When you experience trauma, either as an adult or a child, it can have a lasting effect on your mental and emotional health. The effects show up in many ways — from turning to alcohol or drugs to manage the feelings, to ongoing anxiety, low mood, or difficulty in relationships.
For many people, the emotions and memories that go with the event have been carried a long time without ever being put into words. Trauma therapy is a way of working through those events at a pace you set. Time passing does not close the door — people often begin this work years, or decades, after what happened to them.
Trauma therapy at Campbell Recovery Services is delivered through individual counseling. The work focuses on understanding how the experience has shaped things since, and on processing the memories and feelings attached to it.
Whether it was a single event or years of abuse, trauma counseling starts with putting words to what happened and to what it has meant since. Recognizing how an experience has shaped the person you became is usually where the work begins.
Sessions are one-to-one. Some of what comes up has been deliberately avoided for years, and there is no requirement to move through it faster than you want to.
People come to this work for many reasons — post-traumatic stress, flashbacks, trouble sleeping, feeling constantly on guard, or a sense that something from the past is still shaping the present.
Post-traumatic stress is one of the most common reasons people look for trauma counseling, and it is worth saying plainly what is and is not on offer here.
Campbell Recovery Services is an outpatient counseling practice. We provide individual counseling for people living with the after-effects of trauma, including post-traumatic stress. We are not a treatment center or a hospital, there is no inpatient or residential program, and we do not prescribe or manage medication.
For some people that is the right level of support. For others it is not — and if what you need sits outside what we provide, we would rather tell you that early and help you find the right place than take you on regardless.
Trauma that happened in childhood often surfaces much later — in relationships, in parenting, in how safe it feels to depend on other people, or in the use of alcohol or drugs to manage the feelings.
This is counseling for adults working through what happened to them earlier in life. It does not require a complete or orderly memory of events; people frequently arrive with fragments and gaps, and that is a normal place to start.
Where childhood trauma and addiction are connected, that connection is worth naming rather than treating the two as separate problems. Our article on the link between childhood trauma and addiction goes into it further.
Campbell Recovery Services offers Brainspotting as one approach to trauma work. It was developed by Dr. David Grand, and it uses where you hold your gaze to help you stay with a difficult memory while the body settles, rather than talking the memory through from beginning to end.
It is worth being straightforward about this. Brainspotting is newer than talk therapy and the published research base is smaller. Some people find it useful and some do not. It is offered here as one option among several, it is not a replacement for counseling, and it is not right for everyone.
Where trauma and addiction sit together, some clients use Brainspotting alongside addiction counseling rather than instead of it.
Brainspotting should only be delivered by counselors trained and certified in it. Counselors on our team who hold that certification use it with clients working through trauma. Whether it is a sensible fit for you is a question for an assessment.
Trauma work here is not a single method. Which approach fits depends on the person, on what happened, and on what has already been tried. These are the approaches available at Campbell Recovery Services.
EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. A structured, phased approach in which you attend to a distressing memory while following a repeated left-to-right stimulus. Two counselors on the team are EMDR Trained.
Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) — also uses guided eye movements, with a more scripted sequence and often fewer sessions. The same two counselors are ART Trained. It is offered alongside EMDR rather than as a separate program. ART is not art therapy, which this practice does not offer.
Brainspotting — uses where you hold your gaze to help you stay with a difficult memory while the body settles. Described in more detail above, and in our article on understanding Brainspotting therapy.
The Safe and Sound Protocol — a listening therapy based on Polyvagal Theory, used alongside ongoing therapy rather than on its own. See the Safe and Sound Protocol.
Psychodrama — a group-based method that uses guided role play and enactment to reach experiences that are hard to approach through conversation alone. John Campbell is trained in psychodrama through Onsite Workshops. Our article on the use of psychodrama to treat trauma explains how it is used.
Betrayal trauma counseling — for the particular injury caused when someone you trust breaks that trust. See betrayal trauma counseling.
No single approach suits everyone, and none of them replaces counseling. A mental health assessment is the place to start.
If something that happened to you is still affecting your life, trauma counseling is one way to work on it. Campbell Recovery Services provides trauma counseling in Dallas through one-to-one sessions, including Brainspotting for clients it suits.
Related work here includes Internal Family Systems therapy, which looks at the parts of us that formed in response to difficult experiences; the Safe and Sound Protocol; betrayal trauma counseling, where the harm came from someone trusted; and group therapy. Where trauma sits alongside addiction, recovery coaching is available too.
The starting point is a mental health assessment. Call (214) 538-4088.
I’ve never had such a positive therapy experience in my life! It wasn’t easy to seek out support and doubted I’d find someone I connected with who could see me on the very limited hours I was available, but John from Campbell Recovery Services took all of my limitations and requests into account. Can’t recommend this place enough.
I have referred many clients to Campbell Recovery Services and have received great feedback about their service.
Tell us what’s going on and what kind of support you’re looking for. Our team will follow up to help you determine the right next step.
Prefer to talk? Call (214) 538-4088
