Trauma: Big Ts & Little ts

            As indicated here, one of my specialties is working with those who have experienced trauma. I have trained extensively about not only how to treat trauma, but also understanding the diverse, complicated components of it. One component I want to focus on today is a message I do not see often enough, and that is about what specifically qualifies as trauma.

            First, let me give you a brief history of post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, as it has increased our awareness of the effects trauma can have. PTSD was first identified and diagnosed among Vietnam War veterans back in 1980. It is still considered relatively new in the psychological realm, even though that has been almost 40 years ago. Since PTSD was conceptualized initially among war veterans, I believe the idea of what qualifies as trauma has been heavily influenced by that association. It is important to note that there is no doubt how traumatic war combat experiences are, and I cannot even begin to imagine what that is like. I am not trying to minimize the traumatic experiences of veterans, and/or other victims of sexual or physical assault.

            What I do want to do here is raise awareness that, for lack of a better word, events considered more minor than your stereotypical trauma-related incidences can also cause trauma-related symptoms in people, and can even result in someone having PTSD. Comparing how severe one harrowing event is with another does not alter how each individual person experiences their particular trauma. No matter what caused a person to have PTSD or other trauma-related disorders or symptoms, they could need just as much help as someone who has experienced a more “typical” traumatic event. In EMDR therapy, we distinguish these events as little ts and Big Ts. What are commonly identified as traumatic-like incidences such as war, rape, natural disasters, etc. are Big Ts. Whereas little ts can be verbal bullying, a family member shaming a child, belittling them everyday, etc. I like to describe little ts as the microaggressions of trauma.

            The bottom line is that trauma is trauma no matter what the specific event is: It boils down to how the person experienced it. (Among other things, but that’s material for another entry another day!)

My Personal Introduction

Welcome back! Now that my professional introduction is done, here’s what else I envision for this place of mine in this cyber world: Much like my approach with my clients, I’m quite transparent and I believe it is helpful to speak from not only my professional and academic experiences, but also my personal ones. Though, may I add, I do carefully choose when I speak from my personal experiences as the last thing I would want to do is make your time to be about me. Yet, I would be lying if I tried to portray my work, my perspective, and the guidance I offer to you and others as if none of them were influenced by my own life. This is something people in my field call countertransference.

Some clinicians treat countertransference as taboo, as something that is terrible if you experience it while you are working with someone. The thing is, it is constantly happening. Counselors are human too: We are going to have personal reactions to what we hear and see, and those personal reactions are influenced by our past, our culture, our beliefs, our values, and what we’re currently struggling with ourselves. What can make countertransference bad is what we do with it, i.e., ignore it, project it onto you, or let it cloud our judgment or presence during session. This also means that what we do with countertransference can be powerful in a very effective, helpful way to you, i.e., increase our insight, our empathy, or our understanding of your issues. I won’t go into more details as to how, but just know that we know it exists and hopefully the clinician you’re seeing or will see knows how to use it.

This doesn’t mean that you need to see a therapist who has had very similar experiences to you. Though this can be helpful, if this countertransference isn’t handled well, it could also get in the way. Advice giving in general, in my opinion, is to be avoided as a therapist because it can put a strain in the therapist-client relationship in a couple of ways.

Think of times people have you given you advice, I’m sure it’s happened from people you believe are like you and people that you believe aren’t. Have those all been positive experiences? Did they always seem wise and like they knew better? I’m going to guess that your answer was “no.” Sometimes when people take advice and it goes well, they can become somewhat dependent upon the person who gave them that advice; therefore, how much they trust their own judgment could be negatively impacted. On the other hand, when some people take advice and it doesn’t go well, their trust of the advice giver’s judgment could be negatively impacted. Both are rather understandable responses, and ones that I want to avoid.  I may have very similar experiences to you, but I am not you and you are not me. So, my job is to be a mirror for you, to help you figure out what you want and need, and how you want to achieve that. A mirror isn’t showing you an image because it can always relate to you, it’s showing you an image because it can reflect back to you what it sees.

*By the way, advice giving is not the same as educating someone or offering professional recommendations, which any therapist can and most likely will do.

Nonetheless, some people find comfort in knowing some personal details about their therapist; though, not all therapists will be comfortable or think it’s beneficial for you to know some personal details about themselves. If you are the type of person that doesn’t care to know anything personal about clinicians, then I recommend stopping reading this particular entry—though I do hope you come back to read another entry later.

So, with all that said, let me end this entry by introducing myself to you on a more personal level, (remember that distinguishment from My Professional Introduction?) My name is Ginger Klee and I am a multiethnic Korean, cisgender, lesbian woman from a blended family. I’m a second-generation Korean (first-born in the US.) I was raised in the Christian-faith. I have influences from spending 12 years of my childhood in Tennessee and Kentucky, though I have spent most of my life living in Southern California. I have had obstacles in my life that led me to pursue participating in therapy, and those obstacles also influenced my decision to become a therapist. I have a passion for cooking and baking, singing, creative writing, swimming, and learning.

Lastly, what I just shared with you, though are parts of who I am, do not define who I am. They are parts of my identity, and will likely influence what I will share with you in regards to therapy, how to pursue personal growth, work on change, and those of you who are interested in pursuing self-actualization, and much more.

My Professional Introduction

Welcome to my Reflections page.

Let me start by introducing myself to you on a professional level, (note this differentiation for My Personal Introduction): My name is Ginger Klee, and I am a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (Lic.# 101430) and Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (Lic.#7538). I have my Bachelors of Science in Psychology and a Masters of Science in Counseling. I currently have my own private practice seeing clients and I teach Psychology as an adjunct professor at a Los Angeles County community college. I work from a feminist orientation utilizing the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model through EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing) therapy while integrating Narrative and Family System theories.

Now, if you are relatively new to the idea of therapy/counseling, or you never took the time to look into the various types of theoretical orientations that clinicians practice from, that last sentence, in particular, may have made your eyes gloss over. I had seen four different therapists before I started my academic path, and I had no idea what any of those theories were or what they meant until I started studying them. So, if you have no idea what any of those theories are, that’s okay! If you’re interested in learning about anything I threw in that last sentence of the previous paragraph, you’ll be able to do just that by reading some of my reflections and from my “How I work” page.

How can that be helpful?

As I stated, before my college days, I never took the time to learn about what my therapists were doing and from what orientation they were working from. Did I get some help? Yes. Were they all helpful? No.

Were they bad therapists? Not necessarily. But, had I known before choosing to see them what framework and what perspective they would be coming from, I may have chosen someone else to bare my soul to. The therapist or two that I had that weren’t helpful for me may not have been because they weren’t good at their job, but that we simply weren’t compatible. It’s one thing to look at what the clinician claims are their specialties (teens, adults, trauma, depression, eating disorders, etc.), and it’s a whole other thing to look at how they say they will treat those issues—their theoretical orientation.

Let me put it this way, are you going to order a dish to eat simply by looking at the ingredients, or do you also want to know how those ingredients that you like to eat are going to be prepared?

So, that’s why part of my website features what framework I come from. My Personal Introduction entry discusses the more personal side of therapy, including a more personal introduction of me, and other topics I plan to dive into.

Welcome to my page and I hope you take away something from it.