What Happens in Trauma Therapy? An Introduction from a Hove-Based Counsellor

Many people wonder whether what they’ve experienced 'counts' as trauma. They may feel something isn’t quite settled inside them, yet the word trauma feels too dramatic, too heavy, or not quite right. Others are curious about trauma therapy but worry it means digging up painful memories or reliving experiences they’d rather forget.

From a counselling perspective trauma isn’t defined by the event itself, but by the impact it has on you now. Two simple definitions I often return to are “too much, too soon” and “a wound to the self that stays.” Trauma is what happens when something overwhelms your capacity to cope at the time — and a part of that experience remains present long after the event has passed.

This is why trauma-informed therapy isn’t about retelling painful stories until they hurt less. It’s about understanding how your past experiences may be affecting your present life — how you relate to others, how safe you feel in your body, how you respond to stress, closeness, or conflict. Sometimes this shows up as anxiety, low self-worth, numbness, or a sense that certain situations feel bigger than they “should.” Sometimes it’s more of a feeling and harder to put into words.

Sometimes clients ask whether their experiences are 'big enough' to be trauma. Some events are clearly significant — what’s sometimes called 'big T' trauma. But smaller, repeated experiences can also leave a lasting impact. In practice, it matters less what happened, and more that something has happened and you’re feeling affected by it now. If you’re wondering whether it might be trauma, that curiosity itself is a meaningful starting point.

My role in therapy isn’t to diagnose you or to search for trauma if it isn’t there. Instead, we go carefully. We take time to understand what’s happening for you, help you feel safe enough to explore, and find tools that support you in moving forward. Therapy can’t change the past, those events are part of your life story, but it can change how the past lives in your present.

A useful way of thinking about it is memory. If you once broke your leg, you may remember how painful and difficult it was, but the memory stays in the past, you get on with your day past remembering. Traumatic memories are different, they can feel as though they’re happening again now. Your body might hold them as tension, a knot in your stomach, a racing heart, or sudden fear. This is why trauma feels so immediate, even when the event is long over.

So in therapy, we don’t start by revisiting everything that happened. We start with what’s here now: the knot, the flashbacks, the sense of not feeling safe. Together, we work on restoring a sense of safety in your body and in your inner world. When and if you choose, we can gently explore past experiences at your pace, so they can be processed rather than relived. From there, we can gently explore what needs to be mourned, any anger or sadness that remains, and how to offer compassion to yourself for what you’ve lived through. The aim isn’t to erase the past, but to help it take its rightful place — in the past — so that the present feels safer and more manageable.

It’s also important to say as a trauma-informed psychotherapist, I work integratively That means if you come to therapy and trauma isn’t the main issue, you’re not in the wrong place. If you’re grieving, struggling with relationships, feeling stuck, or simply wanting to understand yourself better, we work with that. Trauma-informed simply means I will always be mindful, gentle, and attentive to your sense of safety — not that I will go looking for trauma if it isn’t there.

In a future article, I’ll talk more about the Window of Tolerance - a way of understanding how the brain and body respond to stress and trauma, and how therapy can help widen your capacity to feel, reflect, and stay present.

For now, if any part of this resonates, you don’t need to have the right words or a clear label for what you’ve experienced. We can start where you are without judging what has or is happening for you.