AREAS OF SPECIALTY
Complex & Relational Trauma
The effects of complex trauma can reach into many parts of your life — how you feel, how you see yourself, how safe you feel within yourself and with others, and how you move through relationships.
You may feel overwhelmed by emotions, disconnected from yourself, constantly alert to what might go wrong, or caught in patterns that are difficult to change.
What is complex and relational trauma?
Complex trauma can develop through repeated or ongoing experiences, particularly within relationships where we needed safety, care or protection.
Over time, these experiences can shape your emotional world, your sense of yourself and the ways you connect with others.
The ways you learned to cope or protect yourself may continue long after the circumstances that shaped them have changed.
You may recognise experiences like...
Your emotions can feel overwhelming or difficult to manage — or you find yourself shutting down and disconnecting.
You’re highly attuned to changes in other people’s moods, tone or behaviour.
You often put other people’s feelings and needs ahead of your own.
You may not have a clear sense of who you are, what you need, or what you want.
You find yourself doubting your own feelings, perceptions or instincts
You carry a sense that something is wrong with you, even when you can’t explain why.
You want closeness, but trusting, relying on or being vulnerable with others can feel difficult.
You find yourself repeating relationship patterns you understand, but struggle to change.
How I work with complex and relational trauma
Understanding where a pattern comes from can be important, but insight alone doesn’t always change what happens when that pattern is activated.
My approach is relational, trauma-informed and body-aware. Together, we can understand the ways you learned to protect yourself and notice how these patterns show up in your emotions, body and relationships today.
The work is collaborative and paced with you, with an emphasis on safety, choice and developing greater flexibility in how you respond.
What healing can look like
develop a greater sense of safety within yourself and with others
feel less overwhelmed by difficult emotions and more able to respond to them
develop a clearer sense of who you are, what you need and what matters to you
trust your own feelings, perceptions and instincts
relate to yourself with greater compassion and less shame
experience closeness while maintaining a sense of yourself
feel greater agency and choice in how you respond, relate and live
