Trauma is not what happened to you, it is what happens inside you as a result. It is the way your nervous system learned to respond to danger, and how those responses continue even when the danger has passed.
Understanding trauma through neuroscience helps us work with your body's protective responses rather than trying to override them through willpower alone.
Types of Trauma I Work With
Single-Incident Trauma
- Accidents or injuries
- Assault or violence
- Natural disasters
- Medical trauma
- Sudden loss or bereavement
Developmental Trauma
- Childhood neglect or abuse
- Attachment disruption
- Early relational wounding
- Inconsistent caregiving
- Emotional unavailability
Complex Trauma
- Prolonged or repeated trauma
- Relational trauma
- Intergenerational trauma
- Systemic or institutional trauma
- Multiple trauma types
Common Trauma Symptoms
Trauma affects people differently, but responses tend to cluster around three primary patterns:
Hypervigilance
Your nervous system remains on high alert, constantly scanning for danger. This might show up as difficulty relaxing, being easily startled, feeling on edge, struggling to sleep, or finding it hard to concentrate because part of your attention is always elsewhere. Your body has learned that safety requires constant monitoring, even when objectively there is no immediate threat.
Emotional Difficulties
Trauma disrupts your ability to regulate emotions, leading to intense feelings that seem to come from nowhere, emotional numbness or disconnection from your feelings, rapid shifts between different emotional states, or difficulty trusting others. You might find yourself avoiding situations that could trigger difficult emotions, or notice that your beliefs about yourself and the world have changed, perhaps feeling fundamentally unsafe, seeing yourself as damaged, or struggling to experience positive emotions.
Flashbacks
Traumatic memories can intrude into the present through vivid, distressing flashbacks that feel as though the trauma is happening again, nightmares, or intrusive thoughts and images. Your brain may attempt to protect you by avoiding reminders of what happened, but this often means restricting your life in ways that maintain the trauma's power. Physical symptoms like tension, pain, and fatigue often accompany these experiences, as your body continues to hold the memory of what occurred.
These responses make sense when understood as your nervous system's attempt to protect you. Treatment helps your system recognise that these protective responses, whilst once necessary, may no longer serve you.
How Trauma Therapy Works
Understanding Your Nervous System
We start by mapping how trauma has affected your nervous system, the patterns of hypervigilance, shutdown, or cycling between the two. Understanding why your body responds this way reduces shame and provides a foundation for change.
Building Safety & Stabilisation
Before processing traumatic memories, we develop resources for nervous system regulation. This includes grounding techniques, understanding triggers, and creating a sense of safety in the present moment.
Processing & Integration
Using approaches like EMDR and trauma-focused CBT, we work with traumatic memories to reduce their emotional intensity and help your nervous system recognise that the danger has passed. This is not about forgetting, it is about changing how your body holds the memory.
Reconnection & Growth
As symptoms reduce, we focus on rebuilding connection with yourself and others, developing new patterns of response, and reclaiming parts of life that trauma has restricted.
Treatment Approaches
EMDR Therapy
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing helps the brain process traumatic memories through bilateral stimulation, reducing their emotional charge and allowing integration.
Trauma-Focused CBT
Addressing trauma-related thoughts, beliefs, and behaviours whilst developing coping strategies and processing difficult memories in a structured way.
Somatic Approaches
Working with how trauma is held in the body, tension patterns, sensations, and physical responses, alongside talking therapy.
Neuropsychology-Informed
Understanding brain regions involved in trauma (amygdala, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex) helps explain symptoms and guides effective intervention.
Free Frontline Workers Support Programme
If you are an ambulance paramedic, nurse, or firefighter, you can apply for six free trauma therapy sessions.
- Six free sessions over a couple of months
- Not necessary to be an existing client
- No obligation to continue afterwards
- For any trauma-related support needs, including burnout, work stress, personal life, or vicarious trauma