People respond to trauma in very different ways, and therapy has evolved as our understanding has deepened. In the past, it was often assumed that talking in detail about traumatic events was necessary for healing. We now know that revisiting trauma too directly or too soon can overwhelm the nervous system and lead to re-traumatisation.

 

For many people, healing does not require retelling what happened. It may instead involve working with present-day patterns, bodily responses, emotions, or relationships. What helps one person may be unhelpful or even harmful for another.

 

Because of this, trauma work needs to be paced, responsive, and tailored to the individual. An experienced trauma therapist is essential, as they can judge when to slow down, when to stay with the present, and if or when past events should be approached at all.

 

Trauma-informed therapy begins with the understanding that many current difficulties are shaped by earlier experiences of threat, overwhelm, or harm. The body and nervous system learned ways to cope at the time, and those survival responses can continue long after the danger has passed. The therapist works carefully, prioritising safety, choice, and pacing. Attention is given to emotions, the body, and relational patterns, not only to thoughts or narrative.

 

Traditional counselling (by which I mean approaches not explicitly organised around trauma and the nervous system) is more likely to treat the problem as something happening in the present that needs to be talked through, understood, or changed. It often focuses on thoughts, beliefs, and behaviour, aiming for insight or practical solutions. This approach may spend less time considering how past trauma can shape perception, memory, attachment, and physiological responses to stress.

 

The risk is that the person may feel misunderstood, blamed, or pushed beyond what their system can tolerate.

 

If trauma-shaped perceptions are treated as simple thinking errors, clients may be encouraged to override fear, distrust, or shutdown with logic or effort. This can increase shame and self-doubt, teaching the person that their reactions are “wrong” rather than understandable responses to past harm.

 

There is also a risk of re-traumatisation. When pacing and regulation are not central, talking about experiences or trying to change behaviour can activate the nervous system faster than it can settle. Instead of integration, the person may leave sessions more dysregulated, exhausted, or numb.

 

Attachment patterns can also be missed. If the therapy relationship itself is not understood as part of the work, ruptures, power dynamics, or fears of abandonment may go unaddressed. This can quietly repeat earlier relational injuries rather than heal them.

 

A trauma-informed approach therefore stops treating trauma as something that lives only in thoughts or memories and starts working with how the whole person has adapted to survive.

 

Memory is understood as uneven and incomplete. Traumatic experiences are often stored as feelings, images, bodily sensations, or sudden reactions rather than as clear stories. Therapy allows these fragments to surface gradually and at their own pace, without forcing recall or explanation. This matters because ordinary memories are stored as part of a timeline: you remember what happened, when it happened, and you know it is over. Trauma often bypasses this system. When the nervous system is overwhelmed, experiences are stored without a clear sense of time.

 

As a result, the body and mind can respond as if the event is still happening now. A tone of voice, a look, or a situation can trigger fear, collapse, or vigilance even when there is no present danger.

 

A traumatic experience has not yet been placed into the past because, at the time it occurred, the system did not have the safety, capacity, or support needed to process it. The experience remains unintegrated – not lost or distorted, but unresolved.

 

When something in the present carries an echo of the original experience – a dynamic, sensation, or relational pattern – the psyche recognises it and pulls it into the present. This is not malfunction. It is an attempt at completion. The system is trying to finish what could not be finished before.

 

From this perspective, triggers or emotional flashbacks are not random or pathological. They are invitations to integration. The difficulty arises when activation is too intense or too fast, tipping the system back into overwhelm rather than allowing the experience to be processed and placed into history.

 

Trauma-informed therapy therefore helps people notice and settle their bodies so emotions and thoughts can be processed without tipping into panic or numbness. The work slows the process down and provides enough safety and containment for integration to occur.

 

Because the psyche is trying to integrate unfinished experience, these moments of activation require careful handling. Without skill and attunement, they can lead to repetition rather than resolution.

 

An experienced trauma therapist has specific specialist experience and training and knows how to recognise when integration is trying to happen, how to slow the process, and how to keep the person within a window of safety. This containment is what allows experiences to be placed into the past, rather than turning the attempt to heal into another injury.

​

Read also:
Trauma Bonds: Why They Feel So Addictive
Healing The Fragmented Self
Feminine Sovereignty & Reclamation
How to be a Safe Other
The Backlog We Never Processed
Two Kinds of Emptiness

Who's in Charge Here?

​