A Soft Space to Land: Exploring Compassionate Trauma Therapy
Sometimes, the things we’ve lived through don’t stay tucked away in the past. They can show up in quiet, unexpected ways. Perhaps it shows up as a heart that races without a clear reason, a tendency to overthink every small interaction, or just a lingering sense that it’s not quite safe to fully let your guard down.
If you’ve found yourself searching for support, maybe it’s because you’ve noticed that your body is holding a story your words can’t quite finish. You might be looking for a place where you don’t have to "perform" healing, but where you can slowly begin to understand why your system has stayed in survival mode for so long.
Woven Wellness’s approach to trauma therapy and counseling is seen as a gentle unfolding. A way to look at the “what” and "how" of your life with curiosity rather than judgment and shame.
A Gentle Approach: Considering Types of Therapy for Trauma
It’s quite common to reach a point where talking about what happened doesn't feel like enough anymore. In some cases, it may even be re-traumatizing. You might feel like you understand your history intellectually, but your nervous system hasn't quite received the memo that you are safe now.\
In our work together, we explore ways that speak to the language of the body, helping those two systems finally find a way to communicate.
A Way to Soften the Past (EMDR)
When we think about trauma counseling, EMDR is a modality that offers a way to "take the edge off" of memories that feel a bit too sharp or a bit too present. It’s a process of helping the brain gently file things away, so those moments can start to feel like part of your history rather than a constant interruption to your today.
Getting to Know Your Internal World (IFS)
Sometimes in trauma work, it can be helpful to break things down into parts, internal parts. Perhaps you’ve noticed that part of you wants to be open and free, while another part feels a deep need to stay guarded and small. In IFS, we hold space for each facet of you. We get curious about how these parts have tried to protect you through the years, and we wonder what it might feel like to lead from your true Self.
Learning the Language of your Body
To be perfectly honest, you can't do trauma work without focusing on the nervous system. Working with somatics might look like noticing how you feel sitting in your chair, or like noticing where you feel tension when you speak to a particular emotion. Together, we'll build skills at a pace that feels right for you. Through this process, you'll learn to support your body into new paths of peace and rest.
An Invitation to Breathe Again
Trauma counseling isn't about "fixing" a version of yourself that you think is broken. Instead, it’s an invitation to consider that your symptoms (anxiety, perfectionism, avoidance, people-pleasing, numbing) might actually be brilliant survival strategies that your body has used to keep you safe.
Trauma work may explore the following:
The "Why" Behind the Protection: Looking at your history with kindness rather than shame.
A New Kind of Safety: Helping your body recognise that it’s okay to put the armour down.
A Path Back to You: Remembering who you are beneath the weight of what you’ve survived.
Beginning the Journey Together
Whether you are seeking trauma counseling in Birmingham, Mobile, or online in your Alabama home, I'd be honoured to meet you and your story where you're at. I'd love to walk this road alongside you. Together, we can begin making more sense of your tapestry threads. We can move at your pace, acknowledging the courage it takes to even begin looking at these strands of your story.