PTSD and Complex Trauma can occur following a life-threatening event (car accident, mugging or rape) or a series of upsetting events that build up over time (bullying, verbal abuse, shaming). Typically, people who have PTSD have experienced or witnessed things they wish their minds would forget.

While most people can still function, those memories still impact them and show up in other ways, such as hypervigilance, sensitivity to noise, nightmares, and anxiety.

Unfortunately, these reactions can increase over time until the person finds it hard to leave the house, to go into stores, or to drive on the highway. In some cases, flashbacks of the upsetting event are a daily part of their life.

During a trauma, clients may also have body sensations which they do not fully understand and subsequently experience as unfavorable. Others experience automatic body reactions during trauma and then assign responsibility to those body reactions – usually blame (think of a molested child whose body involuntarily became aroused). The typical result is an experience of shame, even though they are the victim.

A person is usually diagnosed with PTSD if, after one month, the symptoms, both physical and psychological, have not faded into nothingness. Ask yourself, have my symptoms of substance abuse, sadness, depression, anxiety, job, or personal problems increased or developed after the incident?

When anxiety hits, it feels like a tidal wave of emotions has smashed into us, and they are too intense to deal with logically. All we want to do is escape them—in any way we can. Anxiety is debilitating. It is almost impossible to think clearly when we’re anxious, especially since, at the same time, as anxiety strikes, our need to “act” kicks into gear, preventing us from weighing the possible outcome.

Anxiety disorders are common. Almost one-third of adults will have experienced an anxiety disorder at some point in their lifetime.

The good news is there are effective treatments for anxiety disorders.
While medication can help, it doesn’t get to the underlying reasons for the panic, fear, or paralysis. Nor does it put to rest the obsessive thoughts that keep us from sleeping at night.

EMDR is excellent for helping us to identify what is causing our anxiety, especially when we are too anxious to think. Reality testing helps us to diffuse the anxious thoughts and feelings which are often irrational and based on old “scripts” put on us by parents, teachers, siblings, and friends. The combination of EMDR and reality testing allows us to develop the ability to cope with stressful situations as they arise.

Most of us have memories from our childhood that we wish we could forget. Some of the common ones are teasing, bullying, sibling rivalry, parental labeling, and teacher favoritism.

Depending on your upbringing, support network, and nervous system, you could have experienced these memories as discomforting or as traumatic. For most of us, our childhoods are a combination of both.

When memories are painful, they are alive inside of us, ready to distress us over and over again as adults. The bullied child in school will relive those same feelings as a bullied adult!

In some cases, painful experiences can stunt our growth and crush our desire to succeed in life. A neglected or abused child (verbal or physical) may feel like damaged goods and undeserving of good things.

A molested child may, as an adult, find it difficult to trust people and to form romantic relationships.

A gay child, teased for being effeminate, may develop internalized homophobia. In contrast, a straight child may grow up with a need to “prove” his masculinity through sports or domination over women.

EMDR is the “go-to” therapy for terrors experienced by first responders, police, and the military. EMDR treatments move the trauma to a different area of the brain where it can be processed, reducing the painful feelings attached to it.

Some people with HIV experience deep shame about the diagnosis and are fearful of telling friends and family. While no longer a terminal disease, it still brings up internalized feelings of shame conflated with painful childhood memories.

The diagnosis of HIV often triggers issues of depression, anxiety, and self-hatred buried deep within the psyche, impacting the client’s ability to cope.

Sadly, the diagnosis also brings up internalized feelings of shame around being “damaged goods,” triggering fears about dating. And, in some cases, an HIV- man will not date an HIV+ man.

Happily, that is on the decline as there is more education surrounding HIV drug treatments such as Truvada, Zigen, Sustiva, Viramune, and prevention drugs such as PrEP. Also, as many HIV+ men report being undetectable, the fear of transmission by dating an HIV+ man has been dramatically reduced in men who test negative.

While HIV is not a gay disease, the clients we treat with HIV are predominantly gay men. Our clients are often referred to us by Dr. Joe DeFoto, Dr. Anthony Mills, and Dr. Jay Gladstein. They are specialists in internal medicine and infectious diseases.

Dr. O’Reilly, in particular, has been working predominantly with gay men for most of her career using EMDR and psychoanalysis to decrease the effects of trauma on gay men.