can greatly help alleviate trauma-related symptoms, whether they are associated with PTSD or another form of traumatic event.
What PTSD Actually Is and What It Isn’t
PTSD in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR) has to meet one of these four Criterion A experiences as it relates to real or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence in the following ways for an event to reach the PTSD threshold. The first is directly experiencing a traumatic event, for example, a near-death car accident. The second is witnessing a traumatic event occur to others in your vicinity. The third is learning that a traumatic event occurred to a family member or close friend. The fourth is being highly exposed to trauma-related material through one’s profession. Such as emergency room staff, doctors, nurses, first responders, morticians, and military personnel. PTSD symptoms may become more complex as you experience trauma without seeking PTSD treatment in Milwaukee, WI.
What Falls Outside the PTSD Diagnosis and Why It Still Matters
Any type of traumatic or other overwhelming event that does not meet the 4 Criterion A PTSD benchmarks will be classified as another form of traumatic event. This doesn’t mean it was any less severe or any less dysregulating to your nervous system. It just means that you don’t fit into the PTSD box that society has created. Other forms of trauma can significantly and negatively impact your sense of self-worth, how you navigate conflict with others, your ability to feel internally at ease and calm, and disrupt daily routines, such as going to sleep or walking through a grocery store.
Understanding Little t Trauma — The Experiences Most Men Dismiss
As mentioned above, little t traumas are all those things that happen in life that do not meet the PTSD criteria. This can include chronic bullying in high school or college. It can also include being emotionally neglected as a child by your caregivers or parents. Supporting someone in your family with a chronic illness or disability also qualifies. So does the relentless pressure to perform as the sole provider for your family and then being laid off. Over time, little t trauma symptoms can lead to mind-body disconnection and trauma symptoms that impact your life.
Because of America’s culture, men often dismiss the stress and pain that they experience in life. This includes both PTSD related events as well as little t trauma incidents. With this dismissal, men can fall into avoidant patterns, emotional numbness, compartmentalization, and even dissociative symptoms.
Little t trauma events can include many different things in your life. For example, knowing that your spouse has to go to work in a high-risk profession, being let go from a high-paying job, losing control of a car in the snow and barely missing an accident, or your partner cheating on you. The little t traumas and trauma symptoms in your life can add up and disrupt your daily functioning.
Nervous System Dysregulation — The Common Thread
Both little t and big T traumatic events have the potential to dysregulate the nervous system. With this dysregulation, your sleep, feeling of safety, and internal calmness can all be disrupted. This is why bottom-up forms of therapy, such as somatic experiencing therapy, target the body and the nervous system as the first areas of intervention. As the nervous system begins to re-regulate, your body can then begin to complete incomplete threat responses. It can also begin to heal how the trauma is held in your body. This then allows for cognitive shifts to take place. These shifts are more in line with the reality and facts of the situation, which trauma sometimes distorts.
Nervous system dysregulation essentially means that something so powerful occurred in your vicinity, life, or to someone you know and love. The body itself was not able to hold the stress and digest it on its own. Traumatic events take place quickly. The body does not always have time to brace, prepare, or complete the threat responses that try to naturally occur for protection.
Nervous system dysregulation doesn’t typically carry a diagnosis, because many different diagnoses within the DSM-5-TR can dysregulate the nervous system. Research is making clear the importance of not only recognizing nervous system dysregulation but also using interventions that target nervous system re-regulation during the healing process, especially when it comes to treating trauma.
Felt Sense Trauma Symptoms — When Something Is Wrong But Doesn’t Have a Name
Felt sense trauma symptoms are the body’s inward reflection that something has happened in the past, but which cannot be explained with thoughts and verbal language. When trauma occurs at such a young age or while in utero, the brain’s development at that time is still forming. It does not yet have the ability to formulate a thought process related to what is going on. It cannot understand why this is happening or when it will be over.
The felt sense only knows discomfort or comfort, as well as approach or avoid. However, this felt sense can be stored within the body and create trauma symptoms later in life.
What a Trauma Therapist Can Do That a Diagnosis Cannot
The root of the underlying trauma is what needs to be healed. The diagnosis, whether it is PTSD, a severe reaction to stress, or complex post-traumatic stress disorder, can be informative, but it does not always dictate what needs to be healed. Diagnoses are more so labels that society has developed to define something that is different or non-normative.
Starting with nervous system and body-oriented interventions helps to establish nervous system regulation. It also gradually tracks the uncompleted threat movements and impulses that are being held in the body. By doing this, your body is able to experience more ease and calm. It can also experience a sense of release from the muscular tension and emotional numbness you have most likely been carrying for years or decades.
When the nervous system itself is dysregulated because of trauma and stress, men can have a hard time slowing their thoughts when trying to go to sleep. They may struggle to connect with their authentic selves. They may become more reactive versus responsive to stressors. And they may isolate more due to fear and other insecurities.
Somatic Experiencing for Non-PTSD Presentations
A somatic experiencing trained trauma therapist can help with both PTSD treatment as well as non-PTSD-oriented treatment. This form of bottom-up oriented psychotherapy helps heal many things related to trauma treatment. These things may include negative patterns in your life that seem to replay unconsciously, self-sabotaging and destructive patterns, habitual overthinking and racing thoughts, anxiety and panic, an urge to control things that are beyond your control, and navigating how stress is held in your body when you are a high-performing individual, such as an athlete, healthcare worker, entrepreneur, or CEO.
A somatic experiencing-trained trauma therapist can really help you slow down and re-regulate your nervous system so that you are more responsive than reactive, attuned with your emotions and the emotions of those around you, able to appreciate the beauty in life, and able to build the self-worth you desire to have. Somatic experiencing therapy can also help you unfreeze from a collapsed trauma state so that your life does not feel like you are disconnected from your emotions and experiences. This collapse state can often feel similar to depression, and the body is in more of a shutdown, energy conservation state.
Signs That You Would Benefit from Trauma Therapy — With or Without a Diagnosis
There are many different signs that somebody may display due to experiencing a traumatic event. These can include the following, but every person is unique in how they may experience the after-effects of trauma.
- Disrupted sleep cycle, or waking up after a long night’s sleep but still feeling exhausted.
- Significant changes in appetite and eating habits.
- Difficulty managing emotions or feeling emotionally numb.
- Intrusive thoughts and flashbacks related to stressful events that pop up out of nowhere.
- Difficulty slowing down racing thoughts.
- Feeling like you might jump out of your own skin because you’re so restless or hypervigilant.
- Avoiding certain topics, thoughts, memories, or even physical locations.
What to Expect When You Reach Out Without a PTSD Diagnosis
The first few sessions are tailored toward you and me building a therapeutic alliance. This helps you feel comfortable and allows us to establish a baseline level of nervous system function. From there, we work to expand your capacity to experience both positive and uncomfortable emotions and sensations within the body. As we pendulate between calm and ease and discomfort and stress in the body, the body itself simultaneously integrates the experiences that caused the stress and dysregulation.
As the integration progresses, you will notice an easier time connecting with internal peace. Anxiety symptoms become less intense. Your ability to cope with the pressure of high-performing roles improves. And you will notice positive changes in the quality of your life.
Trauma therapy for men in Milwaukee, WI can benefit you whether your life has been derailed by traumatic and overwhelming experiences, or if you’ve been suppressing these symptoms for years or decades. The diagnosis is not as important as your desire to heal and your commitment to the process.
Finding a Trauma Therapist for Men in Milwaukee and Southeastern Wisconsin
If you’re tired of having your life controlled by trauma and want to take the next step to start healing, trauma therapy in Milwaukee, WI can be just what you need. Revitalize Mental Health’s office is located in Kenosha, WI, and in-person sessions are available for those who live within driving distance. Common areas I see people driving from include Burlington, Lake Geneva, Salem Lakes, Bristol, Oak Creek, Greendale, Greenfield, and Big Bend, WI. Virtual trauma therapy sessions in Wisconsin are also offered for those who do not want to make the drive or who prefer virtual sessions. Reach out now or call 720.295.6703.
You Don’t Need a Diagnosis to Start Healing, So Reach Out to a Trauma Therapist in Milwaukee WI
Whether your experiences meet the clinical threshold for PTSD or not, your nervous system has been carrying something, and it deserves real treatment. Trauma therapy in Milwaukee, WI does not require a label to begin. It requires only a willingness to show up and do the work. At Revitalize Mental Health, we meet you exactly where you are, diagnosis or no diagnosis, and we use body-based approaches that work with your nervous system directly to help you finally feel the relief you have been looking for. The first step is simpler than you think.
- Complete the online form or call 720.295.6703 to get started.
- Begin meeting with a compassionate trauma therapist through a free 15-minute consultation to see if we’re a good fit.
- Take the first step toward healing with a trauma therapist in Milwaukee, WI today.
Additional Counseling Services Offered at Revitalize Mental Health
At Revitalize Mental Health, I understand that trauma without a diagnosis is still trauma, and it still deserves care. While this blog focuses on how a trauma therapist in Milwaukee, WI helps men heal without a formal PTSD diagnosis, I also work with men navigating a range of challenges including Anxiety, Panic, Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI), Men and Infidelity, Trauma Therapy for First Responders and Military Personnel, Men’s Therapy, and Trauma Therapy.
I frequently work with men who have been told nothing is clinically wrong but who know something is off in their body, their relationships, and their sense of self. Sessions are collaborative and intentionally paced using evidence-based approaches such as EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, CBT, and ACT, bottom-up therapies that regulate the nervous system and help men heal from whatever they have been carrying, regardless of what it is called. I offer both in-person therapy in the Milwaukee area as well as virtual therapy throughout Wisconsin and Colorado.
About the Author
I’m Daniel, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and the founder of Revitalize Mental Health. I specialize in working with men who know something is wrong but have never had a name for it. These are men who do not have a PTSD diagnosis but whose nervous systems are clearly still responding to something that happened. They sleep poorly, struggle to be present, and feel irritable or numb. They cannot figure out why nothing seems to fully resolve, no matter how hard they try. I understand that not having a diagnosis can make it harder to justify reaching out for help. But the absence of a label does not mean the absence of pain. And it does not mean the absence of a path forward.
My work begins where the symptoms actually live, in the body and the nervous system, rather than in the diagnostic category. As a certified EMDR therapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, I help men regulate their nervous system. We work to complete the threat responses their body never got to finish. The goal is to build the internal capacity to finally feel at ease in their own skin. You do not need a diagnosis to work with me. You just need to be ready to start.
