Services
Trauma Therapy & Counselling in Narre Warren
Feel Safe Again
Trauma doesn't always look the way you might expect, and many people who are living with its effects have never thought of themselves as traumatised. But if something from your past is quietly shaping how you feel, how you relate to others, or how you move through the world today, that is worth paying attention to.
Have a specific question? Jump straight to the FAQs below.
What Are the Signs of Trauma?
- Flashbacks, intrusive memories, or distressing dreams
- Feeling on edge, hypervigilant, or easily startled
- Emotional numbness, disconnection, or feeling detached from life
- Difficulty trusting others or feeling safe in relationships
- Anxiety, depression, or unexplained physical symptoms
- Shame, guilt, or a persistent sense that something is wrong with you
- Avoiding people, places, or situations that trigger distressing feelings
- A feeling that you have never quite felt safe, settled, or fully yourself
Understanding EMDR
What Is EMDR?
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an evidence-based therapy recognised by the World Health Organisation, the American Psychological Association, and Phoenix Australia (Australia's National Centre of Excellence in Posttraumatic Mental Health) as one of the most effective treatments for trauma, complex trauma, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It can also help with anxiety, phobias, grief, and distressing life experiences that continue to affect daily life. Traumatic experiences can become stored in a way that leaves the brain and body reacting as though the danger is still present, and EMDR helps the brain process these experiences so they can be remembered without the same emotional intensity.
How Does EMDR Work?
EMDR helps the brain reprocess distressing traumatic memories that may feel recurring or unresolved. During therapy, you briefly focus on a memory, including the emotions, thoughts, and body sensations connected to it, while engaging in bilateral stimulation such as eye movements, tapping, or alternating sounds. The goal is not to erase the memory, but to help the brain store it as a past experience rather than something that continues to affect you in the present.
Our Approach: EMDR and Schema Therapy Together
Trauma rarely stays contained to a single memory. Alongside the memory itself, it often leaves behind deep beliefs, that I am not enough, that I am not lovable, that the world is not safe, beliefs that can quietly run a person's life for decades. EMDR on its own is powerful for processing the memory. Combining it with Schema Therapy reaches both layers at once, the experience and the belief it left behind, which is why the two are used together rather than in isolation.
EMDR
Processes the traumatic memory itself using bilateral stimulation, so it can be recalled without the same emotional intensity, without needing to retell the story in detail.
Schema Therapy
Addresses the beliefs about yourself and the world that formed around the trauma, the patterns that keep showing up in relationships, work, and self-worth long after the original event.
Where unhelpful thinking patterns are part of the picture, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is also drawn on alongside this combination, tailored to what's actually needed rather than applied as a fixed program.
What Is PTSD?
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can develop after experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event such as an accident, assault, abuse, natural disaster, military combat, or another life-threatening experience. Trauma can disrupt how memories are stored, sometimes resulting in memory fragmentation, where parts of the experience remain disconnected rather than forming a coherent narrative.
People with PTSD may experience intrusive memories, flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, emotional numbness, sleep difficulties, irritability, or a persistent sense of danger. PTSD is a treatable condition, and evidence-based therapies can help process traumatic memories and restore a greater sense of safety and control.
Trauma is not the story of something that happened back then. Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score
How Recovery Works
Psychiatrist Judith Herman's model, one of the most influential frameworks in trauma treatment, describes recovery as unfolding in three stages that build on each other rather than happening all at once.
Safety and Stabilisation
Before any processing of the trauma itself can happen, you need to feel physically and emotionally safe, whether that means stabilising your current environment, building coping skills, or steadying day to day functioning. This groundwork isn't skipped.
Remembrance and Mourning
This is where the trauma itself is processed. You build a coherent narrative of what happened and grieve what was lost, whether that's a person, a sense of safety, or a version of yourself. This is the stage most associated with active work such as EMDR.
Reconnection
Having processed the trauma, you move toward rebuilding ordinary life, forming new relationships, and reclaiming a sense of agency and future, rather than being defined by what happened to you.
These stages aren't strictly linear. People often move back and forth between them, and revisiting safety work partway through processing is normal, not a sign of failure.
References
Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence, from domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books.
Levine, P. A. (1997). Waking the tiger: Healing trauma. North Atlantic Books.
Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.
Does EMDR Work for Grief?
EMDR is not only effective for trauma and PTSD. It can also help when grief becomes complicated by traumatic circumstances such as a sudden death, suicide, accident, or medical emergency. By processing distressing memories associated with the loss, EMDR can reduce emotional overwhelm and help create space for the natural grieving process.
What to Expect
Sessions are 60 minutes, available in person in Narre Warren or via telehealth Australia-wide. We start with a thorough understanding of your history and what you'd like to work through, then build a plan suited to you, whether that's short-term, focused work or a longer-term course of therapy.
Wondering about cost? Session fees and private health insurance rebate details are on the Fees page.
If something from your past is still shaping your present, support is available.
Book a Session →Common Questions
Trauma Therapy & EMDR FAQs
Trauma is not defined by the event itself, it is what happens to you when your nervous system is overwhelmed beyond its capacity to cope. It is less about what happened to you, and more about what happened inside you. When an experience leaves you feeling unsafe, helpless, or utterly alone, and your nervous system cannot fully process and recover from it, that is trauma (van der Kolk, 2014).
Big T traumas are the experiences most people associate with the word, accidents, assault, abuse, natural disasters, war, or sudden loss. These are significant events that threaten safety or survival and can leave a lasting imprint on the nervous system (Herman, 1992). Little t traumas are less visible but equally real, childhood emotional neglect, chronic criticism, bullying, relationship breakdowns, or years of feeling like you didn't quite belong. They rarely involve a single dramatic moment, and the nervous system doesn't distinguish the size of the threat when deciding whether it was overwhelming (Levine, 1997), which is why little t traumas so often go unrecognised, even by the person carrying them.
Yes. Early relational experiences shape the nervous system, your sense of self, and how safe you feel in the world. What happened, or didn't happen, in childhood has a profound effect on adult mental health, relationships, and how you cope with stress. Research shows how early adverse experiences become encoded in the body and nervous system, shaping how a person responds to the world long into adulthood (van der Kolk, 2014).
Unresolved trauma doesn't stay contained to the individual, it moves into your closest connections. Arguments that escalate too quickly, silences that go on too long, or feeling fundamentally unseen by the person who's supposed to know you best, are often trauma responses playing out between two people (van der Kolk, 2014). When you feel threatened or emotionally overwhelmed, you react from old survival patterns rather than your best self. This is one of the reasons couples counselling and individual trauma work often benefit from happening alongside each other.
Trauma therapy is professional support for people affected by distressing or overwhelming past experiences. It helps process traumatic memories so they no longer trigger the same intensity of emotional and physical reaction, using evidence-based approaches such as EMDR and Schema Therapy.
No. One of the benefits of EMDR is that it does not require retelling the story in detail. You briefly focus on the memory while engaging in bilateral stimulation, which is often far less distressing than talk-based approaches to trauma.
Yes. EMDR can help when grief becomes complicated by traumatic circumstances such as a sudden death, suicide, accident, or medical emergency, by processing the distressing memories associated with the loss.
Yes. Thoughtful Strides Counselling and Psychotherapy offers trauma therapy and EMDR via telehealth Australia-wide, as well as in person in Narre Warren, Victoria.
Ready to take the first step?
Appointments are available now. Reach out today and we'll find a time that works for you.
Book an Appointment