Steve Hammil Counseling

My Approach 

The most important element in my approach to healing from trauma and abuse is that you are always in control of the process. I function as guide, coach, educator, and facilitator. Establishing an environment in which you can develop a sense of trust and safety is the first and most important step in the process. The second step understands the problems and challenges you are facing. We then look at how you have adapted to life circumstances and how those adaptations might now be contributing to your problems and challenges. Deciding on a plan that leads to changes that allow you to resolve problems and meet your challenges is next. The remainder of the time is spent working together to affect the changes you have chosen to make.

I cannot tell you whether or not seeking formal help to heal from abuse and traumatic experience is right for you. Only you can make that decision. I can tell you that I am deeply committed to helping you feel better through acceptance of and unconditional positive regard for yourself. I understand that you may feel that is simply impossible. Nevertheless, I believe that our experiences do not have to condemn us to a life in an emotional prison. We can change. 

I want to help you live with greater freedom and increased confidence in your self and trust in others. My wish is that you are able and willing to engage life fully, especially emotionally, while establishing deeply satisfying relationships based on mutual regard, trust and healthy interdependence. Of course I also want you to be free from depression, anxiety and other overt symptoms of complex trauma. 

Treatment

Healing the trauma of severe life experience is challenging to be sure. Just thinking about getting help can stir up feelings of fear, grief and shame. Many decide its just not worth it and others enter therapy only to drop out at some point because they simply cannot face the painful feelings that come up for them. This is both sad and understandable.

However, you do not have to relive painful experiences to successfully heal from them. Early treatment models focused on full exposure to the painful and often terrifying memories of trauma without regard for the retraumatizing potential of this approach. It is not surprising that this method suffers from a very high dropout rate. Methods have been improved and rethought and the retraumatizing potential taken very seriously. While some still advocate and use a full exposure model, I do not use it.

Description

Psychological trauma is a circumstance that overwhelms or exceeds a person's capacity to protect their psychological well being and integrity. Trauma can result from a single overpowering event or be the result of prolonged exposure to many much smaller events. Traumatic events range from the impersonal such as an earthquake to the interpersonal, such as rape, to the most damaging of all, attachment trauma, which involves overwhelming betrayal or neglect by a parent or other adult responsible for our care and protection.

The word trauma is derived from the Greek word for wound. People who have been traumatized have been wounded. An otherwise effective psychic barrier was breached and often cannot heal without help. Even so, each person is different as to how and when these consequences become life problems. One person develops problems immediately and their life course veers off track while another may live just fine for years and with great success until some incident or series of events causes some threshold to be exceeded. Suddenly they are thrown into a major depression, become prone to acute anxiety and lose trust in formerly close friends and lovers. Inexplicably their life begins to unravel.

Too often trauma and abuse survivors suffer from feelings of worthlessness that can have them feeling like they are bad to their core even when many parts of their life are successful and seem happy. They may lack confidence in themselves; have difficulty trusting others;  be prone to irritability, anger and depression; have a constant sense of danger and insecurity so they never really feel safe; and have a difficult time forming and staying in relationships. They may be either overly dependent on others or be walled off and unable to depend on anyone but themselves. Furthermore, they may suffer through a series of mental issues such as depression, anxiety, panic, impulse control problems and substance dependence. One of the reasons I specialize in depression and anxiety is that many trauma survivors first seek help for one of these conditions.