Trauma
work
I’ve dedicated a section of this site to trauma because it often requires a different type of therapy – one that centres the body and nervous system, not just thoughts and behaviour.
When we go through something overwhelming, frightening, or deeply lonely — particularly without enough support — our nervous system can move into survival mode. This isn’t a conscious decision. It’s an automatic response, shaped by our biology and unconscious mind, designed to protect us.
While these survival responses are often helpful at the time, they don’t always switch off once the danger has passed. As a result, we can find ourselves stuck in patterns of anxiety, shutdown, or hyper-alertness for days, weeks, or even decades.
Some people notice anxiety, hyper-vigilance, or a constant sense of being on edge without knowing why. Others feel disconnected, collapsed, frozen, or emotionally numb – sometimes alongside fear. For some, the body begins to speak through physical symptoms that we don’t yet understand.
Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a body-based trauma therapy that works directly with the nervous system. Rather than retelling or analysing events, SE gently supports the completion of survival responses that are still held in the body, helping restore a greater sense of regulation, safety, and choice, without overwhelming or re-traumatising.
Alongside this, trauma-informed psychotherapy helps us explore how early experiences shaped the ways we learned to adapt. When it wasn’t safe to fully be who we were, we may have organised our identity, relationships, and sense of self around survival. Together, this work can help loosen strategies that once made sense, but may now be getting in the way having your deeper needs met.
You don’t need to identify with the word trauma for this way of working to be relevant.
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Both humans and wild animals have intricate biological survival response systems which become activated in response to perceived life threatening situations. When overwhelmed by a threat where fight or flight is not possible, mammals (including humans) enter into a freeze response.
Unfortunately humans tend get stuck in these biological survival states far more often than other mammals. -
You may be suffering from post traumatic stress if you have noticed the following symptoms:
Anxiety
Phobias or unexplained fears
Insomnia, severe mood swings, hyper-vigilance
Obsessions/compulsions
Physical symptoms that seem to have no medical explanation. For example: chronic fatigue
Difficulty learning and concentrating
Often we don't know how significant the impact of a trauma was until symptoms show themselves later. The delay can be short or even as long as years or decades.
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Developmental trauma is worked with alongside the shock trauma. One must understand the impact shock trauma has on the developmental stage at which it occurs, and the subsequent stages. For example a child abused within the family at an early age will not form secure attachment. A child hospitalized at an early age for prolonged periods may loose some of their sense of earlier successful attachment.
Developmental trauma may also be as a result of adoption, neglect, and poor attunement or attachment. Having a broad knowledge of Somatic Developmental Psychology is essential in this work. Completing incomplete developmental tasks is part of this work.
My main goal however will be to develop a core within the individual to which they can attach, rather than attaching to something or someone outside themselves. In this work the individual is learning how to self soothe, rather than to turn to addiction or develop compulsions, which are the most common indicator that a person has experienced developmental trauma.
Other conditions which indicate underlying Autonomic Nervous System dysregulation:
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder(ADHD) - Bi-Polar Disorder/Manic Depression - Obsessive Compulsive - Disorder (OCD) - General Anxiety Disorder - Dissociative Disorders.
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In cases of 'shock trauma' the nervous system must be allowed to resolve an unfinished pattern – the energy that has been mobilised to deal with the threat must be discharged.
Because physical sensation is the language of the instinctual brain, the tracking of subtle body experience creates a natural opening for the involuntary release to occur. By guiding people gently into the realm of body sensation, somatic work helps them regain the ability to regulate their own nervous system.
Unlike us humans, animals quickly return to normal by surrendering to the involuntary mechanism that allows their nervous system to 'discharge' their excess survival energy and re-establish equilibrium.
Instead, humans tend to override instinctual systems with the 'rational' part of their brain. This 'higher' brain structure blocks involuntary discharge of the nervous system. Thus the body remains in this highly charged frozen state, leaving the body in a condition like that of a car with the brakes and the accelerator floored at the same time. Containing this energy can cause the above listed symptoms.
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Working to resolve trauma and its symptoms is a more active and contained form of psychotherapy. It involves the therapist guiding the client to track their body awareness in a focused, skilled and specific manner.
The way each person has responded to the fight-flight-freeze energies is very individual, and the therapist attentively tracks that person's response pattern, in order to move towards re-establishing equilibrium of the nervous system.
The process is very natural and everyone can learn these skills to be able to move out of the traumatic state their own.
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You will have more of a sense of what you need as we begin to work. This is an 'as needed' situation, led by you.
