Careful work with things that happened and have not finished happening

The work

You do not have to tell me everything

The single most common fear people bring to trauma therapy is that they will be made to describe the worst thing that ever happened to them, in detail, in the first session, to a stranger. That is not how I work, and honestly it is not how anybody competent works.

Trauma is not really about the event. It is about what the event did to your nervous system and what has been running on autopilot ever since. Quite a lot of useful work happens without a detailed account of what happened, and where the detail does become useful, you decide when.

What it can look like now

People often do not connect their current life to something that happened years ago. Some of the things that turn out to be connected:

• Being permanently on alert, scanning rooms, unable to sit with your back to a door
• Going numb or blank under pressure, then being furious with yourself for it
• Reactions that are far bigger than the situation, and that you cannot talk yourself out of
• Sleep that never quite becomes rest
• Avoiding places, people or conversations, with the avoidance growing quietly over years
• Difficulty trusting anyone, including people who have given you no reason not to
• A persistent sense that it was somehow your fault, which almost never survives being examined properly

How the work is paced

We build stability before we go anywhere near the difficult material. That means practical work on grounding, on what to do when you are flooded, and on what helps you come back down. It is not a warm up. It is the thing that makes the rest possible without knocking you over.

Then we work at whatever pace holds. If a session leaves you unable to function for the next three days, that was too fast and we adjust. You will not be pushed through something because a model says session six is when you do the hard part.

What I do not offer

I am a counsellor, not a psychologist or psychiatrist. If what you need is a formal diagnosis, a specialist PTSD programme, EMDR from a certified practitioner, or medication, I will say so and help you find it rather than keeping you in a chair that is the wrong shape. If you have experienced sexual violence, counselling is funded through ACC with registered providers and I can point you toward that pathway.