Trauma can continue to affect how you feel, think, relate to others, and experience your body long after an event or period of difficulty has passed. You may feel anxious or on edge, disconnected, overwhelmed, or find yourself responding to situations in ways that don’t always make sense to you.
Trauma therapy offers a space to respond to these patterns differently and begin working with them at a pace that feels safe and manageable. Together, we can explore both your inner experience and the ways trauma may be held in the body, supporting greater awareness, regulation, connection and choice.
My approach draws on psychotherapy, somatic psychotherapy and, where appropriate, Craniosacral Therapy and SomatoEmotional Release (SER). We work collaboratively, with care for your individual history, needs and readiness.
You don’t need to have everything figured out before you begin. We can start with where you are now and work from there.
Understanding Trauma and PTSD
Trauma is not only about what happened. It is also about what happens within us afterwards. An experience can affect our sense of safety, trust, connection, identity, and the way we respond to the world around us.
Trauma can result from a single overwhelming experience. Still, it can also develop through repeated or ongoing experiences such as childhood abuse, neglect, family violence, difficult relationships, or growing up without a consistent sense of safety.
Sometimes the effects are obvious. At other times, they can be harder to understand. You might notice yourself becoming highly alert to what is happening around you, avoiding situations or conversations that feel difficult, finding it hard to trust others or feeling disconnected from your emotions or body. Sometimes these responses can feel confusing, particularly when you know you are no longer in the situation that originally caused them.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is one way trauma can continue to affect a person after a distressing or life-threatening experience. But you don’t need to have a PTSD diagnosis for your experiences to matter or for trauma-informed therapy to be helpful.
My focus is not on deciding whether what happened to you was “traumatic enough.” Instead, we explore how your experiences may still be affecting you now, including the ways they may show up in your emotions, relationships, nervous system and body.
How Trauma Therapy May Help
Trauma can affect not only how you think and feel, but also how you experience your body, your relationships, and your sense of safety in everyday life. You may notice yourself becoming overwhelmed, shutting down, staying constantly alert, or reacting in ways that feel automatic or difficult to understand.
Therapy provides an opportunity to gently slow these experiences down. Rather than focusing only on what happened, we explore how trauma may still be influencing your life today, including your emotions, relationships, nervous system and physical responses. As these patterns become clearer, many people find they begin to feel less overwhelmed by them. Reactions that once felt automatic can gradually become something you understand, respond to differently, and have more choice around.
The aim is not to erase your past or ask you to revisit experiences before you are ready. Instead, we work together to help you develop a greater sense of safety within yourself, feel more connected to your body and emotions, and discover new ways of responding that better reflect who you are today rather than what you have been through.
How I Work with Trauma
Trauma therapy is tailored to your individual history, needs and readiness, drawing on both psychological and somatic approaches.
We begin by making sense of your experiences and exploring how they continue to influence your emotions, relationships and daily life. Psychotherapy provides space to explore these experiences while developing a clearer understanding of the patterns that may have developed around them. As this awareness grows, you may begin to feel less overwhelmed and more able to respond with greater choice.
We may then bring greater attention to the body’s role in trauma. Somatic psychotherapy allows us to notice sensations, tension and nervous-system responses that can offer another way of understanding experiences that are difficult to put into words. Over time, this can support a stronger connection with your body and help you recognise when you feel safe, activated or overwhelmed.
Where Craniosacral Therapy and SomatoEmotional Release are appropriate, gentle therapeutic touch can provide another way of working with experiences that may not be fully accessible through talking alone. We remain guided by what feels safe and manageable, allowing emotions, sensations, images or memories to emerge naturally rather than forcing the process.
Throughout our work, you remain in control of what we explore and how we work. My role is not to push you towards difficult experiences, but to provide a therapeutic relationship where you can feel supported enough to explore what has happened, reconnect with yourself, and develop new ways of responding to what you experience.
Is trauma therapy right for me?
You don't need a diagnosis of PTSD or to be certain that what you've experienced was "trauma" before coming to therapy. People respond to difficult or overwhelming experiences in different ways, and you may simply know that past experiences are continuing to affect your emotions, relationships, sense of safety, or everyday life.
Trauma therapy may be helpful if you're experiencing anxiety, feeling overwhelmed, struggling in relationships, feeling disconnected from yourself or your body, or noticing patterns that don't fully make sense to you. Together, we can explore what may be contributing to these experiences and how they continue to affect your life today.
You also don't need to remember everything or feel ready to talk about everything. We can begin with what feels possible now, allowing understanding, healing and change to develop over time.
If you're unsure whether trauma therapy is right for you, our first session is simply an opportunity to meet, talk about what's bringing you here, and see whether we feel like a good fit.
Do I have to talk about what happened?
No. You never have to talk about anything before you feel ready. We go at a pace that feels manageable for you, and there is no expectation that you need to tell your whole story for therapy to be helpful.
For some people, talking about what happened becomes an important part of their therapy. For others, it can be more helpful to begin by noticing how their experiences are affecting them now. My role is to offer a safe, respectful space where you remain in control of what you share and how quickly we move.
What if I can't remember everything that happened?
That is more common than many people realise. Traumatic or overwhelming experiences can affect the way memories are processed and recalled. Some people remember events clearly, while others may have gaps, fragmented memories, or remember things more as a blur.
You don’t need to remember everything, or have a complete account of what happened, for therapy to be helpful. We can work with what you do remember and, importantly, with what you are experiencing now, including your thoughts, feelings, and what you notice in your body. If memories become clearer over time, we can approach them gently and at a pace that feels safe and manageable. If they don’t, there is still meaningful work we can do together.
Can trauma affect me even if I don’t have PTSD?
Yes. Trauma can continue to influence how you feel, relate to others, experience your body, or respond to situations without meeting the criteria for PTSD. You may notice anxiety, difficulty trusting, feeling on edge, shutting down, or feeling disconnected from yourself. You don’t need a diagnosis for these experiences to be meaningful or for trauma-informed therapy to be helpful.
What if I feel overwhelmed during therapy?
Trauma therapy does not mean being pushed to revisit difficult experiences before you are ready. We work at a pace that feels manageable, paying attention to what is happening in your body and nervous system as we go. If something feels overwhelming, we can slow down, pause, or approach it differently. You remain in control of what you choose to explore.
How will I know when I’m ready to finish therapy?
There is no set point at which trauma therapy needs to end. For some people, the work may focus on a particular experience, while for others it may involve understanding patterns that have developed over many years. As the work progresses, we can reflect together on what has changed, what feels different, and whether there is more you would like to explore. The aim is not to stay in therapy longer than you need, but to support you in reaching a place where you feel more able to move forward with greater understanding, connection and choice.