Counselling for Trauma
Trauma is what happens when an experience is so overwhelming, frightening, or painful that our mind and body struggle to process it in the normal way. It isn't about being weak or overly sensitive. It's a natural human response to something that exceeds our capacity to cope in the moment. Most of us will experience something traumatic in our lives, and many people recover over time with the right support around them. But for others, the effects of trauma persist and can interfere deeply with everyday life, sometimes for years or even decades.
What Do We Mean By Trauma?
Trauma can result from a single event: an accident, an assault, a sudden bereavement, a violent incident witnessed or experienced. It can also develop from prolonged or repeated experiences, particularly when those experiences happened in childhood. Neglect, emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, growing up with a parent with serious mental health difficulties, or living with chronic unpredictability and fear, these are all forms of trauma. The effects can be wide-ranging: difficulties in relationships, depression and anxiety, self-destructive behaviours, problems with self-worth and identity, and a persistent sense of being unsafe or disconnected from yourself.
The Impact of Trauma
In the immediate aftermath of a traumatic experience, the body's alarm system kicks in. You might feel shock, panic, dissociation, intense fear, or profound numbness. Over time, for many people these responses settle. But when they don't, the result can be a nervous system that remains in a state of high alert, responding to present-day situations as though the original danger is still happening. This is what PTSD looks like. You might experience flashbacks or intrusive memories, nightmares, hypervigilance, emotional outbursts, difficulty concentrating, a persistent sense of dread, or feeling ‘on edge’ a lot of the time. It can be exhausting and confusing, particularly when you can't always identify what's triggering it.
What began as the body and mind’s helpful and self-protective response to an experience of trauma then becomes a severe, distressing and life-limiting condition that can interfere with everyday living. The mechanisms that automatically kicked-in when we were originally faced with the trauma have failed to switch off, leaving us feeling as though we are constantly in a dangerous life-or-death situation even though we know we are not.
Working with Trauma
One of the most important things to understand about trauma therapy is that talking about the traumatic event isn't always the right starting point, and certainly isn't the only way to heal. In fact, going straight into the detail of what happened can sometimes be overwhelming and counterproductive. I always begin by finding out where you are, how safe you feel, and what you can manage.
The first phase of trauma work is often called stabilisation: developing a set of tools and practices that help you manage difficult feelings when they arise, so that you can move through daily life without being constantly overwhelmed. This might involve working with breathing and body awareness, understanding how your nervous system responds to stress, and building a sense of internal safety. Stabilisation can be the most important part of trauma work for many people.
Once there's enough stability, it can become possible to begin processing the traumatic memories themselves. My starting point is always a thorough history and a genuine understanding of your individual experience.
Recovery is Possible
Trauma can make you feel as though something is permanently broken, as though the person you were before simply isn't available any more. That's not the case. Recovery from trauma is real, and it happens all the time. The goal of trauma therapy isn't to erase what happened; it's to reach a place where it no longer holds the same power over your present life. Moving from surviving to genuinely living.