How to Cope with Trauma while in Rehab

Trauma can influence every part of your life. Without learning to cope with trauma, you can turn to drugs or alcohol to self-medicate. This leads to higher rates of addiction and the need for professional rehab. 

When that happens, you might worry about how you will cope with your trauma while in treatment, especially if you experience things like:

• Panic attacks
• Nightmares
• Flashbacks
• Social anxiety

With the right mental health treatments, you can overcome addiction and co-occurring trauma at the same time, in the same treatment center. 

Centric Behavioral Health offers top-rated addiction treatment services near you.

What is Trauma?

Trauma refers to any event that is traumatic, any event that leaves a lasting (and negative) impact. This can include:

• Getting into a car accident
• Sexual or physical assault
• Exposure to violence in the home
• Exposure to violence in your neighborhood
• Natural disasters
• War and associated violence
• Death of a loved one

Trauma does not have to be something that happened directly to you, either. It can be something you witnessed or something that happened to a loved one. 

Sometimes people are unaware that they have untreated trauma, especially if they self-medicate with drugs or alcohol. Simple signs or symptoms can be easily misunderstood as stress-related or acute signs because of an upcoming test, work presentation, or deadline. But trauma can cause more significant mental health issues if left untreated, so finding the right treatment center is essential. 

Find an Appropriate Treatment Center

One of the best ways to cope with trauma while in rehab is to find a rehab center that:

• Offers dual diagnosis services, specifically with trauma-related mental health treatments
• Provides trauma-informed treatment

If you go to drug or alcohol rehab and you have untreated trauma, it can cause a lot of hiccups along your path to recovery. 

You might, for example, end up in group therapy sessions with people who look like an old assailants. You might, instead, find yourself working one-on-one with a counselor or psychiatrist who accidentally triggers you during sessions. 

The more often these small triggers add up, the less likely you are to complete your rehab program, let alone be able to overcome some of the root causes of your addiction. 

Use Trauma-Informed Treatment

When you look for drug or alcohol rehab centers, you should review which facilities offer trauma-informed care. Just because a location has dual diagnosis services for mental health treatments does not mean they use trauma-informed therapies. 

What is trauma-informed treatment?

It is when your rehab center helps you cope with trauma by:

• Enduring no staff or participants are people who might trigger you
• The environment, including the office space, music, and lighting in an office don’t cause re-traumatization
• Using appropriate words or phrases, and centering all of your services and therapies around trauma recovery

EMDR Trauma Treatments

But what makes mental health treatments better at teaching you to cope with trauma?

Things like EMDR are some of the most useful treatments for PTSD. The Department of Veterans Affairs and the WHO use EMDR as their best treatment for overcoming PTSD. This type of treatment is also short, which means you can finish a course of treatment for trauma in as little as a few weeks or months. 

It works by retraining the eyes as you recall the events of your trauma. This can serve as a viable alternative for many people who don’t feel comfortable talking about their trauma with a therapist but still want to overcome their triggers. EMDR can help you reprocess memories so that they are properly stored in your brain and don’t continue to cause anxiety.

Turn to Centric Group For Trauma Treatment Near You

Centric Group can help you overcome your trauma by finding the right mental health treatments. We know the importance of selecting a drug and alcohol rehab center that uses appropriate trauma-informed care. That is why we work with you to determine which types of therapy you are most comfortable with and then refine your search results to treatment centers in your area. 

When you reach out to our team, we can help you compare different services, explain more about the kinds of therapy you can expect at a given institution, and help you verify your insurance benefits so that drug or alcohol rehab is not out of reach. 

We understand how detrimental trauma can be, especially if you don’t learn how to cope. So let us help you learn how to cope with trauma today. 

Contact our team today to compare different mental health treatments in your area.