What is trauma?

Firstly, its' more common than once thought. It happens to millions of human beings every year, without them knowing. Trauma can be a child or adult's long term exposure to emotional, physical, sexual abuse from someone known to you, also known as Developmental Trauma. It can be through experiencing war or a one of event such as a terrorist attack, assault or accident too. Trauma can also be defined by what we needed to emotionally survive as children and not had, such as reassurance, feeling safe, having an available parent.

Experiencing distressing events affects our brains in different ways, which in turn affects our nervous system and then our bodies. When we feel regularly unsafe, our brains respond in a protective way; fight, flight freeze, fawn and this rewires the brain to respond without us knowing, which is amazing but also problematic. This also means other parts of our brain can be underdeveloped, like out ability to think and learn, for example. Trauma survivors can experience many physical health issues as adults too due to these lived distressing experiences, but change can be made. If the trauma you experienced was in your childhood relationships, then the therapy needed to heal and recover is through the relationship in Trauma Recovery Counselling, more longer term talking therapy. This relational form of therapy heals what hasn't happened and what shouldn't have happened,  rewiring the brain and calming the nervous system so it can be present and alert to current dangers and situations and not be triggered by the old ones.

In my couples work, I like to use an ACE Score that I give to my new couples at the start of the therapy, so I can identify really quickly if they're impacted by past trauma. This helps me understand how you are experiencing your relationship from a deeper and unconscious lens so I can help you understand this within your relationship.