Welcome to Bee Yourself Counselling

Many people ask: "Do I have trauma?" or "Am I traumatised?"

In the past trauma has been associated with war, natural disasters, or mass violence. Of course these are traumatic events. We now know there are many situations which can result in trauma.

Before I list some of the possible sources of trauma let me say this: your trauma reaction or experience is totally individual.  What impacts one person may not impact somebody else at all. It's important you don't downplay your individual experience and struggles.

The below list is not exhaustive by any means but we now know that trauma can be caused for many reasons:

• childhood abuse: physical, sexual, psychological, emotional and neglect
• domestic and family violence
• ongoing medical issues
• life-threatening illness
• sexual assault
• unexpected death
• traumatic death 

Trauma is a felt experience of overwhelm - Dr Aimie Apigian

Of course there needed to be a traumatic event or events for you feel overwhelmed and experience trauma. The distinction to be made is the effects of trauma are something you experience on an individual basis and something that can now be worked with on an individual level.

This changes the focus from an event we can't change to being able to work with your nervous system to understand and release those felt experiences of overwhelm. Make sense?

If your overwhelming experience/s are not worked through you may become "stuck." You can start to display patterns such as fluctuating between stress and collapse. You might experience mental and physical health issues, relationship issues, use unhelpful coping mechanisms and experience many other challenges.

There are a myriad of techniques for working with trauma and what works for one person may not work for another. Because everybody responds differently my main aim is to keep you psychologically safe while we find out what works for you. 

Some of the tools in my toolkit include: psychoeducation, trauma-informed somatic therapy, shadow work and mindfulness strategies. Hypnotherapy can also be helpful for trauma as it works with your subconscious.

I have undertaken Trauma Training with the Blue Knot Foundation