Trauma Therapy in Whitefish Bay, WI
You know that thing that happened that shouldn’t have happened and you can’t get it out of your head?
Maybe sometimes you see pictures of it pop up unexpectedly as you’re going about your day, or watch it happen in your head like a movie.
Sometimes something totally random triggers it. Maybe the memory shows up when you’re least expecting it. It’s scary. It makes it hard to keep going throughout your daily life because you never know when it’s going to blindside you.
Maybe it’s hard to fall asleep, or you’re having nightmares. Some nights you might even have a few drinks so you can forget about it and actually get some sleep.
Sometimes your emotions feel out of control. It keeps you from being who you want to be.
You can’t really talk about it with anyone else. Maybe they just don’t get it or it’s too painful for you to talk about in the first place.
Sometimes the memory makes you feel shameful, embarrassed, or disgusted.
You just wish you could forget about what happened and move on, but it just keeps coming up.
Let’s get it out of your head. You don’t have to continue feeling triggered or panicked by your trauma anymore.
Maybe it was an assault, a traumatic birth, an accident, abuse. No matter what it was, we can work together to help it have less of a hold on your life.
Therapists at ERA work from an integrative perspective — utilizing both trauma therapy and lifestyle changes to help you heal. We do both cognitive behavioral therapy (what you’d think of as traditional talk therapy) and a technique called Brainspotting, which helps us access your sub-cortical brain and heal that trauma at a deeper level, so it stops affecting your daily life the way it does now. Brainspotting can be really transformative and help heal trauma more quickly. Our hope is for you to feel free of that trauma, and finally leave it behind you.
The ERA Wellness office is in Whitefish Bay in Milwaukee County, but we are able to serve clients statewide online via telehealth.
Click the link below to get started with one of our therapists.
FAQs About Trauma Therapy:
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All kinds! Birth trauma, abuse (sexual, physical, emotional, financial), natural disasters, accidents, etc.
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Really anything that you feel traumatized by. The hallmark of trauma isn’t that we were in actual danger, it’s that we either were really in danger, or thought we were in danger. If you reasonably believed that you or someone else was going to be seriously harmed or killed, that can be trauma. Sometimes it’s explained away by other people, like “at least you’re ok” or “the baby is healthy and that’s what matters” - but that isn’t all that matters. What you went through matters.
It also doesn’t matter if someone else went through the same thing, or something “worse” and doesn’t seem to be impacted by it. We all react to trauma in our own ways, there isn’t a hierarchy of what qualifies.
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It can be just about anything - from flashbacks and panic attacks, to changes in eating or sleeping habits, to intrusive thoughts about the trauma. It can look different for each person, and even for different trauma the same person experiences.
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Intrusive thoughts are thoughts that pop into your head and are unwanted or disturbing. In relation to trauma, they can be thoughts or images of the trauma, or even a “replay” of it in your head.
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Brainspotting and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT, especially TF-CBT which is specifically trauma related) can be helpful for trauma.
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Specific therapy for trauma can be helpful when something is really intense, or it’s just not healing with time or other methods of therapy. Specific methods like EMDR or Brainspotting work from a bottom up approach - we’re healing your brain differently than a top down method like talk therapy.
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Unfortunately, this varies a ton depending on a lot of factors - what the trauma is, if the memory is intense or tied to other situations, beliefs, or values, how old the trauma is, what the overall goal of the trauma therapy is, etc. Your clinician will work with you at your pace, we tailor sessions to each individual client, not a cookie-cutter process.
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That’s actually sometimes an option! In Brainspotting, we don’t need to verbally discuss all of the details of what happened to effectively heal. It’s pretty cool stuff.
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Not a problem! We can help heal trauma that is super recent all the way up to many decades old.
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Well, you’re here! So we’re an option. You can schedule a consult on our calendar and we will call you at that time to chat about what is going on for you and how we might be able to help. All therapists at ERA have experience with helping heal trauma, and some of us have additional trauma training and modalities that we use.
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At ERA, we have several tiers of clinician pricing. You can find our full fee schedule here: https://www.erawellnesstherapy.com/fees
An intake (first session) ranges from $60-$200 depending on the clinician, ongoing 50 minute sessions range from $50-$150 depending on clinician. At times, we do have some sliding scale spots available. If this is needed, please ask your clinician during the consultation call.
ERA's Favorite Trauma Resources
The International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies
The Internatioal Society for Traumatic Stress Studies has information and pamphlets about traumatic stress and how to heal. They also have a blog and information for both adult and child survivors of trauma.
PATTCh
PATTCh is an organization based in Washington that focuses on the prevention and treatment of traumatic childbirth. They have a lot of helpful articles on their “Resources” page about various topics relating to traumatic child birth. Please note that there may be some triggering details in the articles.
How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime
This is a really wonderful Ted Talk from Nadine Burke Harris, the Surgeon General for California. She talks about the landmark ACES study and how it affects our health outcomes for the entire lifespan.
