Complex Trauma Counselling

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

Are you caught between overwhelming emotions and feeling numb? Do you feel disconnected from your body, or as if you are one person one day and someone else the next?

You may feel fragmented—confident one day, then powerless or helpless the next—as if different parts of you are pulling in different directions. You may constantly please others while abandoning yourself, or feel broken and unsure whether anything can help.

I offer complex trauma counselling online for adults living with the layered effects of trauma. My approach, the Integrative Trauma Recovery Model™, integrates IFS-informed parts work, somatic and Polyvagal-informed approaches, EMDR, and anti-oppressive practices, adapted to your needs and goals.

Who I work with

I work with adults whose experiences involve layered and ongoing relational harm during childhood and adulthood, often alongside systemic harm.

If your difficulties are primarily connected to a toxic adult relationship that you have left, relational trauma counselling may be a better fit.

What you might notice

Complex trauma can affect your mind, body, emotional life, nervous system, sense of self, and relationships with yourself, others, and the world.

You may notice:

  • Swings between overwhelming emotion and numbness.
  • A persistent sense of danger or hypervigilance, even when you are physically safe.
  • Difficulty trusting yourself, other people, or your own boundaries.
  • A rational, capable part of you that functions well until emotions suddenly become overwhelming.
  • A relentless inner critic, self-blame, or a belief that everything is your fault.
  • Chronic pain, fatigue, or other physical symptoms that are difficult to explain.
  • Anxiety, depression, disordered eating, addictive behaviours, or more than one mental-health diagnosis.
  • Dissociation or difficulty staying connected to your body.

Meet Natalie

I’m a trauma counsellor and complex trauma coach with 15+ years supporting adults healing from complex trauma. I combine clinical depth with the embodied experience of recovery from complex trauma. My approach, the Integrative Trauma Recovery Model™, is built on the five principles: healing needs a healthy relationship, context matters, healing follows your pace, recovery isn’t a straight line, and recovery addresses the multidimensionality of trauma.

Complex trauma counselling is available for people in Alberta and Western Canada. If you live outside this area and want to work with me, please reach out. We can explore options. Income-based variable pricing is available.

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

My integrative approach for healing complex trauma

Complex trauma touches too many aspects — nervous system, emotional landscape, sense of self, relationships, the parts of you that had to adapt to survive — for any single method to reach all. My approach meets that complexity directly, combining what’s needed rather than picking one lane and hoping it’s enough.

Here are the five pillars of my approach:

Recovery is not a straight line

Healing complex trauma is more like peeling an onion, layer by layer. We start where you are and work towards your goals. In the journey, there might be setbacks: like you want to set a boundary and suddenly notice you go into fawn. That’s a signal that we need to look at these parts. Sometimes, we may get stuck. That’s usually a sign that parts are in conflict. We’ll dig deeper to explore these parts and negotiate with them so that you can move forward. Other times, you may notice that you fall back into patterns you have overcome – like your eating gets more disordered, or you shut down more often. We’ll attend to that and explore what activated it. It may feel like a setback, but it usually is not. Maybe there is more stress, maybe the specific context is new; it’s just something unknown we need to understand and integrate first.

Healing follows your pace

We build the process together, and it starts with our relationship. You are allowed—and welcomed—to have and communicate your fears, concerns, and inner experience. We usually start with getting to know your system and helping it stabilize.

I provide psycho-education about the nervous system and complex trauma, not to tell you how you feel, but to explore what resonates. Together, we will understand that what you carry helped you survive, even if it feels unbearable or stigmatized at times.

Then we’ll collaborate to find practices and tools to stabilize your system. We look for small improvements, not rapid changes. Somatic practices are often not an all-or-nothing approach. Many clients have parts that are scared to be in the body. We don’t force them to get there. We try to understand their fears and explore how we can increase safety. If parts dissociate, we explore what activated them and work with that. Progress can be 5%, not zero to 100%. Sometimes progress is simply noticing that you’ve dissociated.

We also explore your concerns and questions. Healing often means jumping into the unknown. It’s natural to have questions, and I’ll answer them. 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.

Recovery addresses the multidimensionality of trauma

Complex trauma affects your body, mind, nervous system, emotions, sense of self, and your relationships. For many people, these symptoms are caused by inner fragmentation: an adaptive pattern when our brain split into apparently normal parts and emotional parts that are often hidden behind a wall. These are adaptive responses that allowed you to survive. We work with them, not against them.

These layered and connected symptoms often don’t heal by talking about them. It’s about working with them. Inner fragmentation is often better addressed with somatic parts work; nervous system regulation with a combination of skill building, somatic practices, parts work, and grounding. Building boundaries is essential throughout our collaboration. Boundaries and a sense of self develop hand-in-hand.

We look for gradual improvement, not quick fixes. EMDR can be complicated when it comes to complex trauma. If you had past bad experiences with it, we will explore them to learn from them. I’ll give you the options and be transparent about the risks and benefits so you can make an informed choice. Read more: IFS or EMDR for complex trauma.

Context matters

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.  I hold myself accountable to this. You can read my full Inclusive Trauma Recovery framework to see exactly how I approach this.

I’ll also recognize and acknowledge abusive or toxic relationship dynamics. Complex trauma is often relational, though triggers are rarely only about the past. It’s about building the skill to discern healthy from toxic relationship dynamics, learning to set healthier boundaries, becoming assertive—and sometimes learning to walk away if the relationship is harmful for you. I won’t tell you what to do, but we’ll collaborate so that you can make the choice that’s best for you.

Healing needs a healthy relationship

For complex trauma specifically, I believe the therapeutic relationship itself is part of what heals. So, I show up honestly, not from behind a blank slate. Our relationship matters to me. Some of my clients have experienced harm by past therapists. I won’t erase the harm, but I hope we can work through it in our collaboration.  If parts of you don’t trust me, that makes sense. I don’t need them to change. My hope is that you learn to trust yourself. I want to understand your concerns.

And if we have a conflict, I stay present, hear your position, and respect it. If you communicate a boundary, I respect this. I repair if I made a mistake. I get that our relationship isn’t neutral if we have a difference in privilege. I intend to work consciously with my privilege. I am committed to creating a healthy relationship with you, so it doesn’t replicate how you’ve been wounded before.

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.

If this resonates with you, we can start small. Your next step is a free consultation to see whether my approach feels right for you.

Book your free consultation

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 parts work, EMDR 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.

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 your free consultation

Your complex trauma counselling questions answered

Trauma usually doesn’t account for the relational wounding and enduring conditions of violence that are often at the root of complex trauma. Though not all relational trauma is complex. What matters is the impact it had on you, the age it happened, and whether or not you had a healthy enough outer resource. 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.

Single-incident trauma 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. Read more: CBT for childhood trauma.

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.

My approach 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. It also 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.

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.

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. Every bit of relief is real healing — just not all of it.

Many clients notice real relief within six to twelve months: less overwhelm, more capacity, a nervous system that isn’t in constant alarm, more access to the adult self and more connection with parts. Integrating what was fragmented and creating 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, especially if new losses, breakups, trauma or other challenges 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.