Sabine Seddon

Trauma can come in many different forms. Trauma may be an isolated experience such as an attack, car accident, health scare, or witnessing violence/death, or it may be a  prolonged experience like domestic violence, childhood abuse/neglect, or bullying (school, workplace, family). The list of possible traumatic experiences is endless and trauma is often not recognised as such by clients and sometimes health professionals you may have seen already.

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Trauma can be experienced by adults and children, and unless worked through, can lead to depression, anxiety, addiction, poor relationships, failure to reach one's potential professionally, not feeling safe, hypervigilance, medical conditions, suicidality and much more.

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Professionals may also be vicariously traumatised by being repeatedly exposed to the trauma of others. This includes social workers, police, ambulance services, fire services, medical personnel, therapists and counsellors and anyone else in the helping professions.

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An experience becomes traumatic if the nervous system is overwhelmed. A person might be in the state of fright, fight or flight for a short or prolonged period without being able to regulate their emotions. When something happens to someone else or the experience is survived, there seems no point talking about it or a reason to feel like this. Often a connection is not made between feelings and a traumatic event.

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The aim of good trauma therapy is not to retraumatise you. Therefore, the first step of trauma therapy entails learning to regulate your emotions and to help yourself feel safe when something triggers your trauma. How long this takes depends on the nature and length of exposure to the traumatic experience and many other factors impacting on your physical and mental health. Once I am confident you can manage difficult emotions, we explore the trauma itself. This does not mean that you have to retell your trauma if you don't want to. We are looking for all the ways in which your traumatic experience is interfering with your life, for example your self perception, your self-care, your self-confidence, the way you are relating to others, and your ability to trust.  

 

For some clients telling their story is important. It is important to be heard and to be believed, and to somehow make sense out of what happened and is happening in their bodies and minds now. 

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You will be setting the pace of the therapy in order to keep you safe.

 

I will discuss strategies with you so that you can make an informed decision about your therapy.