Trauma Informed Counseling
What is trauma-informed counseling?
Trauma-informed counseling is an underlying approach, philosophy, of how to engage in counseling itself. A trauma-informed counselor isn’t just looking at behaviors, experiences, emotions in the present; they’re seeing humans and their lives through the lens of what they may have experienced in the past and creating a safe counseling experience. This does not mean some kind of secretive, psychoanalytic analysis - it’s a shared experience of curiosity. When we’re sitting in a trauma-informed seat we’re asking questions like:
“What happened?” as opposed to “What’s wrong with you?”
“Where might that come from?” as opposed to “How come you can’t stop doing x?”
“How has that served or protected you?” as opposed to “Why do you do y?”
Principles of Trauma-informed Counseling
Safety
Trustworthiness & Transparency
Peer Support
Collaboration & Mutuality
Empowerment & Choice
Cultural, Historical, & Gender Issues
Being trauma-informed means including the body in every counseling session
Trauma isn’t stored in a neat, tidy A-B path in our mind. Bringing the body into counseling is often called a “bottom-up” approach, which means both being neck-down (as opposed to neck-up) and attending to the more primal, less conscious parts of our brain. It includes interpersonal neurobiology and physiology.
Bottom-up counseling brings in the skills that you might have been missing in therapy. The skills and experience of:
“This is what my body is communicating to me”
“This is what my body needs”
“Here’s how I can regulate and respond to my body right now”
If you’ve felt overwhelmed in therapy before, or felt more triggered/upset during and after a counseling session than when you entered, it might mean you’ll benefit from this kind of approach that centers your body and the felt experience security. When your body is calm and present you are more able to make new connections, learn new things, and engage with the world around you. A safe, regulated body is the best way we can encourage lasting counseling progress.
Being trauma-informed requires specific, appropriate training
Being a trauma-informed provider is a commitment to the highest quality care for all clients. It includes ongoing continuing education and training in the most modern, evidenced-based trauma informed treatment.