Trauma is often thought of as resulting only from the ‘big T trauma’ moments, e.g. the Twin Towers. Yet many people’s lives are affected by their experience of ‘small t trauma’ i.e. what a person has had in a relationship they didn’t need, or not had that they did. Both types bring disruption to individuals’ nervous systems, their mental well being, and to their relationships and attachments with others.

I understand trauma as an experiencing of something in which a person’s healthy strategies for coping are overwhelmed. This might manifest as a response to a seemingly non-threatening current situation with anger, panic, or shutting down.

One specialist describes trauma as

“Any experience of fear or pain that doesn’t have the support it needs to be digested and integrated into the flow of our developing brains.” (Badenoch, 2018:23)

When beginning a therapeutic journey with people bringing early life and/or adult traumas, I offer a ground rule that, in trauma work, “Slower is faster”. At this stage, re-sharing trauma memories can be dysregulating, hence early in our journey I will be supporting people to build trust, resources and the beginnings of compassion to self.

My choice to specialise in working with people bringing trauma was inspired initially from my own personal blessing of having experienced therapists supporting me in my own journey of recovery. Since then, I have taken various specialist trainings, including the one year ‘Diploma in Contemporary Trauma Practice’ through Relational Change. Importantly, I keep my awareness and learning up to date though supervision with a “trauma informed” supervisor and through reading writings by influential trauma practitioners, including:

• Jo Watson ‘Drop the Disorder: Challenging the Culture of Psychiatric Diagnosis’

• Janina Fisher ‘Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors’

• Pat Ogden and Janina Fisher ‘Sensorimotor Psychotherapy’

• Ogden, Minto and Pain ‘Trauma and the Body’

• Bessel van der Kolk ‘The Body Keeps the Score’

• Peter Levine ‘In an Unspoken Voice’

• Babette Rothschild ‘The Body Remembers’

• Judith Herman ‘Trauma and Recovery’

• James Kepner ‘Healing Tasks’

• Miriam Taylor ‘Trauma Therapy and Clinical Practice’ and ‘Deepening Trauma Practice’

“We have to believe that we are more than the sum of our symptoms. When we settle for anything less, we limit our recovery, because we allow ourselves to be defined by what happened to us: the over-sensitisation of our neurobiology and the fragmentation of our sense of self. Recovery means that we connect the dots between all the different parts of ourselves: the different experiences, emotions, outlooks; the desires, and hopes and fears; and we become the person that we truly are, the whole that is greater than the sum of all its parts. I had to believe that I was more than a collection of symptoms, and forge forwards into the entirety of my being.”

Carolyn Spring (Extract from her book "Recovery Is My Revenge")