What Is Trauma-Informed Counselling and how can it Help Me?

I’m a trauma-informed Counsellor and I’ve realised that the term ‘trauma-informed’ is a phrase that’s used a lot, but there is little consistency about what it means. As such, I thought I’d explain what being a trauma-informed Counsellor means to me.

I chose to do the extra training to become a trauma-informed Counsellor because I was working with more and more people who’d experienced trauma, and I was aware that grounding was an important part of people being able to heal and move forward with their lives. By becoming a trauma-informed Counsellor, I could support the people I work with to understand their nervous system, resulting in less anxiety and a greater sense of self-awareness. 

I’m going to explain how I use trauma-informed counselling techniques by using a fictional account of a client, Julia. Please note that no real client details are shared in this account.

How can trauma-informed counselling help?

Meet Julia, a 47-year-old nurse and single mother.

 Julia’s background:

Julia got divorced two years ago after a nineteen-year marriage. The end of the marriage was traumatic, rocky and stressful. In many ways, Julia is glad to have parted ways with her ex, but she can’t seem to shake the events of the end of her marriage and get back to herself again.

Added to the mix is a difficult and stressful working environment, the challenges of being a single mother, the impact of the perimenopause and resurfacing memories of a complex and confusing childhood. It’s not surprising that all of this started to take its toll on Julia. 

Julia’s symptoms:

Julia was finding it difficult to sleep at night due to tension in the body, racing thoughts and nightmares of past experiences waking her up. She felt more and more lacklustre during the day and felt constantly on edge. 

The trauma-informed approach to counselling

The trauma informed approach gave me and Julia a framework to make sure that the counselling is safe and effective. It doesn’t essentially change the counsellor’s main methods they use to help people (I’m an Integrative Counsellor so I use a variety of methods), but it gives them a structure to make sure that they are not taking things too quickly. The structure of trauma-informed counselling didn’t dictate the content of the counselling: that was up to Julia. Trauma informed counselling is more about providing a safe framework to explore issues. Trauma informed counselling has three phases: 

1.        The grounding stage

2.        The processing stage                 

3.        The moving forward stage

Let’s explore these three phases:

Grounding

In our first session I did an assessment with Julia where we talked about some of the events that led her to her situation and what she would like to process going forward (whilst ensuring that the conversation didn’t get too overwhelming for her). It is, after all, important to establish the purpose of the counselling. However, after the assessment and in the grounding phase of the work, it was less about talking about details of what has happened and more about regulating the nervous system so that we can explore the issues safely and effectively. In the grounding phase I supported Julia to recognise the different nervous system states she finds herself in. 

A useful framework is identifying whether you’re in fight, flight, freeze or fawn mode, essentially your nervous system’s survival responses, which we share with animals in the wild.

• Fight mode involves acting out, lashing out or fighting back to survive.

• Flight mode is an urge to escape and avoid conflict. There may be panic or anxiety associated with this.

• Freeze mode means feeling numb or dissociating.

• Fawn mode means lapsing into people pleasing or putting yourself last.

In Julia’s case, she was most prone to going into flight or fawn mode. She would avoid conflict with her ex or her workmates but find herself being anxious about the situation late at night. She also found herself appeasing work colleagues by taking on extra work that she didn’t have time for, which caused extra problems for her. Part of our work was learning to recognise these states and learning ways to regulate her nervous system so that she could come out of flight or fawn mode.

Processing 

Julia and I began the processing stage after about a month, when her nervous system began to feel more regulated. Everyone is unique in terms of how long it takes for their nervous system to settle. The processing stage will also look very different depending on the issues brought to therapy. In Julia’s case we processed some difficult childhood memories and Julia learned to reparent her inner child. We also looked at some of the patterns from childhood that had replicated in her adult life. This included doing some creative work. Healing is never linear, so it is important to say that it was necessary to go back to grounding work every so often so that the details didn’t become overwhelming. It was also important for Julia to hold the grounding work as a lifelong tool for regulating the nervous system. During the processing phase Julia tapped into her inner knowing to understand more about what had happened to her and how she could start to do things differently for a brighter and more authentic future.

Moving forward

Once Julia understood her patterns and processed a lot of her negative experiences, she was able to start looking forward to the future and what she wanted in her life. She put new boundaries in place in relationships and in the workplace. This and her grounding practices meant that she felt much more regulated and much more able to tap into what she really wanted and needed. In Julia’s case she decided that she liked her job a lot more in a regulated state and began to consider going for a promotion. Others might realise that the environment that they are in isn’t for them and they might start to think about alternatives. This type of recalibration might apply to areas of life during the moving forward phase, including work, relationships, friendship groups, hobbies and lifestyle choices.

Trauma-informed counselling offers both structure and freedom: a safe container in which to explore the past without being overwhelmed by it. For Julia, and for many people I work with, it’s less about reliving what happened and more about rediscovering who they are beneath it