When your body is still braced
Long after the danger has passed, the body can carry on as though it hasn't.
If you're still watchful, still flinching, still sleeping lightly years after something happened, there's nothing wrong with you. That's what an unfinished stress response looks like, and it can be worked with.
Why it doesn't just fade with time
When something overwhelming happens, your body does something quite sensible. It mobilises everything it has and puts everything else on hold. But if that response never gets to finish, because you couldn't fight back or get away or be comforted afterwards, some of it can stay switched on for years.
That's what's behind the watchfulness that never quite stands down, the startle that arrives before you've had time to think, and the sleep that never seems to reach the bottom. None of it is weakness and none of it means you've failed to move on. It's an unfinished process in the body, and it responds much better to being worked with than to being argued out of.
How the work actually goes
Slowly, and with your agreement at every stage. The first phase isn't processing at all. It's about building enough steadiness that going near the difficult material doesn't overwhelm you, which usually means working on regulation and on what already helps you feel safe. Only after that do we start on the memory itself, using EMDR, somatic approaches, parts work or something else depending on what you're carrying.
We don't believe in reliving things for the sake of it. Going over something painful again and again without the capacity to process it isn't therapy, it's just more of the same injury. If you're moving faster than you can absorb, your counsellor will say so out loud and slow things down rather than quietly steering you.
If it wasn't one event but a childhood
Some people don't have a single thing that happened. They have years of it: a parent whose mood you had to monitor, neglect that nobody named, an environment where reading the room was how you stayed safe. That work takes longer and it depends much more on the relationship between you and your counsellor, because the injury happened in relationship and tends to heal there too.
It's also, in our experience, the work that changes the most. Ninety-minute sessions are worth considering if this is your situation.
Common questions
Before you begin
I don't think what happened to me really counts.
That thought is one of the most common effects of trauma, so it's worth being suspicious of it. If your life is being shaped by something that happened, it counts, and you don't need to make a case for yourself before we'll take it seriously.
Will I have to talk about it in the first session?
No. The first session is about where you are now, what you'd like to be different, and how much you feel able to take on. What happened comes up when you decide it should.
Can this really work over video?
Yes, and a lot of people find it easier because they're in their own space rather than a clinic. Before we go anywhere near difficult material, we'll agree together what happens if a session becomes too much.
Ready when you are.
Fifteen minutes, free, no clinical intake. Just a conversation about whether this is the right room for what you're carrying.