What is Trauma Counselling?

 Trauma Counselling brings to the counselling relationship, a focus around unresolved and unprocessed experiences of the past, that are held as trauma in the systems within the human body and may be experienced as persistent irritability, disturbances, fear, panic, avoidance, disconnection, emotional fluctuations/instability, breakdown in relationships and high anxiety. Understanding what you may be experiencing through a trauma informed approach, can help to understand how experiences of the past may be impacting on your connection to people and experiences of the world around you.

Trauma informed approaches can be integrated into our work together. We can consider and identify what it is that you may be experiencing now as symptoms and distress, and acknowledge ways that you have been coping that have enabled you to get this far. Collaborating together, we consider and focus on what it is you would like to change and what it is that you need in order to make the changes you want.

We begin with creating a sense of inner safety and experience of safety in our counselling space and relationship in the here and now, so that we can begin working to understand and recognise your symptoms of trauma safely. 

As the therapy continues, we consider the meaning of body sensations, changes and fluctuations in emotional states, intrusive memories and thoughts and the impact on your life and relationships. Making sense of your experiences, any memories, and associated sensations is the focus, rather than trying to recall and retell the detail of the events, that often is not accessible in the fragmentation that trauma creates. This is paced work, that takes time and is centred around safety, stabilisation, re-connecting and developing resources to experience increased connection and support a sense of calm in your body and mind and to the world and those around you.

Trauma counselling offers hope for connection and safety in relationships, so that life may feel more fulfilling and meaningful.

Carolyn Spring (writer, survivor and researcher) offers reflections on their own experience of the transformation that therapy can bring: