Trauma is a psychological and physical response to a highly stressful or shocking event that felt unmanageable at the time.
Trauma can be a single event (e.g., loss, car accident, assault, natural disaster),
or long-term and relational, often referred to as complex or developmental trauma.
This includes experiences such as chronic neglect, abuse, domestic violence, or the absence of safe and nurturing connection.
It may also result from prolonged exposure to situations like war or displacement.
In a safe therapeutic space, you are invited to open up about your story – one that may have been overwhelming, where you possibly felt helpless or unable to act.
You may have experienced shock.
It might be a story whose effects are still with you – perhaps in the form of flashbacks, where emotional intensity returns unexpectedly, or avoidance, whether conscious or unconscious, where you limit yourself in daily life to escape overwhelming feelings.
You might notice tension or chronic pain in your body that seems connected to the issue.
Or perhaps you just have a sense that something happened, but you’re not sure what – only that you’re left with confusing or disturbing feelings.
Trauma doesn’t automatically arise from a difficult experience.
It’s a psychological and physical imprint that lingers when our system was unable to process the experience on its own, when our natural self-healing mechanisms were overwhelmed – maybe because we didn’t have the internal resources, resilience, or support we needed at the time.
How I Work with Trauma
I integrate various approaches depending on your current needs, psychological state, and the specific nature of the trauma. These may include:
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EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) – a desensitization method using guided eye movements
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Body-oriented psychotherapy approaches
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A combination of verbal and somatic (body-based) processing
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Principles from Trauma-Sensitive Yoga
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The EmotionAid® Protocol
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And other methods as appropriate
At the core of this work is the creation of supportive internal resources (through imagination, body awareness, etc.) and, most importantly, a safe and trustworthy therapeutic relationship where healing can take place.
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