Trauma

Trauma can come from a single incident or build up over a longer period — I work with both, including chronic trauma such as sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. There's no requirement that an experience be dramatic or extreme to be worth bringing to therapy; what matters is the effect it's had on you.

The pace of trauma work is deliberately unhurried. Feeling safe enough to process something difficult takes as long as it takes, and the approach is adjusted to what you can tolerate at each stage rather than pushed on a fixed timeline.

One of the techniques I'm trained in for this work is EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), which is internationally recognised as a first-line treatment for trauma-related difficulties. It isn't the only approach used, and isn't necessarily right for every person or every stage of the work — see the EMDR page for more detail on what it involves and its evidence base.