There's a gap between knowing you're safe and actually feeling safe. Your body remembers what happened—sometimes through flashbacks and panic, sometimes as a persistent sense that something's fundamentally wrong with you, constantly bracing for the next crisis, or finding that closeness feels like danger. Talk therapy can help you understand your trauma, but healing requires working with where it lives: in your body and nervous system.

Where trauma lives in your body

Trauma fundamentally reshapes the nervous system in ways that cognitive understanding alone cannot resolve. Research shows that traumatic experiences are encoded in implicit, procedural memory networks that operate entirely outside conscious awareness. Trauma lives in the brainstem, limbic system, and autonomic nervous system—parts of your brain and body that don't respond to rational thought or understanding.

This explains why you can know intellectually that you're safe now, yet your body still responds as if the danger never ended. It's why insight and understanding, while valuable, often aren't enough to create lasting change. The body bears what the mind cannot fully process.

Understanding this distinction between where we process thoughts and where we hold trauma helps explain why body-centred approaches are essential, not optional, for complete healing.

Two types of trauma

Trauma can result from a single overwhelming event or from prolonged, repeated experiences:

Single-event trauma involves a specific traumatic incident—an accident, assault, natural disaster, or acute medical emergency. This type often creates clearer PTSD symptoms: flashbacks to the event, nightmares, hypervigilance related to specific reminders or triggers.

Many people carry both: developmental trauma layered with specific traumatic events, or single events that echo earlier wounds. Trauma rarely exists in isolation. Whether your experiences were singular or ongoing, whether they show up obviously or subtly, body-centred therapy can address them at their source.

A somatic approach to healing trauma

According to the Somatic Experiencing® model, trauma represents incomplete defensive responses that become frozen—held in the nervous system, still active, still waiting to complete. When threat happens, your body instinctively prepares to fight, flee, or freeze. But sometimes those responses can't be expressed—you couldn't fight back, couldn't escape, or had to shut down to survive. The activation energy from those interrupted defensive impulses remains in your nervous system, creating the persistent symptoms we recognize as trauma.

I use Somatic Experiencing® to help your body complete what got interrupted. This means working with sensations, tracking what happens in your body moment to moment, and supporting your nervous system to finish the protective responses it began. We build your capacity for regulation gradually, expanding your window of tolerance—the range where you can experience sensations and emotions without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down.

In complex trauma, these defensive responses may be deeply buried or less obvious than in single-event trauma. They might show up as numbness, a sense of being disconnected from your body, or automatic patterns in relationships. But they're still there, still shaping how you experience safety, connection, and yourself. We work gently to access and complete them, always at a pace that feels manageable.

What this looks like in practice

We talk, but we're also tracking what happens in your body as we talk. You might notice tightness in your chest when discussing certain topics, warmth spreading through your arms, heaviness settling in your belly, a subtle impulse to pull back or push forward. We work with these sensations and impulses as they arise, following your body's own wisdom about what needs attention.

This process is collaborative—we discover together what your nervous system needs. I help you notice what's happening in your body while maintaining a sense of safety and groundedness. We move at a pace that works for you, building resources and establishing safety before addressing the experiences that carry the most charge. The work is titrated, not overwhelming.

Sessions may include optional touch work or table work when appropriate, always with your consent and completely your choice. Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy can also complement this work beautifully for some people.

What becomes possible

Through body-centred trauma work, your nervous system can learn—not just intellectually but in felt experience—that you're actually safe now. Activation that used to feel permanent begins to settle. You can be present in your body instead of dissociated, numb, or constantly braced for threat.

Complex or developmental trauma emerges from prolonged experiences, particularly in childhood—abuse, neglect, chronic instability, or growing up with caregivers unable to provide consistent safety. This type often shows up more subtly in adult life: persistent relationship patterns, difficulty regulating emotions, negative beliefs about yourself, a pervasive sense that you're not fundamentally safe in the world. Your nervous system learned early that danger could come at any time, and that learning still shapes how you experience connection, safety, and yourself.

Relationships become less threatening as your nervous system stops automatically reading danger in closeness or vulnerability. Old patterns lose their grip—you discover you have more choice in how you respond rather than reacting from survival programming. Trauma becomes integrated history, something that happened to you, rather than something still controlling your present moment.

For those healing from developmental trauma, this work offers something profound: discovering how you can feel without the constant hum of survival strategies that shaped your entire life. Finding that underneath all the adaptations, you're fundamentally okay.

I work with people throughout Nelson, Castlegar, Trail, Kaslo, and the Kootenays, as well as offering online sessions. This work takes time, but these changes are possible.

Is this work right for you?

This approach may help if:

You've experienced a specific traumatic event and want to work with how it's stored in your body, not just your memories of it
You're recognizing patterns from childhood trauma or ongoing relational trauma and ready to address their roots
You've done traditional talk therapy—it helped you understand what happened and why, but you're ready to work with how trauma lives in your body
You experience trauma responses, whether obvious flashbacks and panic or more subtle signs like constant bracing, relationship difficulties, or feeling fundamentally unsafe
You're open to body-centred approaches and working with sensations rather than only talking about your experiences
You're curious about Somatic Experiencing® or other somatic modalities for trauma healing

You might also find it helpful to explore Attachment & Relationship Patterns —especially if your trauma involved early relationships or you notice patterns repeating in your adult relationships. Or learn more about Emotional Regulation and building capacity for difficult emotions.

Ready to explore whether this approach is a good fit?

Most extended health plans cover counselling sessions through my RCC (Registered Clinical Counsellor) designation, making this work accessible.

Book your free consultation to discuss your specific situation and whether body-centred trauma therapy might help. You can also learn more about my counselling approach to get a fuller sense of how I work.

Trauma counselling in Nelson, BC