Samantha Oliver

Trauma is an incident that occurs that leaves a person highly distressed and afraid. This can be a single event, multiple incidents, childhood abuse and neglect, or a highly stressful period in a persons life. Symptoms that can indicate trauma include: anxiety, depression, irritability, isolation, brain fog and loss of concentration, issues in relationships, use of substances and alcohol to cope, self-harming and suicidal thoughts, risky sexual behaviours, poor boundaries in relationships, overall reduced satisfaction with life.

People who are traumatised will be highly reactive to outside stimuli that it perceived as a threat to safety which trigger the fight or flight response. Fight or flight can look like hypervigilance (needing to stay alert to danger), or hypovigilance which looks like being unable to respond to perceived threats (freezing, shutting down, numbing). This is due to trauma memories remaining unprocessed and becoming easily activated as though they're occurring in the present moment. Our brain has an older ancient brain that acts like a smoke detector constantly looking for dangers (which worked well during the era of sabor tooth tigers) that is concerned with only staying safe - so if we think we are under threat, even if we aren't, our brains will automatically seek out survival responses - running, fighting, freezing, fawning. Our brain doesn't understand that the threat it's perceiving isn't happening in current time but is an old unresolved trauma. It just wants to keep us safe.

This need to remain safe takes over rather than being able to focus on living in a way that meets all of a persons other needs, which can end up leaving us feeling stuck and in repeated patterns of behaviours that are no longer helping us and even hindering. This can end up leaving your life depleted of rich experiences, work and educational opportunities as well as eroding relationships.

Trauma by definition keeps people away from the trauma due to the feelings of extreme helplessness, anxiety and distress it evokes. To work safely with trauma I specifically draw upon Janina Fisher's Safety & Stabilisation methods. There is evidence to support that this can be used as a stand alone effective way of working with clients to improve their quality of life, reduce depression and anxiety. Safety & stabilisation is used to build resilience by helping clients to stay within their window of tolerance which is basically reducing anxiety and depression - this is helpful so that clients can begin to process trauma memories so that they no longer are "triggered" into their survival mode. Part of the work is to help clients to also create a bigger window of tolerance, by this - we mean bear more feelings of of what might feel like anxiety and depression but may well be natural feelings of being out of your comfort zone and feelings of sadness or difficult emotions of disappointment and anger, all are important to embrace. All emotions are important to feel and it's important to risk vulnerability (being out of your comfort zone), so that full integration of a person's wants and needs can be made real. It is particularly helpful in moving towards a more a life where you thrive versus surviving.