I want to be careful here. Trauma is a clinical word that has been stretched until it means anything from a difficult childhood to a single brutal event. Both are real; they are not the same; and they need different treatment. What they share is a footprint in the body that pure talk therapy often cannot fully reach.

When a threat is overwhelming, the nervous system completes only part of its response. Energy that should have discharged through fight or flight stays trapped in posture, breath and muscle tone. Years later, that incomplete response keeps firing micro-alarms that look like anxiety, hypervigilance, sleep disturbance and unexplained body pain.

Body-aware approaches are essential. In my practice I integrate Cognitive Regulation with elements of somatic work — paced breathing, vagal toning, titrated exposure, and where indicated, EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) which has strong evidence for single-event trauma. For complex/developmental trauma, the work is slower, relational, and built on safety first.

If something difficult is sitting in you, take the PC-PTSD-5 here. A positive screen doesn't diagnose anything — it tells us a conversation is worth having. Trauma work is some of the most rewarding clinical work I do; with the right approach, recovery is realistic, not a fantasy.