What is trauma-informed care?
Trauma-informed care is a compassionate, evidence-based approach to therapy that recognises how past experiences can shape a person’s emotions, relationships, behaviours and nervous system responses. A trauma-informed therapist takes a gentle, collaborative approach to the therapeutic journey, with a focus on emotional and physical safety.
What is trauma?
Trauma is not only about specific events or circumstances, but also the impact that those experiences have on a person over time. Every nervous system is different, and our responses are shaped by our unique histories, genetics, relationships and environments. What feels overwhelming, distressing or traumatic for one person may not affect another person in the same way.
Trauma – whether perceived as ‘big’ or ‘small’ – leaves emotional wounds and shapes the protective strategies we develop to cope or feel safe. These adaptations usually begin in childhood and may continue into adulthood without conscious awareness; yet they are evident in our behaviours, emotional responses and relationship patterns.
For example, someone who learned early in life that expressing anger led to rejection or conflict may become highly anxious during disagreements and instinctively prioritise keeping the peace over expressing their own needs.
Trauma-informed care is for everyone
This is why trauma-informed care can benefit everyone – not only people who identify as having experienced trauma – for we have all developed strategies in response to our environments and relationships. Ironically, as we grow into adulthood, these strategies often stop being supportive and can actually become repressive and restrictive, preventing us from experiencing emotional growth as individuals and in our relationships with others. Awareness is the first step towards expansion and transformation.
Working with the nervous system
Trauma-informed therapists are trained to recognise signs of nervous system dysregulation and help clients gradually expand their ability to stay present and emotionally regulated without becoming hyperactivated or shut down. This is achieved by emphasising present-moment awareness – helping people notice what is happening in their bodies, emotions and nervous systems in real time.
I teach nervous system awareness and collaboratively develop nervous system regulation strategies that are unique to each client, for use outside the therapy space.
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