Working Through Trauma

Key takeaways

• Trauma isn't about what happened being "bad enough"—it's about how the experience affected you and whether it continues to affect you now
• Trauma changes the brain and nervous system, which is why you can't just "think your way out" of it
• Symptoms that feel like overreactions or character flaws—hypervigilance, avoidance, emotional flooding—are often normal responses to abnormal experiences
• The beliefs trauma leaves behind ("I'm not safe," "I'm broken," "It was my fault") feel like facts, but they're wounds, not truths
• Healing is possible. The nervous system can change. But it usually takes time, safety, and often support

If you're reading this, something happened. Maybe something obvious and dramatic. Maybe something you're still not sure "counts." Maybe it happened recently, or maybe it was years ago—decades ago—and you're surprised by how present it still feels, how much it still runs your life in ways you didn't expect.

You might not even use the word "trauma" for what you experienced. It might feel too big, or too clinical, or reserved for people who had it worse. You might feel like you should be over it by now, whatever "it" was. You might wonder if you're making too much of something that others would have handled better.

I want to say something clearly: trauma isn't defined by what happened meeting some external threshold of severity. It's defined by how it affected you. If something from your past continues to shape how you feel, think, or function today—if it still carries weight—it matters. Your experience matters.

What trauma actually is

Trauma is what happens when an experience overwhelms your capacity to cope. It's not about the event itself, but about what the event did to your system—your brain, your nervous system, your sense of safety, your understanding of the world and yourself.

This can result from many different kinds of experiences:

The common thread isn't what happened. It's that something exceeded your capacity to process it at the time, and the effects are still with you.

Why the past won't stay in the past

One of the most confusing things about trauma is that it doesn't behave like other memories. It doesn't stay neatly in the past. It bleeds into the present in ways that can feel irrational, overwhelming, even crazy—though they're not.

This happens because trauma affects the brain and nervous system differently than ordinary experience. When something traumatic happens, normal memory processing gets disrupted. The experience gets stored in a way that keeps it "alive"—not as something that happened then, but as something that feels like it's happening now.

Your body stays on alert

Your nervous system may remain in a state of high alert long after the danger has passed. It learned that the world is dangerous, and it hasn't unlearned that lesson—even when the logical part of your brain knows you're safe.

This can look like:

• Constantly scanning for threat, even in safe environments
• Startling at sudden sounds or movements
• Difficulty relaxing or feeling truly at ease
• Physical tension you can't release, pain without clear medical cause
• Exhaustion from running on adrenaline all the time

Your body isn't malfunctioning. It's doing exactly what it learned to do to keep you safe. The problem is that it's still doing it when it no longer needs to.

The past breaks through

Trauma has a way of intruding into the present uninvited:

• Flashbacks—moments when you're not just remembering the trauma but feeling like it's happening again, right now
• Nightmares that replay or rework what happened
• Intrusive thoughts or images that appear without warning
• Triggers—sounds, smells, situations, even tones of voice that send you right back into the feeling of the trauma, even when you don't consciously make the connection

These intrusions aren't signs of weakness or failure to move on. They're symptoms of how trauma is stored in the brain—unprocessed, unintegrated, still raw.

You find ways to avoid the pain

To manage the overwhelming feelings that trauma leaves behind, most people develop strategies to avoid triggering them:

• Staying away from places, people, or situations that remind you of what happened
• Pushing down thoughts or feelings connected to the trauma
• Refusing to talk about it, or only being able to talk about it in certain detached ways
• Numbing through substances, work, busyness, or anything that keeps you from feeling

These strategies make sense. They protect you from being overwhelmed. But they also keep the trauma stuck. The feelings that don't get processed don't go away—they just go underground, continuing to run your life from below the surface.

Your beliefs shift

Trauma often changes fundamental beliefs about yourself, other people, and the world:

These beliefs feel like facts—like accurate assessments of reality based on evidence. But they're not facts. They're the marks that trauma leaves. They're conclusions drawn from overwhelming experiences that didn't have enough context, enough safety, enough support to be processed differently.

Recognising this doesn't make the beliefs disappear. But it can be the beginning of questioning them.

Trauma and how you relate to others

Trauma, especially when it happened early or within relationships, shapes how you connect with people. The patterns that develop often made sense at the time—they were ways of surviving—but they may cause problems now.

These patterns aren't character flaws. They're adaptations. They developed for reasons. Understanding this doesn't make them easy to change, but it does make them comprehensible—and what's comprehensible can eventually shift.

So what helps?

Trauma can be healed. The nervous system that learned the world was dangerous can learn that it's safe again—or safe now, even if it wasn't then. The frozen material from the past can be processed and integrated. The beliefs that feel like permanent truths can soften.

But this rarely happens on its own. It usually takes time, and often takes support.

Safety has to come first

You can't process trauma while you're still in survival mode. Before any deeper work can happen, you need some baseline of safety—both externally (being out of danger) and internally (having enough stability to tolerate difficult feelings without being overwhelmed).

This is why trauma therapy isn't about diving immediately into the worst memories. A good therapist will help you build resources first—ways of grounding yourself, regulating your nervous system, returning to the present when you get pulled into the past.

Going at your pace

Healing trauma isn't about forcing yourself to confront everything all at once. That can retraumatise rather than heal. The work needs to happen within your window of tolerance—the zone where you can feel difficult things without becoming completely overwhelmed.

This window can be expanded over time. What was too much to face a year ago may become manageable with the right support and preparation. The pace should be yours, not driven by some external timeline of how fast you "should" recover.

Processing what happened

At some point, when there's enough safety and enough resources, the trauma itself needs attention. This might involve telling your story to someone who can hold it. Working with specific memories in structured ways that help your brain finally file them as "past." Understanding how what happened affected your beliefs and behaviours. Connecting the dots between then and now.

This work can be painful, but it's different from being retraumatised. Done well, it reduces the power that trauma has over your present life. It moves the experience from something that runs you to something that's part of your history.

Working with the body

Because trauma lives in the nervous system, approaches that work with the body can be particularly helpful. Learning to notice your physical state and what it's telling you. Developing ways to regulate yourself when you're activated. Understanding your window of tolerance and how to stay within it, or return to it when you've been pushed outside.

This isn't instead of talking about what happened. It's alongside it—recognising that trauma is held in the body, not just the mind.

Learning to trust again

Ultimately, a lot of trauma healing is about rebuilding trust—trust in yourself, in other people, in the possibility of safety. This often happens slowly, through repeated experiences that disconfirm what trauma taught you.

A therapeutic relationship can be part of this. For some people, it's the first genuinely safe relationship they've experienced. The consistency of it, the holding without harm, can begin to rewire what seemed impossible.

How counselling can help

Trauma-informed counselling offers several things:

• A safe relationship. Perhaps the first one in a long time, or ever. Someone who can hold what you bring without being overwhelmed, without judging, without needing you to protect them.
• Understanding what happened. Making sense of your experiences and responses. Seeing how what happened then is affecting you now. Getting the validation that your reactions make sense, that you're not crazy or weak.
• Processing at your pace. Working with traumatic material in ways that don't overwhelm your system. Building resources before going to difficult places. Having control over what you're ready to face and when.
• Reconnecting with yourself. Trauma often creates disconnection—from your body, your emotions, your sense of who you are. Therapy can help rebuild these connections, slowly making it safe to inhabit yourself again.
• Updating trauma-based beliefs. Recognising the difference between what trauma taught you and what's actually true. This isn't about positive thinking; it's about examining beliefs that were formed under duress and seeing whether they still hold up.
• Building resilience. Developing your own resources for managing triggers, staying grounded, and living more fully in the present—even when the past tries to pull you back.

When to reach out

Consider seeking support if:

• Past experiences continue to affect your daily life in ways you can't control
• You have flashbacks, nightmares, or intrusive memories that won't settle
• You avoid people, places, or situations because of what happened
• You feel numb, disconnected, or unable to experience positive emotions
• Relationships are difficult because of trust or intimacy issues
• You rely on alcohol, substances, or other behaviours to manage how you feel
• You carry a persistent sense of being unsafe, damaged, or fundamentally broken

You don't need to be in crisis to benefit from support. And you don't need to be ready to talk about the worst things that happened—not yet. Healing can start with building safety and resources, long before you're ready to face the hardest material.

A note to end on

If you're carrying something that still hurts, even if it happened long ago—if something from your past is still shaping your present in ways you wish it wouldn't—I want you to know that this is not your fault, and it's not a sign of weakness.

What happened to you mattered. How it affected you makes sense. And the fact that it's still with you doesn't mean you're broken—it means you're human, and your system did what it needed to do to survive.

Healing is possible. It takes time, and often support, and it's rarely a straight line. But the nervous system can learn new things. The past can become the past. And you can find your way to a present that isn't run by what happened then.

If you'd like to explore this with support, I'm here. You don't need to have it figured out. We can start wherever you are.

About the author

• PTSD UK: ptsduk.org
• Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
• Herman, J. (1992). Trauma and Recovery
• Porges, S. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory