This comprehensive guide serves as your starting point for understanding trauma and the healing process. While we’ll cover the essential concepts you need to know—from how trauma affects your nervous system to evidence-based recovery approaches—each section connects to more detailed resources where you can dive deeper into specific topics that resonate with your journey.
Whether you’re just beginning to understand your experiences or looking to explore specific healing modalities, this article will help you navigate the landscape of healing trauma and direct you toward the specialized guidance that fits your needs.
Trauma can feel overwhelming, isolating, and confusing. If you’ve experienced it, you may wonder whether recovery is truly possible—or if the symptoms and struggles you face will define your life forever.
I want you to know: healing trauma is possible even if parts of you can’t believe this right now. Recovery is not about simply “coping” – it’s about reclaiming your life and integrating what has happened to you.
Throughout my journey and as a trauma counsellor and trauma-informed coach, I’ve seen the power of evidence-based trauma counselling, including approaches like EMDR and parts work therapy, in supporting real healing. In this guide, I’ll walk you through what trauma recovery can look like and how you can begin your path toward healing.
Understanding trauma and its impact
So what exactly is trauma? Let me give you a clear, professional definition that strips away the confusion and stigma:
Trauma is an experience that overwhelms our central nervous system and blocks our capacity to integrate the experience emotionally.
Trauma can be related to:
- A single event
- A series of events
- Enduring conditions in environments
Events vs. enduring conditions
Traumatic events are incidents that overwhelm your system, such as accidents, natural disasters, or assaults.
Enduring conditions are ongoing, stressful environments—like childhood abuse, neglect, abusive relationships, or systemic discrimination—that continuously impact your nervous system.
The memory factor: Explicit vs. implicit
Many people don’t realize trauma can live in memory in different ways:
Explicit memories are what most people think of as “normal” memories—we can recall what happened, remember the event, and put words to the experience. When we have explicit memories of trauma, it’s usually easier to understand that we’ve experienced something traumatic.
Implicit memories are felt only as sensory elements and emotions without words. We experience bodily and emotional sensations but don’t have memories connected to them. These sensations feel disconnected from any specific event, making it much harder to make sense of our experience. You can identify implicit memories if you notice a very intense emotional response that may not fully align with the present moment. Implicit memories are often more confusing and can make connecting present-day reactions to past experiences challenging.
Both explicit and implicit memories can be healed. Healing trauma isn’t about whether you remember everything—it’s about processing and integrating experiences safely.
What makes something traumatic?
Here’s a critical point: the event or environment itself doesn’t determine whether something is traumatic—it’s about how your body, mind, and nervous system respond, and the meaning you assign to the experience. Two people could go through the same event and have very different reactions. Factors such as personal resilience, inner resources, and the presence of supportive relationships all shape how an overwhelming event or circumstance impacts us.
For example, children typically don’t yet have the emotional or cognitive resources to process and integrate traumatic experiences, which makes it more likely that they will store these memories behind a protective wall. Adults, on the other hand, may have developed greater emotional capacity, enabling them to process difficult experiences more independently.
The way supportive people respond—such as a parent or caregiver addressing what happened—can make a significant difference in this process, influencing both how the trauma is experienced and how the individual eventually heals.
The key takeaway? Trauma is relative. What is traumatic for one person may not be for another. Your nervous system, inner resources, and support systems shape your response.
Categories of trauma
Trauma is diverse, and the pathway to healing depends on your unique experiences. Some categories include:
Shock trauma occurs if a person has a shock response to an event such as accidents, natural disasters, assaults or the unexpected death of a loved one. Apart from medical procedure, shock trauma is often easily to identify.
Developmental trauma, also known as adverse childhood experiences, happens during childhood and adolescence, impacting the development of our personality and nervous system. Examples that may cause childhood trauma include abuse, neglect, a caregiver using substances, or witnessing violence.
Relationship trauma occurs within interpersonal connections. It is especially complicated if it happens with people in positions of trust, such as parents, caregivers, teachers, counsellors or partners who are supposed to be a safe place. Examples are family or relationship violence or bullying, If relational trauma is repeated, ongoing and varied it can result in complex trauma. Complex trauma can affect multiple areas of functioning, including emotional regulation, sense of self, and ability to form relationships
Systemic or structural violence can cause systemic trauma. Systemic violence is connected with social structures where certain groups have power over other groups and result in mass losses, deconstruction of cultures, and ongoing institutionalized oppression. For example, in Canada, settlers have power over Indigenous peoples. Other examples include white people having power over black people or cis people having power over trans people, straight people over gay, pansexual or bisexual people and able-bodied people over people living with disabilities.Systemic violence often includes relational trauma, as discrimination and oppression affect how people are treated in interpersonal relationships and can disrupt trust in institutions and authority figures.
Sustained community-based traumatic stress refers to repeated experiences of traumatic events in a community setting. It often connects with complex layers of relational trauma because existing relationships are affected by the experience. Examples are multiple suicides in a community, civil war, war between cultures or religion.
Intergenerational or historic trauma occurs when systemic violence, oppression, or collective traumatic experiences create lasting wounds that persist across generations, affecting current family and community members through damaged relationships, disrupted cultural teachings, and traumatic associations with significant events. These effects can be transmitted through epigenetic mechanisms, where behavioral and emotional experiences become molecularly attached to DNA and passed down as inherited predispositions toward either vulnerability or resilience in areas like anxiety, depression, or coping strategies. When new traumatic experiences occur, they build upon this existing foundation of historical trauma, potentially making affected families and communities more susceptible to harm or causing them to respond differently to current threats.
Why does it matter to understand different types of trauma? It can help you understand what has happened to you. I am aware that it can be overwhelming to read these category because they often have complex interdependences. For example, I experienced development trauma, systemic trauma and historical trauma. The key is to take what resonates with you now and have curiosity about the story of your family and your community. You will expand your awareness and understanding with time. Additionally your healing approach may differ depending on your trauma type. For example, EMDR may be highly effective for accidents, while relational or developmental trauma often benefits from a more integrative trauma counselling approach.
How trauma shows up in your mind and body
Most of the clients I work with can’t remember what happened to them, but they have signs of trauma. That’s actually very common for childhood trauma or complex trauma. Therefore, it’s often easier to identify trauma through the effects it has on us in the present than through memories. Symptoms are not “defects” but adaptive coping strategies your body and mind developed to survive. While signs of trauma may vary depending on what type of trauma you experienced, common symptoms of trauma include:
- Emotional: depression, anxiety, anger, guilt, shame, numbness, overwhelming emotions, low self-esteem
- Physiological: insomnia, chronic pain, dysregulated nervous system, hyperarousal or hypoarousal
- Behavioural: self-injury, addictive behaviours, disordered eating
- Cognitive: difficulty concentrating, intrusive thoughts, thoughts of suicide, dissociation
- Flashback or nightmares
Neuroscience shows us that trauma changes neural pathways, affecting memory, emotion regulation, and stress responses.
The good news? Neuroplasticity allows our brain to develop new pathways. Recovery and new neural connections are possible, meaning healing isn’t just coping—it’s rewiring your body and mind for safety and growth.
Healing trauma: Steps to reclaim your life
Recovery is highly individual, but some core principles apply across different journeys for healing trauma.
Restoring safety and stability
Healing trauma doesn’t mean that we jump into our most painful stories first. The first step is creating physical, emotional, and psychological safety. Trauma also often disrupts our sense of inner safety, so it’s about restoring inner safety. This really depends on your individual experience and context, but it usually involves:
- Understanding the impact of trauma on your nervous system through concepts like the window of tolerance (your optimal zone for processing emotions) and Polyvagal theory (how your nervous system responds to safety and threat)
- Reconnecting with your body: this can happen with yoga, mindfulness or somatic practices
- Containing painful memories
- Developing self-soothing and grounding strategies to widen your window of tolerance
- Identifying triggers and learning to manage them
In the podcast episode “Five Effective Trauma Counselling Techniques That Actually Help,” I explore different tools that can support your trauma recovery journey.
Emotional integration
When you feel confident that you have the emotional capacity to be with complex emotions (a skill that is built in step 1), you can move to the next stage and process traumatic experiences. Emotional integration means processing bodily sensations and emotions that weren’t processed during the traumatic experience. Recovery means learning to experience, express, and regulate emotions without being overwhelmed by them, so the integration needs to be done in a safe way. Please note that processing is uncomfortable because it brings up complex emotions. However, it is less uncomfortable than living with symptoms of unresolved trauma. Without processing, it’s unlikely to improve.
Emotional integration isn’t always a straightforward process. It is often an iterative process with step 1, which means you integrate a little piece and then go back to stabilization.
Empowerment and agency
Trauma often disrupts our sense of control. Healing trauma focuses on empowering you and giving you more agency. This includes:
- Recognizing and asserting needs
- Setting healthy boundaries
- Making choices that reflect your values
Since our imagination is a powerful healing agent, it’s often used throughout trauma recovery.
If you want more information about goals for trauma recovery depending on what has happened to you, please check out my episode “Smart Goals for Trauma Recovery. ”
Evidence-based trauma counselling
If you have experienced trauma, talk therapy is often not enough to integrate trauma. One of the most fitting support options is trauma counselling, an evidence-based, specialized approach that helps individuals process and integrate traumatic experiences safely. Trauma counselling is a holistic process that focuses on trauma recovery—it supports real nervous system healing, emotional integration, and personal empowerment. The long-term outcome is to transcend the traumatic experiences.
Overall, trauma counselling is designed to provide a safe enough space to process trauma. Its focus is to reduce the risk of retraumatization (which is quite rare and can happen in or outside of therapy as long as there is unresolved trauma), although this doesn’t mean that you won’t encounter triggers or feel uncomfortable. Both elements may show up throughout the process. You can learn more about retraumatization, new trauma and the difference to triggers in the article “What is retraumatization.“
Trauma recovery requires a holistic approach that integrates body, mind and emotions. Trauma counselling approaches should be integrated into a trauma-informed framework. This framework follows principles that empower the healing process. You can learn more in the article “Trauma-informed care: Why it matters.”
Some of the evidence-based approaches used in trauma counselling include:
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
EMDR helps the brain reprocess traumatic memories so they no longer trigger overwhelming emotional or physiological responses. While EMDR is very effective for integrating traumatic experiences, it needs a preparation phase so that you can stay within your window of tolerance while working with traumatic experiences. Therefore, it’s often useful to use an integrative approach and not use EMDR as the only method.
Parts Work Therapy
There are many different approaches available when it comes to parts work therapy, whether it’s Internal Family Systems, inner child work, or Janina Fisher’s approach to trauma treatment. I find parts work especially useful for working with childhood trauma and relational trauma. It allows us to connect with disconnected parts of us and create more gentleness in recovery. In parts work therapy, we see emotions, beliefs, and responses as parts of you and not all of you. Since trauma can lead to inner fragmentation (a concept called structural dissociation), it’s a valuable method to work with our inner relationships with our parts.
Somatic approaches
These body-based therapies, including somatic experiencing and sensorimotor psychotherapy, work directly with how trauma is stored in the nervous system and body. Since trauma often lives below the level of conscious thought, somatic work can access and release what talk therapy alone might miss.
In my own recovery, I used different approaches that focused on integrating the body, mind, and emotions. As a trauma counsellor, I also use an integrative approach that draws from all three modalities since it is best practice for healing complex trauma.
The key is finding an approach that meets you where you are in your recovery. If someone moves too quickly into memory processing, symptoms might temporarily intensify – but this doesn’t mean healing isn’t possible. It simply indicates the need for more stabilization work first. A skilled trauma counsellor can help pace your recovery appropriately. Explore my trauma counselling services to build an individualized healing plan here.
Evidence shows that these approaches can significantly reduce trauma symptoms, improve emotion regulation, and help people move from survival to thriving. The best practice for trauma counselling is to integrate different modalities to attend to your specific needs. Integrating trauma counselling with healthy relationships and self-guided practices provides a robust foundation for recovery.
Finding the right trauma counsellor is crucial for this process. In my podcast episode ‘How to Find a Trauma Counsellor,‘ I walk you through what to look for and the important questions to ask.
Connection and support
Healing doesn’t happen in isolation. Supportive relationships, whether with friends, family, or professionals, are critical. Neuroscience confirms that co-regulation (how our nervous system interacts with others) plays a central role in healing. Safe, attuned relationships help regulate our nervous system and foster resilience.
It can also be useful to support healing trauma to distance yourself from toxic relationships in order to give you some space of healing. The decision about whether or not you want cut ties with people with toxic behaviours is completely up to you.
What does healing trauma mean?
Recovery is a journey towards wholeness and reclaiming our true sense of self. Unprocessed emotions that were stuck in our bodies are processed and released. Integrating the traumatic experiences changes you and transforms you. After trauma happened to us, we can’t go back to who we were but we can gain new wisdom and growth. While we can’t change the facts of what has happened to us, we can process the emotions and reconnect with the parts of us that were lost in the trauma. This way the traumatic experience fades into the past and loses its grip over you.
The biological reality
I want to acknowledge that we can only heal the psychological aspects of trauma. For example, if you experience anxiety, we can work with the components tied to your traumatic experiences. However, if anxiety stems from a biological imbalance, healing trauma alone may not resolve it completely. The challenge is that it’s often impossible to predict this distinction when beginning your healing journey—which is why an integrative approach with qualified professionals is so valuable.
What healing makes possible
That said, the transformation can be profound when trauma healing is successful. While healing trauma takes commitment and effort, the outcome allows you to experience:
Emotional wisdom – not just feeling emotions, but understanding what they’re telling you
Empowered living – making choices from strength and integration rather than survival patterns
Clear perception – no longer minimizing, denying, or making excuses for unhealthy dynamics
Authentic relationships – being able to see and respond to people’s actual behaviour, not who you hope they could be
Self-care is essential – even if you are healed
I want to be clear about something that’s often misunderstood: trauma recovery has genuine completion points. When traumatic memories are fully processed and integrated, they lose their emotional charge and no longer drive your responses. This is real healing, not just better coping.
However, recovery changes you fundamentally. You can’t go back to who you were before—and you wouldn’t want to. You now have awareness, boundaries, and tools you didn’t have before. You’re connected with your inner wisdom. Like anyone maintaining their physical health, you’ll need to continue nurturing your psychological well-being through self-care practices.
This doesn’t mean you’re ‘always recovering.’ It means you’re a human being who, like everyone else, needs to maintain their mental health. If anyone—trauma survivor or not—completely abandons all self-care and healthy practices, they would struggle.
Recovery isn’t about managing trauma forever—it’s about processing and integrating it completely. While life will continue to bring challenges, losses, and stressors, these are normal human experiences, not trauma responses. The difference is you’ll now have the tools and self-awareness to navigate them from a place of wholeness rather than woundedness.
My personal journey of healing trauma
On a personal note, my own journey began with developmental and relationship trauma. As a young adult, I struggled with symptoms like guilt, shame, and dysregulation. Over time, with supportive professionals and self-guided exploration, I learned tools for grounding, parts work, and emotional regulation. Ultimately, I was able to heal trauma and the painful memories of the past faded away in the distance.
This journey transformed not only my personal life but also my professional path—I now use the modalities and insights I gained to support others in trauma recovery. One thing I want you to remember is that recovery is possible, even when the path feels like a jump into the unknown.
Takeaways: Hope through science and practice
Trauma does not define you. While it affects your body, mind, and emotions, you are not your trauma. Symptoms are adaptive strategies that helped you survive—they’re evidence of your resilience, not your brokenness.
Healing trauma is possible. Recovery isn’t about learning to cope forever—it’s about processing and integrating traumatic experiences completely. When memories are fully integrated, they lose their emotional charge and no longer drive your responses.
Healing trauma transforms you. Recovery changes you fundamentally, connecting you with wisdom, boundaries, and authentic self-awareness you didn’t have before. You can’t go back to who you were, and you wouldn’t want to.
Professional support accelerates healing. Evidence-based trauma counseling—including EMDR, parts work, and somatic approaches—provides specialized tools that talk therapy alone often cannot. An integrative approach tailored to your specific trauma type typically works best.
Recovery has completion points, but life requires ongoing care. Once trauma is integrated, you’re not “always recovering”—you’re a whole person who, like everyone else, needs to maintain psychological well-being through self-care practices.
You’ll navigate life’s challenges from wholeness, not woundedness. While life will continue to bring stress, loss, and difficulties, these become normal human experiences rather than trauma responses. The difference is having tools and self-awareness to meet them from a place of strength.
Healing trauma is more than coping—it’s reclaiming your life, agency, and authentic self. You are not alone in this journey, and recovery is possible with patience, persistence, and the right support.
Sources
Most formal education in counselling and psychology offers little in-depth training on trauma recovery. Trauma counselling skills are typically developed through additional professional trainings in evidence-based approaches such as EMDR, parts work, and somatic therapies. The following resources informed this article:
Fisher, J. (2023). Janina Fisher’s Trauma treatment certification training (CCTP): The latest proven techniques to resolve deeply held trauma [Online professional training]. PESI
Haines, S. (2022). Safety, belonging, and dignity: Using the generative power of somatics to heal individual and systemic trauma. [Online professional training]. Academy of Therapy Wisdom
Davis, E., & Marchand, J. (2021). Attachment and dissociation assessment and treatment [Online professional training]. R. Cassidey Seminars
Greenwald, R. (2020). EMDR basic training, approved by the EMDR International Association (EMDRIA). [Online professional training]. Trauma Institute & Child Trauma Institute
Enns, V. (2020). Trauma – Strategies for resolving the impact of post-traumatic stress. [Online professional training]. Crisis and Trauma Resource Institute.
Vancouver College of Counsellor Training. (2016). Sexual Abuse Counselling Skills [In-person professional training]. Vancouver, BC, Canada.
