Understanding PTSD: A Common Struggle for Many Women

There are more and more days when you feel so small, helpless, and overwhelmed. Your mornings used to feel full of motivation towards your goals and relationship. But now you can’t face your day – it just feels overwhelming from the start.

On nights when you don’t have bad dreams or nightmares you find yourself tossing and turning. It’s maddening to not be able to sleep well but in your attempt to keep moving forward, there’s no time to nap. During all the business, you find yourself avoiding the people and places that remind you of your past. It’s just easier this way…

Do you suspect that these struggles you’re having are linked to an upsetting or traumatic event? Many women who have a history of at least one traumatic event and are living with these experiences meet the criteria for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, commonly known as PTSD.

Cass Waldo, LCSW: Empowering Women Through Trauma-Informed Therapy 

Hello, I’m Cass Waldo, a mental health therapist at Guided Wellness Counseling, dedicated to empowering women in St. George, UT. Early in my career, I noticed that many of my female clients in this vibrant community who struggled with depression, anxiety, lack of self-confidence, and even addictions had something in common: most of them had lived through traumatic events. Because I wanted to make a difference in the lives of St. George women, I made trauma and its treatment my specialty. In this article, I will share with you what I learned over the years about effective approaches to overcoming PTSD.

The Impact of Trauma on St. George Women: Unveiling the Layers

PTSD can develop when someone in St. George has lived through an event or series of events that caused them to feel so overwhelmed that a part of the brain actually shut down temporarily in order to help them survive. The memory of the overwhelming event is stored in a way that makes it less accessible than ordinary memories, but it can still affect St. George women in negative ways.

The Healing Path: Therapeutic Approaches Tailored for Women

So, what does work for women who are struggling with trauma or PTSD? Therapy.
Therapies for PTSD fall into three broad categories:

1. Cognitive and Cognitive-Behavioral Approaches

These approaches change how a St. George woman thinks about what happened and the resulting symptoms. This includes Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT, which might include Exposure Therapy), traditional “talk” therapies like Psychoanalysis, and Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT).

2. Emotion-Focused Approaches

These approaches help with how a St. George woman feels about what happened and help manage the resulting emotional symptoms. This includes Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT), Emotion Focused Therapy for Trauma (EFTT), and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).

3. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

EMDR is in a category by itself because it facilitates access to the stored trauma, addressing both cognition and emotion. Instead of being “frozen in time,” the traumatic memory moves from being buried in the subconscious to being available to conscious thought. With the help of a trained therapist, the survivor can then desensitize the memory and reprocess the event so it no longer has the power to control her life.

The Best Path to Healing in St. George: Cass Waldo’s Perspective

So, what is the best therapy for PTSD for women in St. George? All of the above are effective, clinically proven interventions; however, I feel EMDR is the most effective. It doesn’t just treat the symptoms of PTSD; it actually takes away the trauma’s power to cause symptoms by making the experience available to the conscious mind. That’s how EMDR “pulls out the splinter” and lets St. George women go on with their lives.

Empower Yourself: Seeking Help is a Sign of Strength

Knowledge is power. If you are a woman in St. George struggling to contain unwanted feelings like the ones described here and are ready to work on healing the problem, please call or text to set up an appointment. While I would love to work with you myself, we’ll take great care to match you with just the right therapist at our St. George UT office. We can give you answers and treatment to get your PTSD symptoms and the pain of your trauma under control.

If you have mixed feelings, check to see if you are denying or rationalizing, recognize these as normal defenses, and then make the call. If you let me in on what you are thinking and feeling, I will be able to help you get to the root of the problem and resolve it. Start today with a complimentary phone consultation to learn more about therapy for PTSD and trauma in St.
George, UT.