Working with Trauma
Trauma isn’t only about what happened. It’s about what stays.
Sometimes that’s a single event, an accident, an assault, a sudden loss. Often it’s something slower, growing up without enough safety, being criticized or overlooked, having to take care of the adults around you or learning early that your feelings were too much. Many people don’t use the word trauma for their own experience because there wasn’t one dramatic event to point to. But the effects can be just as real.
Those effects rarely stay in memory alone. They show up as being on edge, or numb, or both. As reactions that feel bigger than the moment calls for. As a body that doesn’t quite feel safe, sleep that doesn’t come or closeness that feels risky even with people you trust.
Even when the circumstances have changed, the nervous system doesn’t always respond as though they have.
Making room for something different
We start by building enough safety to approach difficult experiences without becoming overwhelmed. That might mean finding ways to settle when things get intense, learning to recognize what happens in your body and developing a sense that you’re in charge of the pace.
You don’t have to tell your whole story or tell it in any particular order. Some things may take a long time to say and some may never need saying at all.
Much of trauma happens in relationship and much of the healing does too. Part of the work is simply having an experience that goes differently, telling something or feeling something with a person for whom it isn’t too much.
Alongside that, we pay close attention to the body because it often holds what words can’t reach yet and it’s often where things begin to loosen.
Protective parts
Trauma often leaves behind parts of us that are still doing their best to keep us safe, the part that stays alert, the part that goes numb, the part that works hard to please, the part that won’t let anyone too close.
They often developed in response to experiences that felt overwhelming or unsafe and they can keep working even when our circumstances have changed.
Here I draw on Internal Family Systems (IFS). Rather than trying to get rid of these parts, we get to know them. What are they protecting and what do they fear would happen if they stopped? As they feel understood, they often don’t have to work quite so hard and what they’ve been guarding can begin to receive some care.
EMDR
I’m an EMDRIA Certified Therapist and EMDR is one of several ways I work with trauma, used when it fits and when someone wants it.
Sometimes overwhelming experiences don’t become integrated into our lives in the way other memories do. They can remain connected to intense emotions, body sensations and beliefs about ourselves. Small things in the present can set them off and the experience can feel as vivid as when it happened, sometimes without a clear memory attached at all.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a structured therapy that helps people process distressing memories so they can become less disruptive in the present.
In a session, you briefly bring a memory to mind while following bilateral stimulation: eye movements, tapping, small buzzers you hold in your hands or tones through headphones. We work in short sets, with pauses to notice what comes up.
For many people, a memory gradually loses its charge and starts to feel like something that happened rather than something still happening. The beliefs attached to it, such as it was my fault or I’m not safe, can shift along with it.
EMDR is one of the most researched trauma therapies and is recommended for PTSD by organizations including the World Health Organization and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Before any processing, we take time to build enough safety and resources that it feels manageable. Some people come specifically for it, for others it becomes helpful partway through longer work, and plenty of good trauma work happens without it. We decide together.