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Despite what movies might have you believe, life here on earth can sometimes be hard and unpredictable. The modern problems you face every day can’t be solved just by rolling up your sleeves and buckling down. Repressing your emotions and “powering through” just disconnects you from yourself further and makes the symptoms you ignore grow and strengthen.
But if you’re suffering from PTSD, navigating daily life , alone, becomes exponentially harder. You find yourself avoiding places or people, unable to connect with loved ones, and maybe even reacting to situations in a way that’s unlike you.
PTSD counseling is one of the best investments you can make in your future. We only live once, so why spend your days carrying the unnecessary burden of trauma, PTSD, or C-PTSD?
Our licensed mental health professionals specialize in a wide range of proven PTSD counseling modalities, that treat the root of PTSD on a neurological level. The somatic ( mind-body) therapies we see get the best results include: IFS, Brainspotting, & AEDP. When you work with us, you can expect to experience relief and new levels of freedom from the limitations caused by trauma. We offer a compassionate and holistic approach to reclaiming your wellness—your most important birthright.
The mainstream definitions of PTSD assert that you must have experienced an extreme event such as combat, violence, or near death experiences.
A more accurate and complete definition of PTSD is experiencing after effects from a traumatic event that triggered your body to experience physiological and psychological responses to the initial trauma after the traumatic event has passed.
A traumatic event often occurs when you experience intense feelings of fear, shame, abandonment, rejection, or sadness that overwhelm your body’s ability to process them.
Typically, in the face of a traumatic event people enter one of four reactionary responses: fight, flight, freeze (going numb, or dissociation) or fawn (people-pleasing behavior to remove perceived danger)
PTSD counseling is for you if you’re living life on your trauma’s terms, if you feel blind sighted by your body’s response to people or situations that remind you of past danger or trauma. If you’re struggling with nightmares or memories of traumatic experiences, avoiding people/places, or otherwise sacrificing your well-being in response to a traumatic event, PTSD therapy can help you regain control.
You deserve to feel safe in your body!
Your resilience has carried you through life and brought you to this moment — it’s time to take the first step to rebuilding your relationship with you and start trusting yourself again. Life has so many happy moments to offer you, and you have every right to enjoy them.
PTSD counseling is right for you if you’re ready to move forward towards freedom and release the burdens of your past.
When you’re suffering from the effects of trauma and PTSD, all you want to do is get back to “your old self.” At the same time, your mental bandwidth is lowered as a result of the heavy burden you’re carrying.
So you have to be absolutely certain that PTSD counseling is going to work. We understand, and we’re thrilled to tell you how effective therapy is for treating this condition.
A recent study found that 86% of participants in therapy for PTSD fared better and recovered faster than the control group, who attended no therapy. You see, working with a licensed mental health professional gives you an unbiased guide through healing.
But, with SOMATIC therapy interventions we KNOW they are even MORE effective than traditional therapy. Trauma is stored in the body and if you are willing to consistently show up and work with a somatic therapist, you can absolutely release the trauma stored in your body. Our therapists will take you through this journey at your own pace, providing you with a built in safety net along the way.
In the US, you can’t talk about mental health treatment without covering costs and insurance. We understand that finances can be a major barrier to entry when it comes to healing. That’s why we do our best to work with insurance providers and keep costs affordable.
We’re an out-of-network provider for almost all insurance companies which offer out-of-network benefits and submit claims on your behalf.
Out-of-network benefits typically cover 30 – 60% of each session’s cost. If we’re in your insurance network, all you’ll pay is your assigned co-pay.
And we’d be remiss if we didn’t have options for cash / out-of-pocket payments. We’ll work with you privately to determine pricing per session if you fall into this category.
It’s really not about price. It’s about the fact that we stand by the quality and effectiveness of our services. Talk therapy alone just doesn’t cut it, because trauma is stored in the body and can’t be healed solely by “talking”. If you want to see results on a mental and physical level give us a call.
If a person has experienced a traumatic event and does not experience PTSD symptoms afterwards, it’s usually for one of two reasons.
The first is something called dissociation. Dissociation is a common trauma response in which a person’s brain and body try to protect the person from feeling the full effects of a traumatic event by repressing the memories of the event and storing them in their subconscious.
This may cause the person to experience memory gaps, numbness or feel like they are detached from their body or the world around them. People who experience dissociation may repeatedly go into bouts of feeling “zoned out” or disconnected from themselves and be unsure where the symptoms are stemming from. They are still suffering from PTSD but they don’t know it.
The second reason one may not experience PTSD symptoms after a traumatic event is related to the way their brain and body processed the event. You see, what might be overwhelming to one person’s central nervous system may not be for another.
If the central nervous system of the person experiencing the event was able to stay regulated, they may not have perceived it as trauma. Underlying factors that create this robust type of response often point to the person having safe and secure relationships with themselves, and others around them throughout life. If they were a child they may have had very supportive and nurturing parents that made them feel safe after the event and helped them reframe the event in a reparative or non threatening way.
In short, PTSD may make you apprehensive about or prevent you from growing in important ways such as:
The best way to know if you have PTSD is by asking yourself the following questions:
If you answered yes to any of the above questions— or more than one—there’s a chance you’re suffering from PTSD.
There are four main groupings of symptoms for those who have PTSD.
Most importantly, you have to know simply reading this list cannot substitute for a professional PTSD diagnosis.
It’s always beneficial to seek help from a trauma informed therapist to accurately determine a diagnosis.
Remember, being diagnosed with PTSD or any other disorder is not a life-long label and doesn’t mean anything bad about you. It’s a grouping of symptoms that may help narrow down which therapeutic approaches will be best to help you recover.
Yes, PTSD can absolutely lead to depression and/or anxiety.
As you can see from the list of common PTSD symptoms above, many symptoms such as hypervigilance and loss of interest in activities you used to enjoy may present as anxiety and depression.
But the root cause is the unprocessed trauma you may have experienced.
Treating anxiety and depression alone without addressing underlying trauma will not repair the main cause of the symptoms.
Dealing with trauma without therapy can be extremely challenging, but you can try:
But dealing with trauma and healing from trauma are two very different things. Because trauma rewires your brain, healing these issues without therapy can be an uphill battle— to say the least.
It is possible but unlikely. The main things that repair the brain from suffering after traumatic events are:
(IFS, Brainspotting, AEDP, Breath work, other somatic therapies)
(ex: you were in a car accident and after 5 years of riding in cars with no accidents you start seeing your symptoms improve because your brain and body are slowly unpairing the association between riding in cars and danger)
It’s time to seek help if you notice these recurring symptoms are getting in the way of you feeling at ease, growing or just feeling safe enough to enjoy your life.
If you suspect you may have PTSD, don’t try to navigate it without help—you are not alone. Please know that you don’t have to live this way or feel this way ever again. PTSD counseling can help you reclaim control over your life once and for all.
Whether you just have PTSD or have been diagnosed with other disorders too, we’ll create a custom blend of treatments and therapies just for you or find you a therapist that is best suited to do this.
This is one of the things we do very differently from other mental health therapists. We take a holistic approach, meaning we look at you as an individual and deep dive into all the factors that may be causing your symptoms, nothing exists in a vacuum and every aspect of our lives affects the others.
While it’s true that certain therapies work best for certain conditions, we don’t follow the standard “round peg to round hole” categorizing that you may have experienced with other providers.
Our holistic mental health services are designed around your goals and what you want to get out of therapy, rather than following some ancient diagnostic textbook to the letter.
Seeking out a trauma informed therapist trained in somatic modalities that are designed to remove trauma trapped in the body can be a game changer and help you recover!
During a traumatic event, the neural pathways in your brain become wired to protect against perceived danger when presented with situations or feelings that remind it of the original traumatic event.
Recovery is most often a matter of helping your brain consistently find a safe place to allow it to rewire itself using somatic interventions in therapy.
With somatic interventions like brainspotting, AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy) , and IFS (Internal Family Systems), research shows us that you can recover from PTSD!
Best of all, recovery is not only possible– it happens all the time! You deserve to enjoy and fully experience everything life has to offer. There’s certainly nothing “wrong” with you or “weak” about your response to trauma.
At Holistic Mental Health Counseling Services NY, we believe – wellness is your birthright! As your mental health care team, we’ll see you through every step of this recovery journey.
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