Trauma and PTSD Counselling

You might be here because

• Something happened and it still feels present
• You avoid places, people or conversations without quite deciding to
• Your body reacts before your mind has caught up
• Sleep is broken, or the dreams keep returning
• You have been told you should "be over it by now"

None of that has to apply exactly. People often arrive unable to name what is wrong, and that is a perfectly good place to start from.

What the work looks like

Nothing is rushed and you are never required to recount more than you want to. Early sessions focus on stabilisation and on building enough safety to do the work at all. Where it suits you, EMDR is used to help the brain reprocess traumatic memories, alongside somatic and mindfulness-based approaches for the physical side of trauma. Whether EMDR is right for you is something we decide together.

Approaches most often used

• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

  EMDR is a non-traditional psychotherapy used particularly for post-traumatic stress. Research has shown it effective at reducing PTSD symptoms and at resolving memories, so that a memory can be experienced as a point in the past rather than as something still active in the present.

  More on EMDR →

• Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy

  Mindfulness-based psychotherapy brings meditation techniques into therapy to cultivate warmth, compassion and self-awareness. Through focused attention and open monitoring you develop the ability to observe your own thoughts and feelings without judgment. You do not need to become a dedicated meditator for it to work.

  More on Mindfulness →

• Written Exposure Therapy

  A brief, structured trauma protocol — usually around five sessions — in which you write about the traumatic event in a specific, guided way, with the session used to process what the writing brings up. It is one of the shortest evidence-based PTSD treatments available, and there is no homework between sessions and no requirement to say any of it out loud.

  More on WET →

• Narrative Therapy

  Narrative therapy separates the person from the problem — you are not the anxiety, the anger or the thing that happened to you. It works on the story you have been given about yourself, often by someone else, and on recovering the parts of your own history that story left out. It is a compassionate fit where shame or self-blame is doing most of the damage.

  More on Narrative →

Further reading

• How therapy works

  EMDR, explained without the jargon

  EMDR is a structured trauma therapy that works on how a memory is stored rather than on talking it through in detail. It runs in phases, it begins with preparation rather than with the memory itself, and it does not require you to describe what happened in full.

• How therapy works

  What "trauma-informed" actually means, and what it should look like in the room

  Trauma-informed appears on nearly every counselling website in British Columbia, which has worn the phrase close to meaningless. Used properly it describes how a session is run — pace, choice, safety, and what happens when something surfaces — rather than a technique anyone performs on you.