The American Psychological Association defines trauma as any disturbing experience that results in significant fear, helplessness, dissociation, confusion, or other disruptive feelings intense enough to have a long-lasting negative effect on a person's attitudes, behavior, and other aspects of functioning. When someone has a traumatic experience, the memory is often paired with a physiological state of hyper-arousal, more commonly known as fight-or-flight. As human beings, we are primed to remember scary or adverse events.

When we experience a traumatic event, or prolonged exposure to adversity, paired with an intense state of physiological hyperarousal, our ability to trust in others and the world shifts. Trauma often challenges an individual's view of the world as a just, safe, and predictable place.

Being a trauma informed therapist means learning to cultivate safety. Safety in the physical space, safety within the co-creation of a container, and safety within the client therapist relationship. Being a trauma informed therapist means learning to create safety and grounding within ourselves so that we can show up as a solid object. Understanding ourselves through our own work and an ongoing commitment to self-care is essential. From this place we can offer an anchor for co-regulation, a place of relational tether from which the client can explore and sometimes re-live painful material.

Beyond safety, trauma informed care is grounded in protocol. At Presence of Mind Therapy we start with informed consent to ensure that the client understand the therapeutic process. We provide psycho-education and nervous system regulation skills as a foundation for deeper trauma work. We want folks to be internally and externally resourced to be able to tolerate trauma processing. Once we are certain that clients are supported we facilitate processing over many sessions. Often this processing is non-linear, as is the nature of trauma. Overtime clients come to understand their trauma differently. Clients come into a new relationship with their trauma and at some point perhaps find new meaning and even purpose. As always, we meet our clients with acceptance and compassion, modeling mindfulness and self-care along the way.