Trauma Counselling and PTSD Support
Trauma is a serious, treatable condition and you do not have to manage it alone. Whether you have experienced a single distressing event, prolonged abuse, or are living with PTSD symptoms, specialised trauma counselling can help you process what happened and rebuild a sense of safety.
Life Supports offers experienced, trauma-informed counsellors available face-to-face, online, and by phone, seven days a week.
What Is Trauma?
When we experience or witness something that is deeply disturbing, distressing or disempowering, we may experience trauma as a response. Trauma is a natural, biological response to situations that are not normal, situations in which you feel particularly helpless, or which ignite an extreme fear response.
People can describe a feeling of being numb and detached, or feel visibly distressed. Both are valid responses.
Experiences that can be traumatic include, but are not limited to:
- War
- Sexual violence, assault and abuse
- Physical accidents or injuries
- Bushfires and natural disasters
- Frontline emergency and disaster work
- Oppression
- Racism, bigotry and discrimination
- Lack of empowerment and conditions of injustice
- Life threatening illness
- Surgical operations
- Lack of safety and dangerous living conditions
- Domestic and family violence
- Physical violence and threats
- Psychological violence and threats
- Childhood neglect or abuse
- Evictions or homelessness
- Health pandemics and disease outbreaks
- Loss of one's job or identity
Signs You May Be Experiencing Trauma or PTSD
When you are traumatised, your body and mind ignite a powerful fear response. Think of sweaty palms, dilated pupils, a racing heart, brain freeze and restlessness. This fight, flight or freeze response is protective in the moment. But when it persists long after the threat has passed, it can become PTSD.
PTSD affects around 8% of women and 5% of men in Australia, making it more common than most people realise. It develops when the fear response triggered by trauma becomes chronic. Everyday triggers like a sound, a smell, or a place can bring the trauma flooding back.
Common signs of trauma and PTSD include:
- Flashbacks or intrusive memories of the event
- Nightmares or disturbed sleep
- Feeling emotionally numb or detached
- Hypervigilance, feeling constantly on edge or easily startled
- Avoiding people, places or situations that are reminders of the trauma
- Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
- Irritability or sudden outbursts of anger
- Feelings of shame, guilt or self-blame
- Withdrawing from relationships or activities you once enjoyed
Trauma and PTSD frequently occur alongside anxiety, depression, grief, relationship difficulties, and alcohol or drug use, which can make it harder to identify on its own. Many survivors also hesitate to seek help out of fear of not being believed or not wanting to revisit what happened. This hesitation is understandable and it is also one of the reasons trauma goes untreated for so long.
How Trauma Counselling Works
Research strongly supports talking therapies as the most effective long-term treatment for trauma and PTSD. Trauma therapy works by helping you gradually face what happened rather than avoid it. Avoidance feels protective but rarely resolves the pain.
A trained trauma counsellor creates a safe space where you can process your experiences at your own pace, with strategies to manage the fear response when it feels overwhelming. Quality trauma counselling gives you the tools to cope with distressing memories, build resilience, and function better day to day. It can help you rebuild a quality of life that may feel out of reach right now.
Trauma-Informed Therapies We Use
Our counsellors draw on evidence-based approaches tailored to your needs and history. Therapies used in trauma treatment include:
- EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), one of the most researched treatments for PTSD, helping the brain reprocess traumatic memories
- Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (TF-CBT), which works on the thoughts, feelings and behaviours connected to the trauma
- Somatic Therapy, which addresses how trauma is held in the body, not just the mind
- Schema Therapy, useful for complex or childhood trauma, working on deep-rooted patterns formed as a result of prolonged adverse experiences
- Narrative Therapy, which helps you reclaim your story and separate your identity from the trauma
Your counsellor will work with you to find the approach that fits.
Our Trauma Counsellors
Our counsellors are accredited professionals with specific training and experience in trauma-informed practice. When you contact Life Supports, we take the time to understand your situation and match you with someone who is genuinely right for what you are going through, not just the nearest available provider.
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Trauma & PTSD Counselling FAQS
There is no set time-frame for trauma recovery because each person is different, and their experience unique. For some, with therapy trauma from a single event may resolve in days to weeks, for others it can take months or years, especially people who’ve been exposed to repeated traumatic events.
Trauma recovery is all about making a person feel safe again, and with good therapy and support it is achievable – on any time scale.
Trauma experienced during childhood can carry through into adulthood, or sometimes reappear in unexpected and new ways. Sometimes, children who’ve experienced trauma grow up with a heightened stress response that is acutely sensitive to threat. This can make it harder to regulate emotions, and lead to a plethora of mental and physical health struggles, including anxiety and depression, PTSD, obesity, heart disease and more.
However, childhood trauma is not a life-sentence. Evidence-based therapy can help to ease the symptoms and often heal from childhood trauma so that it doesn’t define an adult’s life.
Intergenerational trauma refers to trauma experienced by a parent or grandparent or ancestor that may be passed down through families. This inheritance can be social, transferred through inherited patterns of abuse and mental ill-health, or it can be genetic; the scientific field of epigenetics has demonstrated that traumas experienced in life can alter gene expression in our offspring.
Intergenerational trauma can be extremely difficult to overcome, because it’s deeply rooted often from birth. However, recovery is possible, and with good mental health support you can break the cycle of inherited trauma and go on to have a fulfilling life and relationships.
Emotional trauma is an extraordinarily stressful and at times crippling experience, but it can be overcome. Trauma symptoms sometimes resolve themselves over time, but for other people counselling and support is necessary.
Healing from trauma involves many steps, and these can vary depending on the traumatic experience and your own personal psychology, but one of the first is identifying and accepting your feelings. Other steps include confronting unpleasant memories, expending the stressful energy that has built up over time, taking steps to learn to regulate your emotions better, and working on rebuilding your interpersonal relationships.
Trauma can be shattering for not only the experiencer, but their loved ones too. Because trauma can feel very isolating, some people withdraw. It’s important if someone you care about has experienced a trauma to be understanding and respectful of their space and their needs, and to acknowledge that they may not feel safe in intimacy at the moment. There are however a number of steps you can take to support them:
- Offer your support – make it known that you are there to support them in whatever way they need, whether it’s emotional support or practical support, like helping them with tasks
- Give them time and space – acknowledge that it may take a while for them to feel some semblance of ‘normality’, and that they may need a lot of space
- Let them talk about the trauma, but only if they are comfortable doing so – don’t try to force someone to open up if they’re not ready or willing
- Don’t judge them, and don’t use phrases like “look on the bright side” – just be there for them without trying to change their outlook or offer too much advice
- Include them in activities, even if they may not behave exactly like themselves – socialising and enjoying fun activities can be a core component of trauma recovery, but don’t try to force someone to do anything they’re not comfortable doing
- If they are suffering without improvement, gently encourage them to seek professional help, which can be a really important component of trauma recovery.
Testimonials
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