Complex Trauma Counselling

Person hiking on a stoney path in the mountains, symbolizing the recovery journey with complex trauma counselling.

Are you stuck between overwhelming emotions and feeling numb? Do you feel broken, as if nothing can help you get better? Do you feel disconnected from your body, or like you act as one person one day and someone else the next?

You feel fragmented — confident one day and powerless and helpless the other, like different parts of you are pulling in different directions. You may constantly please others while abandoning yourself.

Complex trauma isn’t a single overwhelming event. It was ongoing, often within the relationships you depended on for survival, shaping your nervous system and sense of self before you had the resources to process it. It can also be systemic: the ongoing weight of oppression that couldn’t be escaped.

If therapy has never quite reached the deeper healing, that makes sense. Complex trauma lives in the body, not just the thoughts. It takes more than talk to reach it.

I offer complex trauma counselling online, working with adults across Alberta and Western Canada, integrating EMDR, IFS-informed parts work, somatic approaches, and boundary work, adapted to your needs and your pace.

Curious if this fits? Book a free consultation.

Who I work with – And how I show up

I work with adults carrying complex trauma — chronic childhood conditions like abuse, neglect, or emotional unavailability, and the ongoing weight of systemic harm and marginalization. Some arrive with a diagnosis like complex PTSD,  Bipolar, BPD, or dissociative symptoms. Others never fit one cleanly. They have a suspicion that they carry it. You don’t need either to reach out.

I don’t apply a single model if you’re carrying complex trauma. That’s not aligned with best practice. We draw from different modalities to stabilize your system first, and find which combination works best for you. Memory processing with EMDR comes later in the process, since starting too quickly can dysregulate a system that hasn’t built the capacity for it yet.

Boundaries are part of this work, not an afterthought. Many people with complex trauma learned compassion without ever learning to respect themselves.

I bring more than professional expertise: Over 30 years of my own lived experience of trauma recovery, including childhood abuse and systemic trauma.


If you carry relational trauma as an adult, relational trauma counselling might be a better fit, since recovery often looks different in this case.

What becomes possible with complex trauma counselling

A self not organized around survival

Your sense of who you are can rebuild, not fitting into what society wants from you, but more fully yourself.

A caring adult, from the inside 

An internal presence that can hold space for every part of you, wounded or unwelcome elsewhere.

Boundaries you can hold

Not a technique, but a felt sense of where you end and someone else begins. Parts holding trauma responses around boundaries will soften with time.

Overwhelming emotions that become more manageable

With parts work and somatic practices, you’ll be able to understand your inner world and manage overwhelming emotions, shutdown, or other difficult patterns.

Memories that lose their charge

Through EMDR, parts work, and somatic approaches, what’s lived in the body for decades can finally integrate. This won’t be a quick fix for complex trauma. It’s a paced process that works with your body.

Some clients have told me they were finally able to heal after years of talk therapy, because they didn’t feel judged or treated as a pathology here. Healing complex trauma isn’t a quick fix — but it is possible.

Schedule your free consultation

Meet Natalie

I’m a trauma counsellor and complex trauma coach with over 15 years of experience supporting adults healing from complex trauma, childhood abuse, and relational trauma. My approach, the Integrative Trauma Recovery Model™, combines EMDR, IFS-informed parts work, somatic approaches, and boundary work, adapted to your history rather than a fixed protocol.

I can’t offer a “safe space,”  that’s not fully within anyone’s control, especially for clients carrying the weight of systemic harm. What I can offer is safer: grounded in dignity, honouring the systemic contexts that shape people’s lives, and accountable to anti-oppressive practices as an ongoing commitment, not a claim.

Complex trauma counselling is available for people in Alberta and Western Canada. If you live outside this area and want to work with me, feel free to reach out to explore options. I also offer income-based variable pricing.

Read my full bio
Natalie, a trauma focused practitioner offering relational trauma counselling online.

My integrative approach for healing complex trauma

Complex trauma counselling rooted in the Integrative Trauma Recovery Model™

Complex trauma is not one-size-fits-all, and no single modality is enough on its own. The Integrative Trauma Recovery Model™ brings together evidence-based modalities including EMDR for trauma recovery, IFS-informed parts work, somatic approaches, and boundary work, adapting them to your nervous system, your history, and your pace, never as a fixed protocol.

We build the process together, and it starts with our relationship. You are allowed, and welcomed, to have and communicate your boundaries. We usually start with getting to know your system and helping it stabilize. I provide psychoeducation about the nervous system and complex trauma, not to tell you how you feel, but to explore what resonates, and to understand that most of what you carry helped you survive, even if it feels unbearable at times.

Consent matters: if a part doesn’t want to do something, we respect its concern. From there, we move toward understanding it, find practices that help you stabilize, and start parts work. In the beginning, we look for small improvements, not rapid change. Pacing matters in this journey. We explore your concerns, and I’ll also bring my own observations, ideas, and concerns along the way. This isn’t me just trailing behind what you already know; it’s two people thinking about your healing together.

Here’s what I often work with my clients: many have parts that are scared to be in the body. We don’t force them to get there. We work to understand their fears. Some people have strong carry-on parts that want to push through and get it done. It’s a symptom of inner fragmentation that is often a sign of complex trauma. We explore what those parts are afraid of, and set gentle boundaries so the more vulnerable parts aren’t pushed past what they can handle. We also work with shame, and the parts that believe you can’t heal.

For complex trauma specifically, I believe the therapeutic relationship itself is part of what heals. So, I show up honestly, not from behind a professional persona. Our relationship matters to me. If parts of you don’t trust me, that makes sense. I don’t need them to change. I want to understand their concerns. And if we have a conflict, yes, this can happen in therapeutic relationships, as in any other; I stay present, hear your position, and respect it. I repair if I made a mistake. This relationship needs to be healthy, so it doesn’t replicate how you’ve been wounded before.

Recovery unfolds in overlapping phases, not rigid steps: building enough safety and capacity to tolerate emotion, processing what happened at a pace your system can sustain, and ongoing integration, shifts in identity, boundaries, and relationships that keep happening throughout, not just at the end.

My approach also integrates anti-oppressive practices, recognizing that for many people, complex trauma is developmental or systemic, the ongoing weight of oppression that couldn’t be escaped, not only what happened in a family. I hold myself accountable to this as an ongoing commitment. You can read my full Inclusive Trauma Recovery framework to see exactly how I approach this.

Your symptoms- dissociation, fragmentation, chronic dysregulation- are not signs that something is fundamentally wrong with you; they are adaptive responses that developed for a reason, and we work with them, not against them. Over time, clients often notice more internal stability, parts that used to take over becoming easier to work with, and memories that once felt overwhelming losing their charge. Healing here means recovering agency, rebuilding trust in yourself, and becoming more fully who you are.

If you’d like to understand more about how this model works and whether it might be the right fit for you, read: Trauma Counselling: How I Practice and What You Can Expect. You may also find IFS or EMDR for Complex Trauma: Why I Use Both and What Else Is Necessary useful.

A woman on her sofa in an online session for complex trauma counselling.

It’s your time to heal: Let’s begin

If this resonates, your next step is simple: a free consultation to see whether this approach feels right for you. We’ll map out gentle first steps together. No need to dive straight into the most painful memories. Book through Jane App or message me at nat@brighthorizontherapies.com.

Book online

Your complex trauma counselling questions answered

Trauma counselling isn’t one standardized approach, even though it’s sometimes marketed that way. Talk therapy and general counselling models weren’t built specifically to resolve the impact of complex trauma, so I’ve pursued additional training for complex trauma specifically, and my approach follows the three evidence-based stages of trauma recovery.

As I mentioned above, EMDR used too early, before there’s enough stabilization, can leave a complex trauma system more dysregulated rather than less. That’s why pacing and sequencing matter as much as which modality we use, and why I integrate parts work, somatic approaches, and boundary work alongside it rather than relying on EMDR alone.

No. Some of my clients have a diagnosis, others don’t. Some diagnoses add another layer of pain due to stigma. Complex trauma exists on a spectrum. Sometimes the symptoms fit the diagnostic criteria, sometimes they don’t. Many people feel invalidated if they carry complex trauma but don’t fit the diagnostic criteria. I want you to know that your experience is valid. I don’t diagnose people. In our work together, we focus on your symptoms and what you’re carrying.

PTSD usually doesn’t account for the relational wounding and enduring conditions of violence that are often at the root of complex trauma. Complex trauma is generally connected to a loss of sense of self and low self-esteem that need to be addressed in recovery, and it requires mindful pacing, since symptoms can get worse if the pacing is off. PTSD is often resolved with a single trauma-focused modality like EMDR, IFS, or somatic experiencing. For complex trauma, that’s usually not enough. A multimodal approach that draws from different modalities and addresses dissociation is what’s recommended, and a healthy therapeutic relationship is essential. It’s the container that makes this work safe.

Read more: What’s the difference between trauma and complex trauma?

Yes. Many adults with childhood trauma have no explicit memories. No clear story of what happened. What they have instead are body sensations, overwhelming emotions, and automatic reactions that arrive without context, often activated by a similar situation in the present. The younger you were when it happened, the less likely you are to have explicit memories, and that’s enough to begin.

Not all trauma is connected to violence, either. Some people carry deep attachment wounds from experiences like being separated from a caregiver as an infant, due to surgery, illness, or another necessary intervention. To a young child, that separation can feel like a threat to survival, even without any conscious memory of it in adulthood.

Trauma is often stored as fragments, an image, a physical sensation, a persistent feeling of unsafety, disconnected from the event. EMDR works directly with what the body and mind are holding. I often use it with parts that carry wounds in the present, without needing to revisit memories, which is often easier to stay with.

You also don’t need to share the details of what happened with me. For sensitive experiences — sexual abuse, rape, or anything that feels too painful or shameful to put into words — you can choose how much you disclose. Healing doesn’t require recounting it. It requires your body and mind to process what they’ve been carrying. Those are different things.

Read more: EMDR for childhood trauma.

I get where you’re coming from. I had different attempts before I found the right support myself. Talk therapy alone often isn’t enough for complex trauma: it tends to work with the rational, carry-on part of you, without reaching the emotional parts actually carrying the wound.

If therapy hasn’t worked before, that doesn’t mean you can’t heal. It may mean the approach wasn’t a good fit or that we first need to understand what happened in your past therapy to avoid repeating the past.

The Integrative Trauma Recovery Model™, my approach to trauma counselling, is built on my training, my professional experience, and my own recovery, and it’s helped many clients, though I can’t guarantee it will work for you. I can only invite you to stay skeptical and give it a try. I’m willing to answer your questions and be as transparent as I can.

Dissociation isn’t a barrier to working together. Yes, I work with people who have dissociative parts. Dissociation exists on a spectrum. Some degree is a natural part of life, while for others it can limit the capacity to participate fully in life. In the context of trauma, dissociation is an adaptive mechanism that helped you survive.

I work with it in different ways, but one path looks like this: reconnecting with your body isn’t always straightforward when dissociative parts are present, and that’s okay. We start by understanding your capacity to recognize when you’re dissociating, and finding practices to reconnect with your body while also identifying the parts that don’t want to be in it. I often work with clients toward being 1% or 5% more in their body, not all at once..

Yes. I work with LGBTQ2S+ clients, Black people, Indigenous people, people of colour, immigrants, and neurodivergent folks, including where complex trauma intersects with racism, discrimination, or other systemic harm. I am a non-binary immigrant in Canada, so I have lived experience with oppression. While I recognize that each experience of oppression is different, it gave me a sense of how often these experiences are excluded in the counselling field, which is often harmful for the client. I integrate anti-oppressive practices to mitigate that risk. Furthermore, I pay attention to decolonizing my approach to healing complex trauma.

Read more: Inclusive Trauma Recovery I LGBTQ2S+ Trauma Recovery

There’s no clear answer, and it would be unethical for me to promise one. It helps to separate relief from healing, since they’re not the same thing.

Many clients notice real relief within six to twelve months: less overwhelm, more capacity, a nervous system that isn’t in constant alarm. Healing, the deeper integration of what was fragmented, and a stable sense of self underneath it, usually takes longer. Most clients I’ve worked with are looking at two years or more for that kind of change, and some longer still, six years or more, especially when new losses, breakups, or other crises entered their lives along the way. That’s not a sign something’s wrong. It reflects how much your system had to build to survive what happened, and how much care it takes to integrate it.

Read more: Goals for trauma recovery.

If you’re curious to learn more about trauma recovery at your own pace, you’re welcome to explore my Trauma Recovery FAQs.