Is Your Therapist Trauma-Informed? Here’s How to Tell.
What Is A Trauma-Informed Therapist?
If you’re wondering how to tell if your therapist is trauma-informed, you’ve come to the right place. The words “trauma” and “trauma-informed” are all the rage lately, but what does it really mean?
What Does It Mean To Be A Trauma-Informed Therapist?
To be a trauma-informed therapist means to understand how a traumatized person might think, feel, or behave and be able to assist that person in an accommodating way to heal trauma. The priority of a trauma-informed therapist is to create a safe and non-judgmental environment that supports the person’s autonomy and trauma healing journey. A trauma-informed therapist keeps in mind that all people experience trauma differently and that it requires them to be open-minded and willing to make therapeutic changes as appropriate for trauma healing. Importantly, the therapist client-relationship is always built around safety and trust.
Let’s talk about how to find out if the therapist you’re interested in working with is trauma-informed!
How Do I Know My Therapist is A Trauma-Informed Therapist?
If your therapist is trauma informed, they will prioritize safety, understand they nervous system, use gentle, non-pathologizing language, offer tools to regulate the nervous system, and understand the need to titrate the intensity of trauma therapy based on the individual.
Let’s explore each of these ways you can know if your therapist is trauma-informed.
A trauma-informed therapist might offer the client the choice of where they are positioned in the room, how they are positioned, whether they get up and move around, and whether they eat or drink in the session.
A Trauma-Informed Therapist Prioritizes Safety and Choice
Traumatic Events Usually Involve A Lack of Choice
One characteristic of any traumatic event is that there is somehow a lack of choice. The ability to decide what happens is taken away from that person, which leads them to feeling chronically unsafe. This is why choice and safety are inherently linked. Therefore, a trauma-informed therapist will allow plenty of choice in the therapy room to facilitate trauma healing.
Trauma-Informed Therapists Create Space and Opportunity For Choice
The trauma-informed therapist would create plenty of choice around where the client sits in the room, the ability to get up and move around, the choice as to where they place their visual attention, the choice to drink/eat, the choice to fidget or draw, the choice as to how they position themselves in the seat or on the couch. People’s bodies need so many different things to feel safe, and it is important to honor that and to know that it might even change depending on what part of the session they are in.
Another big point of choice is being able to identify what they are comfortable with talking about and not. In the beginning of many of my intake sessions, I tell them that “just because I ask the questions doesn’t mean I have the right to know the answer.” Just because it might be helpful to do something clinically, doesn’t mean the client is ready for it or wants to, which should always be honored.
Honoring What You Need In The Therapy Room
One of my main goals as a therapist is to help my clients step out of the social part of their brains that says “that’s too weird, I shouldn’t do that,” so they can honor what they truly need. Following through on these impulses often goes away the older we get because we are socialized out of it. Watch a kid watch a movie. Are they still? Absolutely not… they’re moving, wiggling, exploring boundaries, falling down, and meeting their needs. I want my clients to have that same sense of freedom.
As you can see, safety and choice should be offered by the trauma-informed therapist both psychologically and physically at all times in order to create comfort for each client and facilitate trauma healing.
A trauma-informed therapist understands how the body stores trauma and the physical manifestations of nervous system disregulation. By identifying how your nervous system reacts, you can begin to heal and move forward.
A Trauma-Informed Therapist Understands the Nervous System
Instead of talking about issues and trying to get the mind to tell a different story about the traumatic event in order to shift the feelings about it, the body should also be involved in some way. I am sure you have heard over and over again about how the body stores trauma, and it is absolutely true. If we are only using a cognitive approach, we are missing out on a huge opportunity to heal trauma quicker and more effectively.
How Understanding The Nervous System Plays Out In Session
I say this to my clients all the time, but the body often tells the story that the mind won’t. Here is how this can play out in a trauma healing session:
Maria has a history of emotional and physical abuse from her parents. She talks about her trauma quite openly and, most of the time, says that she doesn’t really feel much about it anymore. Without pushing, the therapist knows that this must be a part of some of her symptoms that she came in to treat.
After a while, the therapist notices that Maria is making herself really small in sessions. She sits with her arms wrapped around her, pushes herself into the corner, and crosses her legs really tightly. After gentle exploration encouraged by the therapist, Maria starts to put together that staying small (in many ways) was her survival strategy as a kid which helped her to not be noticed by her father who struggled with substance use. Maria was able to make many connections about how this dynamic plays out today, especially in her relationship with her wife and at work.
After somatic therapy, she has been able to renegotiate her trauma and take up more space in the world.
Moving Toward Trauma Healing By Understanding Your Nervous System
A trauma-informed therapist who recognizes that the body holds trauma can help clients acknowledge how their nervous systems might be stuck (ie, in fight, flight, or freeze). This is an essential piece of knowledge that all clients should have about themselves in order to start healing from trauma.
Trauma-informed therapists view their clients as “clients”, not patients who are broken and need to be fixed.
A Trauma-Informed Therapist Uses Gentle, Non-Pathologizing Language
Coping with the impact of trauma is already hard on its own, and the last thing somebody needs to feel is “othered” in any way. This is why it is so important that a trauma-informed therapist uses language that is gentle, but specific. You shouldn’t feel confused by what the person is saying to you and you shouldn’t feel like it is harsh.
Why Pathologizing People Doesn’t Help
Parts of the westernized way we do mental health can be damaging for many reasons (all of which I will not address in this blog post). As a trauma-informed therapist who has my own history of trauma and anxiety and so on, I find that pathologizing people does not help. Sure, diagnosing can be helpful for a variety of reasons, primarily for the ability to access treatment, but it can distract from treating the person as a whole and healing from trauma. Pathologizing a client can make them feel like they are “broken” or that they are having “weird” responses to what is happening. One hundred percent of the time, if I pay enough attention and listen enough to a person’s story, the reactions they have are actually quite intelligent and make a lot of sense, even if it is something we are wanting to change in the long run in order to heal from trauma.
One of the ways I try to depathologize the people I work with as a trauma-informed therapist is by calling them clients. They aren’t patients that are broken and needing fixing. They are human beings with their own set of truths.
The therapist-client relationship is collaborative. If you don’t feel like your relationship with your therapist is collaborative, then they are not trauma-informed.
Trauma-informed therapists might suggest that you use tools such as movement and breathwork to find immediate help from your trauma symptoms while you go through the journey of trauma healing.
A Trauma-Informed Therapist Offers Tools for Self-Regulation
While I love to really “get in there” and find the root cause of why somebody is experiencing symptoms, it is important to honor that each person with a trauma history is currently suffering and working toward trauma healing. This needs to be paid attention to in conjunction with the deeper work.
When a person is ready to start therapy to heal from trauma, they are needing some immediate help to feel better right now. They need to be able to reach a place of equilibrium in order to feel prepared to do the difficult work of being with the trauma in an intentional way. If clients don’t have any way of reliably feeling regulated, then the therapist can run the risk of retraumatization if they jump straight into the trauma work.
Tools For Self-Regulation Offered By Trauma-Informed Therapists
Some tools that a trauma-informed therapist might offer for self regulation include:
Breathwork
Movement
Mindfulness
Ability to reach out to social supports
Easing Into Trauma Therapy
Until somebody is able to confidently use self-regulatory tools, directly working on the trauma in a pointed way is not advised. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, and there are always gentle ways to approach healing trauma that don’t include going straight to the most disturbing part of the trauma.
A common treatment progression with a trauma-informed therapist would look something like this (but not always, so if yours looks different, no sweat):
Understand my client’s desires for treatment and start to build rapport/safety
Find out what symptoms are bothering them now
Help them to be able to feel things in their body
Guide clients to be able to find good, peaceful, or calm feelings on a regular basis
Start working on the trauma (either the very beginning or end of the trauma timeline to not overwhelm them)
I will rarely just jump straight into it! It can be really overwhelming to somebody’s nervous system to do that and might instead retraumatize them.
A trauma-informed therapist understands that clients experiencing trauma may need to build capacity to tolerate therapy instead of jumping right in.
A Trauma-Informed Therapist Understands the Need to Titrate Intensity
What Does It Mean To Titrate The Intensity Of Therapy?
It means a trauma-informed therapist slows things down instead of going with the natural fast and chaotic way the body is responding to the trauma. Trauma is always “too much, too fast, too soon.”
Why Is Titrating The Intensity of Therapy Helpful?
By titrating the intensity of the work, a trauma-informed therapist is able to help clients build capacity to tolerate the trauma. It allows us to break things down slowly instead of having a retraumatizing “fire hose” of all of the trauma at once. It allows the body to be able to feel through and make sense of each little piece of the trauma instead of becoming overwhelmed by it once again.
Why Does Trauma-Informed Therapy Matter for Healing?
Put simply, people need access to healing, and if their body detects that things aren’t safe, they can’t heal. Most people who have experienced deep impacts of trauma have nervous systems who are hyper-sensitive to lack of safety and will be able to detect something as unsafe even if it isn’t (in other words, they are hypervigilant). This is why it is imperative to find trauma-informed therapists who know how to create safety within their offices. Trauma-informed therapists create a culture of safety and are open to feedback from their clients in order to make therapy accessible for them. Meeting the needs of somebody who is traumatized requires thoughtfulness, creativity, and flexibility, which is one of the things that I love most about the work that I do.
Final Thoughts: You Deserve Trauma-Informed Care
If you are wanting to work on your trauma in therapy, please know that it is okay to ask your therapist what trauma treatment protocols they know and what practices of theirs make them a trauma-informed therapist. You deserve healing, and I fully believe that all people are wired for it.
Ready to Begin Your Journey With A Trauma-Informed Therapist?
If you’re ready to start working with a trauma-informed therapist to heal from your trauma, Lauren Bradley is currently taking on new clients. Together we’ll begin the journey of trauma healing in a gentle, yet effective way.
Frequently Asked Questions About Trauma-Informed Therapists
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A trauma-informed therapist understands how trauma affects a person’s mind and body and creates a safe, supportive environment that prioritizes choice and self-regulation.
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Trauma-informed care helps clients feel safe, understood, and respected, which is crucial for effective healing from traumatic experiences.
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Look for a therapist who prioritizes safety, offers choices, understands the nervous system, uses non-pathologizing language, and helps with self-regulation.
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Trauma-informed therapy specifically addresses the effects of trauma on the nervous system and ensures that therapy does not retraumatize the client.
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Yes, but trauma-informed therapists have specialized training to address trauma more safely and effectively, reducing the risk of retraumatization.
Stevie Spiegel is a Licensed Therapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner located in Kansas City. She uses Somatic Experiencing as her main body-based trauma healing modality, as well as EMDR. As an Intuitive Eating Counselor, she uses these principles to help her clients challenge their relationship with their cultural misconceptions about their body and food.
