Abuse & Trauma Counselling
When you experience abuse and trauma you can begin to integrate the resulting pain as part of who you are. Begin to believe that life will always be this way or that you don’t deserve to live without the distress and pain you’ve known for so long.
If you’ve lived through, or are living through abuse and trauma, it is common to either struggle with intense emotions or to shut off your emotions as a way to cope. You may even find yourself wavering between emotions flooding you, leaving you with a sense of being out of control and helpless or feeling so scared that your emotions might overtake you that you shut them out entirely and feel numb. As much as being numb may begin as relief, over time, that state is painful too. You might feel powerless next to it all. You might find yourself doing, and doing, and doing…anything to keep you busy enough not to have feel because when you slow down, there they are. This creates difficulty in maintaining relationship with yourself and often difficulty in relationships with others. You may find it difficult to trust other people, or that you jump in and trust wholeheartedly and then end up betrayed and hurt. Again, you may find yourself wavering between these two extremes.
Regardless of how unthinkable your experiences have been, we wish to support you. It is a common misunderstanding of trauma counselling that you have to jump right into your deepest, darkest secrets right out of the gate. You don’t. You may think, there is no way I want to talk about what’s happened to me. You don’t have to. You may choose to, at a time when you feel ready, and only at that time. You may choose never to share these things. It is entirely up to you.
At Lavender Counselling, we wish to support to you to find your sense of self again. We wish to support you to explore and process the chaotic responses and the pain, so they do not define you and your life. By creating a warm, non judgmental and safe environment in the counselling room, we help you develop a felt sense for what it can be like to experience safe and healthy relationships in your daily life. Imagine feeling restored hope that you might be able to know internal calm and to experience relationships that are safe and supportive.