Trauma Therapy

Trauma therapy in Huntington Beach

You may be experiencing unwanted fears, anxieties, and a lack of control to the trauma you experienced in your past. You may have experienced abuse in your past and now find it hard to trust anyone, even yourself. You may have had a caregiver that invalidated you and communicated through their words or actions that you are incapable, inept, or just not good enough. Perhaps you had a parent who didn’t spend time with you or was constantly telling you how you don’t do things right and need to do things their way.

Slowly but surely these messages get internalized and you begin to believe that you never do things right, are inadequate, inept, and a failure. More often than not these beliefs have been there for so long that you don’t even realize they exist, yet they still influence so much of how you show up in the world today.

Maybe you have experienced acute trauma, such as the death of someone close, a car accident, injury, divorce, or infidelity. These experiences can be jarring and difficult to recover from.

Trauma can leave you feeling that you just can’ t get your footing and get back on track.  The world keeps moving but you feel like you are moving through quicksand and just can’t get over what has happened.  Trauma is made worse when the people that are close to you don’t know how to help you move through the difficulties that you are facing and put pressure on you to “get over it.”  That’s where working with a licensed professional specializing in trauma can help.

Meet Brandon Pendergraft, Huntington Beach Trauma Therapist

My name is Brandon Pendergraft and I am a licensed marriage and family therapist. I help individuals with many different issues, and trauma is one of my specialties. I have been treating individuals with PTSD and PTSD symptoms in Huntington Beach for 20 years. I draw from my years of experience to help those that have been struggling to live their lives free of the symptoms of trauma.

My goal is to help you sort through the challenging events in your past that have kept you from living your life to the fullest in the present. I recognize how daunting it may feel to begin opening up about the worst parts of your life experience to someone else. I can assure you that my job is to provide the safest space possible for you to feel at ease about allowing someone else to walk with you through the painful parts of your past.

Ready to be free from your past? Contact me for a complimentary consultation.

My approach to trauma therapy

I help you to sort out what is preventing you from moving on and help you to resolve those issues.  I provide a place where you can be heard and understood without judgment or the pressure to “just get over it.”  I offer you a safe space to be honest with yourself and get to the root cause of the trauma. Together, we can get you back into the rhythm and flow of your life, without being bogged down by the emotional weight of the trauma.

I help you to identify old unhelpful messages that you have internalized. I help you replace them with messages that will create a more peaceful future. Our work together can help you rebuild your sense of trust in yourself and others. You will learn to put up healthy boundaries to protect yourself and your loved ones. 

I help you to process the trauma and get rid of unwanted thoughts and behaviors. This will leave you with a sense of freedom and innocence that you never thought you could regain. You deserve freedom from the trauma that you never deserved.  

If you are ready to gain victory over your trauma, contact me for a free consultation.

Trauma Therapy FAQs

Does PTSD ever go away?

This is an important question. There is much debate about what PTSD is and whether it actually even exists, or how long it might last. PTSD stands for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and is defined by the aftermath of being exposed to situations that are traumatic for the individual. The basic idea is that when a traumatic situation occurs, the experience is so jarring to you that there are lingering symptoms that you can’t seem to shake.  Symptoms can include recurring thoughts, nightmares, bodily sensations and panic attacks. However, it is nearly impossible to predict all the ways in which one might respond in the aftermath of trauma. For example, a person who gets into a bad car accident on the highway might have difficulty driving afterwards as they are continually bombarded by images and memories of the car wreck. The fear of getting into another car accident may be overwhelming.  Most people would say this fear is justifiable if it lasted for a few weeks, or maybe even for a few months. But what if that person never wanted to drive on the highway again? 

At a certain point many people would consider the appropriate time to have passed where the affected person should have reasonably moved through their trauma.  Another way to look at this issue would be to consider that even though your wound has healed into a scar, do you still shudder when you remember what happened to cause the wound in the first place? Quite likely. PTSD is capable of being turned into a “scar,” where the fear, panic, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, physical symptoms of the wound can be relegated to a much smaller space in your psyche and everyday life. 

Therapy for PTSD would aim to help you work through the different symptoms that you are facing and reduce the amount of emotional energy spent dealing with the aftermath of the trauma. If you can make meaning of the event, find a way to integrate your survival of the event and reduce the unwanted symptoms, you won’t be subject to being vaulted back into that state of trauma, pain, fear, and panic throughout your daily life. 

How is trauma therapy different from regular therapy?

Trauma therapy is just therapy that has the intention of dealing with a particular trauma.  Trauma therapy is focused on moving through the trauma, finding health in the midst of surviving the trauma, and making meaning of the events in order to move through life not being controlled by or constantly subjected to the trauma. Trauma therapy is often accompanied by some type of somatic or body therapy to help you move the emotional energy that gets stuck in the body out of the body so we can experience the freedom not only in our psyche but also in our bodies. 

An example of this would be treating low back pain associated with resentfulness. Often when people work on forgiving those that have traumatized them, they get to a place where they pick up yoga as well. When both the psychological work in trauma therapy is done along with a yoga practice, they find that the back pain is relieved and often doesn’t return. Trauma therapy can be very rewarding for those that have been carrying around emotional baggage in their hearts and minds for years. Letting go of that baggage can help them get a new lease on life. 

How do you release trauma from your body?

Releasing trauma from your body is so important.  Our body is often equated to the subconscious part of our mind.  If you consider that your mind is made up of all the neurons that run through your body, it makes sense to think of the mind storing information in our bodies.  Often, we can release trauma psychologically and it can still remain in the body.  Also, sometimes releasing the body from the energy stored in it can unlock your ability to deal with things psychologically in life. Ideally it is helpful to think about releasing both your body and mind from the trauma that you have experienced. Releasing the emotion from your body but not finding words for your trauma and integrating the story behind the trauma rarely provides lasting relief. 

Somatic practices tend to be the easiest way to begin releasing trauma from the body.  Sometimes just breathing deeply is enough to unlock stuck places within your psyche.  Giving yourself permission to experience your trauma in your body by allowing yourself to cry, scream, get angry, and controlling your diaphragm can be extremely helpful. Many people don’t realize that they have told themselves or someone else has told them they weren’t allowed to engage in these activities, and the trauma becomes pent up in their body. 

To reiterate, the most effective trauma therapy will address both the trauma in the body as well as finding the words to express the meaning behind the trauma and a way forward through the trauma. Trauma therapy can be a difficult yet very fulfilling form of therapy. There is nothing like releasing trauma and living life without the baggage you have been carrying for so long!

Live a life of freedom with the help of a trauma therapist in Huntington Beach

Does trauma therapy sound like it could be the right fit for you? Reach out for a complimentary consultation.