When you experience a traumatic event, the brain shifts quickly into a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response. These responses are governed by the lower regions of your brain and your nervous system. This is why traditional talk therapy does not have the potency to assist with trauma recovery, and why trauma therapy in Milwaukee, WI uses bottom-up forms of therapy to help heal both the body and the mind.
What Actually Happens to the Brain During a Traumatic Event?
During the traumatic incident, the brain quickly responds to the threat in the best way possible. This is often done unconsciously. During this shift, the brain releases large amounts of adrenaline, cortisol, and norepinephrine to mount the best possible threat response. These hormones are important because they create an intense response within the body and the muscle tissue that, if not fully completed as a trauma response, can stay stored within the body.
Why Does Trauma Get Stored in the Body and Not Just the Mind?
As mentioned above, when the hormones are released from a trauma response, they can become stored impulses within the body – urges to move, to collapse, or to push something away. It’s important to note that other sensory stimuli can also be held in the body’s trauma response. For example, heat or coldness can be felt throughout the body or in certain areas of the body; smell and taste may also be experienced as part of a trauma response, as well as muscle constriction. Another response that the body may have to a traumatic event is a feeling of being disorganized and not knowing what to do. This is due to a traumatic event’s unpredictability, and the body’s struggle to mount an effective response under extreme stress.
Why Talk Therapy Often Falls Short for Trauma Recovery
When trauma is stored in the lower levels of the brain and the nervous system and the body, talk therapy generally falls short in the healing process. It’s difficult to heal trauma by only addressing the brain, the thoughts, and the memories, without addressing the rest of the body that also experienced the overwhelming event. This is why somatic experiencing and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) are so crucial to helping heal the nervous system, the body, and the thought patterns that trauma disrupts. The body and the nervous system need to feel safe enough to let down some of their defense mechanisms to allow for healing to take place and for cognitions and thoughts to shift into healthier patterns.
What Makes Trauma Therapy Different from Everything Else You Have Tried?
Body-oriented trauma therapy helps to create both nervous system regulation and a felt sense of safety. These are vital before beginning to integrate traumatic material. As the body and the nervous system begin to re-regulate, cognitions and flashbacks begin to shift. Intense emotions and other trauma symptoms can then become integrated and resolved. This allows for trauma symptoms to then dissipate, and for you to live the quality of life you desire.
How Does Trauma Therapy for Men Actually Work in Milwaukee WI?
Trauma therapy for men in Milwaukee, Wisconsin starts by reaching out to a trained trauma therapist. From there, an initial consultation call will be scheduled to ensure that we are a good fit to work together. We’ll schedule our first appointment, which is typically an intake session. After that session, we focus on building therapeutic rapport and nervous system regulation skills. As your ability to regulate your nervous system increases, so too will your ability to begin processing past traumatic experiences and start to feel like yourself again. Trauma therapy doesn’t have to be a prolonged experience. Many men can experience benefits within 3 to 6 months. Oftentimes, childhood trauma or prolonged traumatization during childhood and adolescence takes longer to heal in trauma therapy than a single-incident car accident or adverse medical procedure.
Trauma can make the body feel so disorganized that you can’t move forward in life. Trauma therapy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin helps you get unstuck by allowing for regulation within the body and integration of past traumatic experiences. Being stuck is fundamentally the body’s response to trauma because it doesn’t yet know where to begin healing.
Finding Trauma Therapy in Milwaukee and Southeastern Wisconsin
Finding trauma therapy for men in Milwaukee, Wisconsin starts with a simple Google search. You can check out many different therapy directories, such as TherapyDen, Psychology Today, and Headway. But you’ll want to check on a therapist’s specific trauma therapy training and experience. Some therapists say that they work with trauma; however, they don’t have advanced training to treat it effectively. At Revitalize Mental Health, I am a certified EMDR therapist and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner.
I help men heal from trauma and improve their quality of life. Online trauma therapy is available for those who live beyond a comfortable driving distance from my Kenosha, Wisconsin office. In-person trauma therapy sessions are accessible for those driving from Lake Geneva, Burlington, Franklin, and Oak Creek, Wisconsin. If you’re interested in scheduling a free consultation, fill out the form below, and we’ll schedule our call.
Stop Letting Trauma Keep You Stuck and Start Healing with Trauma Therapy in Milwaukee WI
Your brain and body have been carrying the weight of what happened for long enough. The racing thoughts, the physical tension, the feeling that you just can’t move forward — that is not weakness, and it is not permanent. That is what trauma does to the nervous system and it is exactly what trauma therapy in Milwaukee, WI is designed to address. At Revitalize Mental Health, we start where the trauma actually lives — in the body — and we work from the ground up so that healing is real, lasting, and felt in every area of your life. You don’t have to understand all of it before you reach out. You just have to take the first step.
- 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 your brain and body with trauma therapy in Milwaukee, WI today.
Additional Counseling Services Offered at Revitalize Mental Health
At Revitalize Mental Health, I understand that trauma affects far more than just your thoughts. It shapes how your nervous system responds to the world, how present you are able to be in your relationships, and how much energy you have left for the life you actually want to be living. While this blog focuses on what trauma does to the brain and why trauma therapy heals it differently than talk therapy, I also work with men navigating a range of challenges, including Men’s Therapy, Anxiety, Panic, Mood Disorders, Grief and Loss, Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI), Schizophrenia, Perfectionism, and Men and Infidelity.
I frequently work with men who have tried talk therapy and walked away feeling like nothing really changed. Sessions are collaborative and carefully paced, using evidence-based approaches such as EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, CBT, and ACT– bottom-up therapies that work with the brain and nervous system directly rather than just talking around what happened. 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 are stuck. These are men whose brains and bodies are still responding to experiences that happened months or years ago. They haven’t been able to move forward no matter how hard they have tried. I understand that reaching this point can feel exhausting and discouraging. Especially if you have already tried therapy and didn’t get results.
But there is a significant difference between talk therapy and trauma therapy, and that difference is often what changes everything.
My approach works directly with the brain and the nervous system rather than just the thoughts surrounding what happened. As a certified EMDR therapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, I help men create safety in the body first. Then we gently process what has been stored for too long. The result is a nervous system that finally has room to heal. The man who walks out is no longer slowed down by the weight of the past at every turn.
