London, UK
Other Pages of Interest
Trauma from rape, murder, accidents, bereavement, death, sexual abuse, loss, bullying.
PTSD includes flashbacks, panic, sleep disorders, nightmares, depression, anxieties, low self-esteem, eating disorders, lack of goals, poor confidence, low self-worth, intrusive thoughts and phobias .come to the London and Basingstoke Trauma Recovery Clinic for help with all the above
‘because we believe you should be living your life, not running away from it’
Harley Street, London
& Hampshire, England
home
other pages of interest
Case Studies
These studies help you see how different trauma can be, what time span the therapy lasts, and how the therapy works differently for each individual.
All names and some details have been changed to protect the client from being identified.
Client L was a 29 year old woman, who had experienced a bad car crash 2 years earlier.
She and her boyfriend had gone to a party. The boyfriend had promised to drive home so she could drink, but as soon as they arrived, he started drinking and eventually ended up drunk.
Client L was angry he had done this, and that she had to drive home. It was a wet dark night and 10 minuets into the journey she lost control of the car and it rolled twice and ended up in a ditch. When she came round, she found she was trapped in the car, had suffered a bad cut on her head, but worse, her boyfriend had been thrown through the soft top of the car, and was nowhere to be seen.
It was 4 hours before she was found by a passing motorist. The boyfriend was found and had suffered few injuries and both were taken to hospital.
The physical injuries recovered but client L started to experience many emotional responses after the accident. She found as soon as she went near a car she suffered panic attacks, she often woke up at night experiencing nightmares and cold sweats, the accident played over and over in her mind during the day, and gradually she became depressed and her relationship with her boyfriend was strained.
She went to counselling to help overcome this, but after seeing 2 different counsellors she still experienced the panic and intrusive thoughts. She could only get into a car with her sister, and even then, the journey was fraught and difficult.
After 2 years she came to see us. After taking a brief history, the NLP dissociative technique was used in session 1 to allow the mind to process the accident and to store the memory without the amygala (the terror centre of the brain!) responding to the memory.
When she arrived at session 2, she reported no change which was unusual in cases like this. A more in-depth counselling session was carried out, and it became clear that the trauma wasn’t over the accident, but the 4 hours when the client was trapped in the car, and she had no way of knowing whether she ‘had killed her boyfriend’ The fact she had been angry with him made the guilt worse. From this, the NLP technique was used again but this time just on that 4 hour period.
On coming to session 3, client L reported some major changes. She was sleeping better, the panics had stopped and she was able to drive her car for a short trip for the first time in 2 years. The third session included some work on re-framing her thoughts over the accident, and she came to terms with the fact the accident had happened at a notorious black spot and was due to bad weather rather than her incompetence.
Session 4 included seeing her boyfriend as she believed he blamed her for the accident, even though many times he had said he didn’t. With some relationship counselling Client L was able to let go of her guilt and move on in her life.
3 months later she called to say she was now living a normal life again and was driving without any problems at all.
Client A was a 42 years old woman who loved horses. 9 months earlier she was riding on the road when a car passed her too fast and too near her horse, and it panicked and threw her onto the car. She was lucky and suffered few injuries, but she quickly developed panics and anxieties about riding the horse again.
These seemed to get worse as the months progressed.
She came to us as she was recommended to us by a friend, and we used some hypnosis and the ‘rewind technique’ (also known as the fast phobia cure) and some guided imagery under hypnosis so she imagined riding the horse again feeling confident and relaxed. By doing this the brain fires off the neurons that would be used if she really was riding the horse. The brain then believes ‘I’ve done it once, so next time will be even easier’.
We suggested she only come back to us if she felt she needed any more help. She never returned, so after 3 months we made a follow-up call. She told us she had ridden the horse for the first time that weekend, and after a few rides her old confidence had retuned fully and she no longer had any worries or concerns.
Client T was a 24 year old man who was fit and strong and always felt he could ‘look after himself.’
One night when returning home from a nightclub, he was attacked by 2 men, and of them tried to carry out a serious sexual assault. The attack went un-reported, and client T started to suffer major effects from the attack. Gradually he feared going out.
When he came to see us he was very reluctant to discuss what had happen, so the first 3 sessions was person-centred counselling to allow him to build a relationship with the counsellor and feel safe discussing what happened. Once he did (in a flood of tears) work was then carried out to allow him to move on. A bi-lateral processing procedure (similar to EMDR) helped the brain calm down over the attack and the panicky feelings started to subside. With more counselling sessions, Client T started to feel more confident.
He stopped the therapy a little sooner than we had wished, but he felt he could make the rest of the journey himself. His confidence had returned, the panic had gone, and although there was still some anger, he had enough to move forward and to start working at enjoying his life again.
