Trauma Counselling — Martin Alderton | London, Norwich & Online

What it can feel like A small child stands alone amid the monumental toppled letters of the word TRAUMA — trauma is not always the thing people expect it to be.

A small child stands alone amid the monumental toppled letters of the word TRAUMA — trauma is not always the thing people expect it to be.

Trauma is not always the thing people expect it to be. It is easy to assume the word belongs only to single, dramatic events, and for some people it does. But for many, what they carry came from something longer and quieter: an early environment that was frightening, unpredictable, or unsafe in ways that were never named, a childhood spent managing a situation no child should have had to manage, a pattern of experiences that never amounted to one nameable event and yet shaped everything that came after.

A figure buries their head against a folding paper structure printed with the words 'this is why the effects can be confusing… you may feel braced much of the time, or strangely numb, or swinging between the two… a system shaped by earlier conditions is still doing what it learned, in a present that no longer requires it.'

This is why the effects can be confusing, including to the person living them. You may find yourself reacting to ordinary situations as though they were threats. You may feel braced much of the time, or strangely numb, or swinging between the two. Closeness may feel unsafe in ways you cannot explain. You may carry a sense that something is wrong with you, when what is actually happening is that a system shaped by earlier conditions is still doing what it learned, in a present that no longer requires it.

Where it comes from

A figure sits curled inside the cracked, broken letters of the word TRAUMA — what could not be metabolised then does not simply fade; it stays, held in the body.

What these experiences have in common is not the size of the event but what it did. Trauma is what happens when an experience overwhelms your capacity to bear it at the time. There was too much to feel, and no one there to help you feel it, so the only option was to survive it rather than process it. What could not be metabolised then does not simply fade. It stays, held in the body and the nervous system, often outside of clear memory, continuing to shape how safe the present feels long after the event itself is over.

A person braces their whole body to hold up the monumental words NOT WEAKNESS as the letters crack and crumble at one end — none of this is weakness, and none of it is your fault.

It is worth saying clearly that none of this is weakness, and none of it is your fault. What looks like overreaction, or shutdown, or difficulty trusting, is the trace of an intelligent adaptation, a way of surviving something real. The responses made complete sense in the conditions that formed them. The difficulty now is that they have outlived those conditions, and continue to run in a life that is no longer the one they were built for.

The danger has passed. Something in you hasn't heard.

The danger has passed. Something in you hasn't heard.

Trauma is not always the thing people expect it to be.

This is why the effects can be confusing.

What could not be metabolised then does not simply fade.

None of this is weakness, and none of it is your fault.

The work is careful, and it does not begin by going back into the worst of it.

This is slow work, and it is relational.

So that more of your life belongs to now.

Worth taking seriously rather than carrying alone.