Trauma doesn’t always look like trauma
The ways we survive difficult experiences can become so familiar that they just feel like part of who we are.
You might notice:
- feeling on edge or always waiting for something to go wrong
- shutting down, disconnecting, or going numb
- overthinking conversations long after they are over
- finding it hard to trust or rely on other people
- feeling responsible for keeping everyone else okay
- being very independent because needing other people has not always felt safe
- understanding your patterns really well but still feeling stuck in them
These responses usually developed for a reason. Therapy is not about judging them or forcing them away. It is about understanding what they helped you get through, and whether you still need them in the same way now.
Trauma can come from more than one kind of experience
Some trauma has a clear before and after. An accident. An assault. A frightening medical experience. A sudden loss.
Other experiences happen repeatedly or build over time.
Growing up around anger or unpredictability. Having to become independent too early.
Not knowing which version of someone you were going to get. Being repeatedly criticized, rejected, ignored, controlled, or made responsible for things that were never yours to carry.
Sometimes there is one experience you can point to. Sometimes there are hundreds of smaller moments.
Emotionally Focused Therapy for trauma considers
chronic, cumulative, and acute traumatic experiences,
rather than limiting trauma to one particular type of event (Johnson & Campbell, 2026).
What matters to me is not putting your experience into the right category. It is understanding what happened, how you learned to get through it, and what is still showing up in your life now.
How I work with trauma
My primary approach is Emotion-Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT), an attachment-based and experiential approach developed by Dr. Sue Johnson and Dr. Leanne Campbell (Johnson & Campbell, 2022).
EFIT is used with concerns including anxiety, depression, traumatic stress, and difficulties connected to our sense of self and relationships. Rather than working only with thoughts or coping strategies, EFIT helps us slow down and understand the emotional experience underneath the patterns that keep repeating (Johnson & Campbell, 2022).
You do not have to tell me everything that happened
Trauma therapy does not mean sitting down and having to tell me your entire history.
We can begin with what is happening for you now: what you notice in your body, what brings up strong reactions, and the ways you learned to protect yourself.
In EFIT, safety and connection are central to trauma work. A sense of safety in the therapeutic relationship helps create the conditions for approaching difficult emotions and experiences without having to force or rush the process (Johnson & Campbell, 2026).
You do not need to talk about something because you think I expect you to, and you do not need to go further than feels manageable.
You get a say in what we talk about, when we talk about it, and how quickly we go.
What might change through trauma therapy?
There is no single version of healing, and therapy cannot erase what happened.
Over time, the work may help you:
- understand your reactions with more curiosity and less shame
- notice emotional patterns before they completely take over
- feel more able to stay with difficult emotions without them taking over
- develop a stronger sense of choice in how you respond
- feel more comfortable with your own needs and vulnerability
- experience yourself as more capable, worthy, and grounded
- feel safer reaching for support and letting other people be there for you
In EFIT, trauma recovery can involve becoming more able to access, tolerate, and organize emotional experience, developing a stronger sense of competence, worth, and agency, and building a greater capacity to trust, reach for, and receive support from others (Johnson & Campbell, 2026).
Trauma therapy does not have to be serious every second
Some sessions are heavy.
Some involve grief, fear, anger, or things you have spent a long time trying not to feel.
There can also be humour, relief, awkwardness, swearing, moments of connection, and the occasional realization that ends with, “Well… that explains a lot.”
You are a whole person in the room.
Trauma may have shaped parts of your life, but it does not have to become the only story we tell about who you are.
