trauma therapy & counselling online
Trauma-informed therapy takes into consideration the impact of what’s happened to you, and prioritises creating a safe and supportive environment for you to process what has happened.
In practice this means we will start by building awareness of how your experiences affect various aspects of your life, and what could (or does) strengthen and resource you. I will suggest we pace things, giving us time to build trust and to explore together what approach might best suit you.
what is trauma though?
Trauma is the word we use to describe a response to an event that has been deeply distressing or threatening for us. It’s not only about what happened, but its impact on our body, mind, or ability to cope.
Some of the experiences I have supported people with include childhood abuse, sexual abuse, domestic abuse, childhood neglect, loss/bereavements, medical emergencies or witnessing something traumatic happening to someone else. I also work with people who experience oppression from some of the systems we live within (e.g. systemic racism, ableism, sexism, homophobia or transphobia). This ongoing context can also cause trauma responses.
Sometimes people coming to therapy can feel worried that what they’ve experienced might not ‘qualify’ as trauma. I’m here to help you work through whatever has happened. If it’s impacting you in your daily life then it’s worthy of my time and yours.
how trauma can affect us
Trauma can affect our relationships, our emotions and our bodies in a number of ways. You might feel fearful or on edge, numb or disconnected, irritable or angry, or be having flashbacks or nightmares, difficulty sleeping or concentrating, or have bodily complaints (e.g. headaches, tense muscles, racing heart or persistent pain).
People respond differently to traumatic events though, and what is traumatic for one person may not be for another. How we respond in the longer term is often dependent on the kind of support or safety we had around us at the time, the age it happened, or other past experiences.
working with complex trauma, complex PTSD or childhood trauma
If you have experienced multiple traumatic experiences over a prolonged period, it may have impacted how you feel towards yourself now (e.g. feeling like a failure or having very low self-esteem), your ability to connect to others (e.g. feeling distant, pushing people away, fearing abandonment or people pleasing) or how you experience your emotions (e.g. not feeling able to calm down or feeling very numb).
I can help you explore these challenges, bringing my curiosity and compassion to support you understand what drives them and what is needed to bring about change.
trauma therapy with me involves:
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I’ll be providing a present, authentic and accepting relationship where you can come as you are. I will show interest in what’s important to you, what makes you uniquely ‘you’, how you see yourself and the world around you, and the context you are living in to help us understand better what’s happening for you in the here and now.
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I will invite you to think about what resources or supports you, and offer mini experiments to develop other tools that can help calm your nervous system (your body’s internal alarm system). This can include grounding or mindfulness techniques, art/creativity, identifying forgotten strengths or hobbies, or using guided visualisation or imagery.
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When we process, we are able to link thoughts and feelings to make sense of them, reframe old beliefs to gain new insights, and safely feel things to release tension that might have become stuck. With traumatic memories, sometimes simply talking about them doesn’t help them process or shift this stuckness. We will work together to see what might best suit you, but some of the ways I can help you process include:
Parts work or inner child work (where we get curious about the parts of you that feel wounded, scared or that you don’t like, and begin to understand them)
Embodied (or somatic) psychotherapy where we focus on the nervous system responses held in the body and we alternate between discomfort and calm to help release tension safely.
EMDR. Read more here.
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…such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or ableism, and how these cause unsafe environments that might be impacting you. We’ll then consider how we balance a focus on your personal coping strategies/tools with emphasising connection to community and safe others. This is a part of what we mean by ‘anti-oppressive therapy’.
you don’t have to tell me everything straight away
Working with painful thoughts and feelings means trauma therapy can be hard, but our goal is not to retraumatise you. That’s why pacing and building a good relationship between us is important. We will go carefully, taking time to notice how you’re doing and what happens as you think or speak about certain things. This helps to guide us on what is the best way forward for you.
You may decide down the line that you don’t need or want to focus on the traumatic memories themselves at all, and that’s fine too, there are many ways we can work on the issues that are important to you.
EMDR
what is EMDR?
EMDR is an evidence-based structured therapy approach that offers one way to process traumatic memories.
who is it for?
EMDR is best known as a treatment for PTSD, but you don’t have to have a diagnosis to work in this way with me, and it can be helpful for a range of mental health difficulties and childhood trauma.
If you think past events are impacting on your daily life we can discuss together whether EMDR would suit you.
what happens in an EMDR session?
I will guide you to focus on a memory while at the same time doing something to activate both sides of your brain (e.g. side-to-side eye movements or hand tapping). This helps to make it less overwhelming as it pushes you to stay aware of two things at once: the past memory and your present safety.
The process supports your brain and body to then work through what’s traumatic about the memory, processing the negative beliefs, images, body sensations and emotions associated with it so that you can ultimately see it differently, feel less distress around it and be less impacted by it in the present.
FAQs
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Yes, and it can be just as effective as in person. Because we’re not in the same room I may ask more questions about what is happening for you as we go, and I may suggest we develop a plan for how you transition out of therapy and into the next part of your day.
For EMDR I would suggest using a larger screen (laptop/large pad) as it’s hard to achieve enough eye movement by looking at a phone screen. I am trained to offer EMDR online , and I’m a member of EMDR Association UK.
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Of course, and trauma therapy is not the only thing I offer. Sometimes we don’t know why we are struggling, we might move through waves of ups and downs, or feel regularly overwhelmed without a clear cause.
If that’s the case for you, there are still lots of ways I can help you to gain awareness of yourself, feel empowered in your choices, and make change that is meaningful to you.
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That’s completely fine, and many people don’t know. That is why I work collaboratively and integrate a few different approaches so that I can be flexible to what works for you. I will propose ideas and you can see how they feel, and I will often ask for your feedback on what helped and didn’t throughout our time working together.
If you think therapy could help you work through a past experience,
get in touch for a free 20 minute call