Trauma
Trauma is not what happened to you. Trauma is what happened inside you as a result of what happened to you. That distinction matters — because it means the event does not have to have been objectively catastrophic for the impact to be real. It means your nervous system gets to be the authority on what was too much. Not anyone else's opinion of it. Not whether it was "bad enough." Your body keeps the score, and your body does not lie.
What trauma actually is.
Relationship difficulties come in many forms. Some are acute — a betrayal, a rupture, a crisis that has forced something into the open that can no longer be ignored. Others are slower and harder to name — a growing distance, a pattern that keeps repeating, a sense that the same argument is happening on a loop with different words.
People come to me with relationship issues across every kind of relationship. Romantic partnerships — the strain of conflict, disconnection, infidelity, or simply two people who have grown in different directions. Family relationships — the weight of difficult parents, estrangement, the particular complexity of sibling dynamics or inherited family patterns. Friendships. Work relationships. The relationship with an ex that somehow still has a grip.
Big T and small t trauma
When most people think of trauma they think of the obvious things — war, assault, serious accidents, natural disasters. These are what clinicians sometimes call Big T traumas: single, identifiable events that would overwhelm almost anyone's capacity to cope.
But trauma also accumulates. Small t traumas — chronic emotional neglect, persistent criticism, growing up in an unpredictable household, repeated experiences of humiliation or rejection, relationships that were consistently unsafe — can be just as disruptive to the nervous system as a single catastrophic event. Sometimes more so, because they are harder to name, harder to point to, and more easily dismissed — by others, and by the person themselves.
If you have spent time wondering whether what you experienced was "bad enough" to count as trauma — that question itself is worth examining. The nervous system doesn't grade on a curve.
What trauma can look like
Trauma shows up differently in different people and different bodies. It can look like hypervigilance — a constant state of alertness, scanning for danger, never quite able to relax. It can look like emotional numbness, or dissociation — a sense of being disconnected from yourself, your body, or the world around you. It can look like intrusive memories, flashbacks, or nightmares. It can look like shame so deep it feels like a fact about who you are rather than a response to what happened.
It can also look like anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, chronic physical symptoms, or a persistent sense that something is fundamentally wrong — without being able to identify exactly what. Trauma is often what is underneath the presenting problem, rather than the presenting problem itself.
What treatment looks like.
Trauma treatment has changed significantly in the last two decades. What the evidence now clearly supports is that talking about trauma is not always enough — and for some people, talking about it in the wrong way, before the nervous system is ready, can make things worse rather than better. Good trauma therapy understands this. It works with the body as much as the mind, and it moves at a pace that feels safe.
Stabilisation first
Before we go anywhere near the traumatic material itself, we build capacity. This means developing a genuine toolkit — grounding techniques, nervous system regulation skills, the ability to move into and out of difficult material without becoming overwhelmed. This is not a preliminary step before the real work begins. This is the real work. A nervous system that has been in survival mode needs to know that safety is possible before it can begin to process what happened.
EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing is one of the most extensively researched trauma treatments available. It works by activating the brain's natural information processing system — using bilateral stimulation to help the nervous system do what it was trying to do at the time of the trauma but couldn't: process the experience and file it away as something that happened, rather than something that is still happening. EMDR does not require you to talk through the trauma in detail. For many people this is a significant relief.
Somatic and body-based approaches
Because trauma lives in the body, the body is where a significant part of the healing happens. Somatic approaches work directly with physical sensation, posture, breath, and movement — helping the nervous system complete the responses that were interrupted at the time of the trauma. This is careful, attentive work. Nothing is forced. The body leads.
IFS — Internal Family Systems
Trauma rarely travels alone. It brings with it a cast of protective parts — ways of being, thinking, and relating that developed to keep you safe at the time and that are still working very hard, often at significant cost. IFS is a framework for understanding and working with those parts with curiosity rather than judgement, and for reaching the parts of you that have been carrying the trauma itself. It is some of the most profound work I do.
Schema Therapy
For trauma that is rooted in early experience — childhood adversity, relational trauma, chronic emotional neglect — Schema Therapy addresses the deep beliefs and patterns that formed in response to those experiences and that are still quietly shaping how you see yourself, other people, and the world. This is where lasting change at the identity level happens.
Psychedelic & MDMA Assisted Therapy
For people with treatment-resistant PTSD or complex trauma where conventional approaches have not produced sufficient relief, Psychedelic & MDMA Assisted Therapy is an option worth knowing about. MDMA-assisted therapy has a growing and compelling evidence base for trauma, having shown significant results in clinical trials for PTSD. It works by temporarily reducing the fear response, creating a window in which traumatic material can be approached and processed in a way that is often not possible in a standard therapeutic context.
This is specialised work, conducted within a carefully held clinical framework. It is not appropriate for everyone — but for those for whom it is, it can reach places that other approaches have not.
→ See also: Psychedelic & MDMA Assisted Therapy
If trauma is affecting your daily life, a Mental Health Care Plan from your GP provides access to Medicare-rebated sessions with a clinical psychologist.
What happened to you is not the end of the story.
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