Trauma can leave you feeling stuck, overwhelmed or disconnected from yourself and the world around you. You don’t have to stay there. Healing is possible — and it starts with a safe, supported space.
Trauma is not just about what happened to you – if you were unable to process it at the time, for example if it wasn’t safe as a child, a difficult relationship, or you were unable to, as you were dealing with a traumatic incident in a professional capacity, as a member of the emergency services or military; the memories can store as fragmented parts and it can also store physically within your body. It impacts on the neural structures of your brain and central nervous system and activates the fight/flight/freeze/fawn system and can heighten the amount of stress hormones in your body, which in turn can increase inflammation within your body.
Trauma becomes a problem when traumatic experiences layer and build, perhaps we didn’t learn safe coping mechanisms as a child or our training teaches us to detach from the experience so we can do our job, but it rewires our fight/flight response and floods our body with activating neurochemicals creating biological changes in our amygdala and pre-frontal cortex, leading to anxiety, depression, flashbacks, difficulty sleeping, anger response and our relationship with food.
The good news is that our brains are malleable, and there are things we can do via the body first, to let us know we are safe and start to reverse this cycle. We can work to reverse the effects, by using breathing techniques, relaxation, guided mediation, mindfulness, walking in nature to recalibrate and activate the calming neurochemicals and start to build new neural pathways.
If you’re struggling with something that happened – whether recently, years ago or a bereavement has brought up past experiences – and it’s affecting your daily life, trauma counselling can help.
You don’t need a formal diagnosis to benefit from trauma counselling. If any of these resonate with you, it may be worth reaching out:
Safety and regulation are important in all trauma work. I will first explore and teach you techniques to help you to regulate your body and emotions. We will work on your experiences in a trauma informed way to minimise re-triggering existing traumatic experiences. We will work at your pace, sometimes I may slow you down so that we can keep you regulated as we work to expand your tolerance levels, building a sense of safety and trust before exploring anything difficult.
I work in an integrative, trauma-informed way, drawing on somatic awareness and evidence-based techniques. My aim is to help you understand how trauma has affected you and to support you in building your own toolkit of approaches that work for you, whilst processing what happened and the emotions around that leading to a connectedness between your mind and body and your own sense of agency in your life.
All sessions are held online via secure video call – so you can access support from anywhere in the UK, from the comfort of your own home, a private space at work or if working away from home.
You’ve already taken the hardest step by looking for support. Book your free introductory call today.
