About trauma therapy
Your counsellor will work with you throughout this process on your memories and how your experiences have affected the relationships you have had subsequently. Trauma therapy lasts for up to 20 sessions.
Your counsellor will work with you in a safe and controlled environment. You will only be offered trauma therapy if you are assessed as stable enough to benefit from it. Your counsellor will work with you to tailor the 20 sessions to help you reach your goals. Survive’s goals will be to reduce the impact the trauma has on you, as measured by the IESR Trauma Scale. For example, to reduce flashbacks or nightmares.
At the end of the Trauma Therapy, you will be asked to wait for 6 months before referring yourself back to the Counselling service for further work.
What to expect
After a short review, you will receive up to 20 weekly one-to-one sessions. These sessions usually last around 50-55 minutes. You will be expected to commit to attending these 20 sessions.
How to access
You access the trauma therapy after completing 10 counselling sessions.
About EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a technique that helps survivors work on their memories in a safe and controlled environment. Not everybody needs it or is likely to benefit from it. You will only be offered EMDR if you are assessed as stable and robust enough to cope with it.
Your EMDR counsellor will work with you to understand your needs and will tailor the sessions to help you reach your specific goals. Survive’s goals will be to reduce the impact the trauma holds for you as measured by the IESR trauma scale. For example, to reduce flashbacks or nightmares.
If you are going through the EMDR programme you may find that not every session will use EMDR. It is usual for EMDR to cause some destabilisation – in which case your counsellor will refocus on stabilisation techniques before resuming EMDR.
What to expect
Each EMDR session will last from between 60 and 90 minutes so you will need to be sure that you can commit the time it will take to complete.
How to access
You will only be offered EMDR if you are assessed as stable and robust enough to cope with it. You can discuss the benefits of EMDR with your counsellor.
How we help
I was referred to Survive by my mental health social worker. I had become too ill to work.
Fragmented memories in the form of flashbacks from seven years of child sexual abuse flooded my waking hours.
I was seven when I went to visit a friend of my parents. He sexually abused me before offering me some of his wife’s jewellery.
He then frightened me by saying I would be in real trouble if anyone found out.
