Trauma Counselling & Therapy

Have you been through something really tough, distressing or traumatic?

Do you find yourself:

  • Reliving the event through vivid memories or bad dreams?

  • Feeling constantly on edge, jumpy, or easily irritated?

  • Struggling with negative thoughts about yourself or the world around you?

  • Feeling emotionally numb or disconnected from others?

  • Having trouble sleeping or focusing?

  • Feeling overwhelming guilt or shame about the event?

  • Avoiding places, people, or activities that bring back memories of what happened?

You Don’t Have to Face it Alone

“Trauma compromises our ability to engage with others by replacing patterns of connection with patterns of protection”

Stephen Porges

Trauma can deeply affect every aspect of your life, but there is hope.

At Reach Your Potential Counselling, Cathie specialise in trauma counselling, offering compassionate and specialised support to help you with your recovery and healing journey.

The trauma counselling services provide:

  • A safe, supportive environment where you can share your story.

  • Evidence-based treatments to manage the impact and enhance your coping and well-being.

  • Tools and strategies to manage anxiety and emotional distress.

  • Support in rebuilding your relationships and reconnecting with your loved ones.

  • Guidance to help you rediscover your strengths and resilience.

Take the first step towards your recovery and learn more about how Cathie can assist you overcome the trauma

Understanding the Difference Between “Trauma-Informed” and “Trauma-Focused” Counselling

Trauma-Informed Care

Trauma-informed care is a comprehensive approach to providing services that is grounded in the principles of safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, and empowerment.

Trauma-informed care provides a supportive framework but differs from trauma-focused therapy. Being trauma-informed means understanding trauma and its impacts, but it does not necessarily equate to being trained in trauma therapy.

Key Elements of Trauma-Informed Care:

  • Understanding Trauma: Recognises the complexity and impact of traumatic stress and the role of coping strategies that help individuals survive traumatic events.

  • Safety and Strengths: Emphasises creating a safe environment, preventing retraumatisation, and building on existing strengths and skills.

  • Holistic View: Sees the individual beyond their symptoms and behaviours, focusing on their overall well-being without pathologising them.

Trauma-Focused Therapy

Trauma-focused therapy, requires advanced training, knowledge, and skills to address psychological trauma comprehensively. This specialised approach involves targeted treatment and interventions to help individuals re-establish safety, process, recover and heal from trauma.

While trauma-informed care provides a foundational understanding and supportive environment for individuals, trauma-focused therapy involves specialised treatment to help individuals recover and heal from their traumatic experiences.

Complex trauma: When individuals experience multiple, chronic, or pervasive traumatic events, such as repeated abuse, oppression, or childhood trauma, it can lead to complex trauma. Treatment for complex trauma necessitates a high level of care, time, and expertise, given the profound and multifaceted effects it has on a person’s life.

Types of Trauma: Trauma can manifest in various forms and from a range of experiences, often overlapping, such as:

  • Relational and Interpersonal Trauma: Includes domestic and family violence, sexual assault.

  • Developmental and Childhood Trauma: Encompasses disrupted attachment, child abuse (including sexual, emotional).

  • Institutional experiences: Involves experiences in care systems, military, or religious settings.

  • Human Rights Violations: Covers refugee trauma, race-based trauma.

  • National Disasters, Traumatic Grief, Accidents, and Injuries: Encompasses a wide range of traumatic experiences.

Cathie's Holistic Approach to Trauma Counselling

Cathie provides trauma counselling using a holistic and integrated approach, combining both trauma-focused and non-trauma-focused modalities to deliver the most suitable treatment for each individual based on the their needs, readiness, abilities and capacity

Comprehensive Treatment: Cathie's treatment addresses the broad impact of trauma, focusing on managing and alleviating its effects on various aspects of a person's life. This includes understanding, treating, and managing the trauma's impact, reprocessing experiences, and reconnecting and integration to oneself and others through specialised trauma-focused techniques, and identifying and building on existing strengths and capacities.

Cathie's integrated approach to trauma counselling and therapy ensures that each person receives tailored, effective care, fostering healing and resilience.

Safety First: The foundation of Cathie's approach is establishing and maintaining psychological and emotional safety. This focus ensures that individuals can achieve and maintain emotional and functional stability, providing a safe and secure environment for recovery and processing traumatic experiences.

Trauma-Focused Modalities: Cathie is trained in several effective trauma-focused therapies, including:

  • Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP)

  • EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing)

  • Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)

  • Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)