Trauma Counselling

Is current or past trauma impacting my life?

When we experience trauma, our lives can be impacted in every way—often with physical, mental, emotional, and daily or seasonal symptoms showing up. Even when we are not thinking about the trauma a lot, this underlying issue can leave us feeling isolated and powerless as we try to move through other areas of our world.

How do I know if what I experienced is trauma?

Trauma is defined differently depending on the setting. In therapy, trauma is usually seen as an experience (ongoing or a single incident) when someone’s nervous system has become overwhelmed and they were pushed beyond their body’s ability to cope. When this happens, we cannot internally make sense of what we have experienced. During and after trauma, our inner systems that are meant to keep us safe can get almost locked into place or become disjointed—with responses like flight, fright, freeze, and fawn becoming our everyday mode instead of rare experiences.

An important note is that these systems and responses are actually good; they keep us safe and alive. It’s when they are chronically in use that we start to be negatively impacted. This chronic use can happen when we are no longer experiencing trauma, but our brain and body are still responding as if we are. This can lead to a host of issues like the list above, which may be subtle or impossible to hide. Over time, a chronic trauma response will likely impact us in every area of life.

Symptoms

Consider if one or more of the following possible symptoms of trauma feel relatable:

Often feeling overwhelmed by emotion, without being able to find relief
Feeling overly aware of your surroundings
Feeling numb in your body, unreal, or like you are floating
Frequent irritability
Ongoing shame and worthlessness
Difficulty trusting others or forming safe boundaries
Nightmares and flashbacks
Noticing your anger or rage flares up quickly
Low mood, depression, and hopelessness
Poor concentration and memory
Being unable to fall asleep, stay asleep, or wanting to sleep all the time
Few thoughts or feelings about your future
Chronic pain, headaches, dizziness
Substance misuse
Eating disorders
High anxiety and panic attacks
Self-destructive behaviour
Disrupted or few memories

Coping with any one of these items can be so difficult, especially if you feel like nothing is helping or that you are alone. This list is not for diagnosis, simply for reflection as you explore if there may be a concern here. As trauma symptoms are similar to symptoms of serious physical illnesses, it is crucial to always consult a medical doctor.

Developmental trauma and adulthood

Children and attachment wounds

When we are young or in a vulnerable place in life, trauma can look like being in a home or in a relationship where our most basic needs are not met for safety, love, acceptance, and nurturing. Counsellors call these attachment wounds when our basic needs with our attachment figures are not met. When this happens, we tend to adapt to the wound to survive and get those basic needs met.

These early experiences of having our needs met or not will usually shape how we understand ourselves, others, and how we ask for or give care. We will likely start forming beliefs, coping strategies, and relational patterns based on these experiences that will shape our responses as adults. Even if there is no presence of trauma, abuse, or neglect, when we are vulnerable we can still experience wounding that our nervous system interprets similarly to traumatic events—as something that overwhelms our capacity to cope, resulting in similar symptoms too. These symptoms can show up when we are adults in ways like anxiety or numbness about relationships, perfectionism, people-pleasing, and feeling worthless.

Therapy for developmental trauma does not aim to demonize or blame our families of origin, though naming what was not okay may be a powerful part of this work—especially if this has not been acknowledged so far. Counsellors aim to help clients better understand what is happening, heal attachment wounds, adjust coping patterns, intentionally move forward, and potentially identify areas where repair or healthy boundaries are needed with family.

How can this impact me now?

Trauma can influence you in almost every area of life, even years or decades after the original experience has ended. From school, work, family, and daily chores, trauma can disrupt what we most value in life and bring distress into everything we do. If our bodies and brains are stuck in a trauma response—unable to tell that we are safe now—we may feel ready at all times to either attack, run, curl up in a ball, freeze, or fake a smile to try and protect ourselves. For some, your symptoms may become much worse or change suddenly when a reminder of your trauma comes up. Underlying trauma can also go undiagnosed for years, leading to the potential for misdiagnoses or for other disorders to form as a result.

Uncertainty in trauma

Because trauma impacts us at a nervous system level, it’s symptoms can be varied, broad, and confusing—like the list above demonstrates. If you are unsure if trauma is influencing you, that is a very normal place to start. We would encourage you to keep learning, talking with a medical doctor, and potentially meeting with a counsellor who can help you determine if trauma is a main concern or if there is something else. Usually, there is a mix of a few underlying issues that can be addressed in an integrative way—taking all of who you are into account for treatment.

Shame and trauma

Our experience of trauma can be painfully influenced by shame. This can show up as shame in the traumatic experience itself, being blamed by others who should have comforted you, degrading yourself, embarrassment over symptoms, and even shame in not being able to recover or heal fast enough. There may be so much that communicates something is wrong with you and needs to be hidden or fixed before you can be whole. If this has been your experience of trauma, it can make healing and therapy feel so difficult.

We believe that it is crucial to work with shame in trauma counselling, recognizing that even this painful aspect is part of the pattern where our bodies are trying to protect us and have gotten stuck in a survival mode. Shame itself often shows up as part of one of the most intense ‘survival modes’ within trauma experiences. Changing how you relate to shame may be a first step or the very last thing you want to touch in counselling. Either way, we can hold space for it and explore this at your pace.

Trauma and hope

We have worked with individuals, healthcare staff, and organizations struggling with trauma. This experience has shown us that as humans, we have a great capacity built into our brains and bodies for healing, relief from symptoms, and the experience of freedom. With evidence-based therapeutic approaches, a counsellor can create a practical plan to help you work with your body's nervous system, patterns of trauma, and survival strategies. Trauma counselling can offer you a place to start and find what you need.