IN-PERSON COUNSELLING IN VANCOUVER & ONLINE ACROSS BC
Trauma Counselling
Imagine letting the past guide you, not define you.
You keep telling yourself that nothing’s wrong, and you should be grateful for everything you have. Deep down inside? Something does feel wrong — whether it’s the persistent sadness that keeps showing up time and again, or just the vague sense of perpetually being on edge. At the end of the day, you’re exhausted. You don’t remember the last time you really got to relax — it’s hard to let your guard down when the world never feels safe.
You keep telling yourself things could be worse, but it’s been hard to be around others. Your don’t remember yourself being so short-tempered, and you’ve done a lot of things you regret, like yelling at your friends. And you can’t ever be sure if your partner means it when they say they love you, either. When you think about how anyone sees you, you almost always start to spiral. You want to break out of those patterns, but keep finding the impulse to manage every aspect of your relationships, and you’re too drained to know how to move forward.
Opening up and talking about everything you’re going through feels hard. You’re afraid no one will really understand what’s going on, or even know how to help. Maybe you’ve done therapy before, but still find yourself trapped in the same pattern. Now you want something deeper, more than the surface level coping strategies you’ve been taught before. You’ve pushed yourself hard to get to where you are, and you’re ready for someone to help you figure out exactly what you need to move forward.
nourish the compassion to heal & the courage to grow
Unresolved trauma can come in many forms. You might feel “fine” and tell yourself it wasn’t that bad, but your nervous system doesn’t fully relax.
Chronic feelings of fear and stress that can’t be eased by any form of logic or evidence
Perfectionism that fools you into thinking that safety is somehow attainable
Chronic exhaustion and burnout from always holding it together
Chronic pain and health issues that doctors can’t effectively treat or explain
Emotional numbness or difficulty feeling anything
Difficulty trusting others, constantly on guard in relationships
Never feel like you are good enough, no matter what you do
Emotional flashbacks, or sudden waves of body feelings without clear memories
Difficulty setting healthy boundaries
Naming your symptoms as trauma isn’t an exaggeration. It’s about understanding your experiences and making sense of why your efforts haven’t given you the relief you deserve.
Healing is so much more than managing your emotions.
Because you’ve already done your share of getting through difficult moments, so therapy needs to go beyond surface level coping strategies. No matter where you are right now — maybe confused, overwhelmed, or just tired — we can work with that.
We start with providing you with a place of comfort, where you can feel a sense of trust and safety, so that you can really get to know your internal landscape. Our work here isn’t about labelling what went wrong, it’s about understanding who you are and what you truly value, and giving voice to the words you’ve never had the chance to speak out loud. Getting familiar with a sense of calm and safety helps to ease our way into deeper work, and every step of this process will be at your pace.
You won’t ever have to feel rushed, or “behind” — the process won’t always feel like a straight line, but you will move forward, because trauma therapy is tailored specifically for what you need. I work with gentle and effective interventions based on Emotionally Focused therapy, to help you with where talk therapy often gets stuck. Not because you weren’t trying hard enough, but because insight alone doesn’t give the body the reassurance it needs. With somatic approaches, you don’t have to retell your worst moments (unless you want to), and by working with your body, you can shift from coping to healing, and from surviving to thriving.
Healing is possible
and it can start today
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
-
Trauma isn’t a competition. If something you experienced is still affecting you today, then it matters. And you don’t need to justify your experiences were “bad enough” to deserve the help you need. Even if you’ve never thought of your experiences as trauma, it may still be helpful to explore whether past patterns are still shaping the way you think, feel, and relate to others without your conscious knowing.
Trauma therapy isn’t about bringing the past for its own sake, it’s about recognizing how your nervous system learned to adapt and survive in past environments and relationships, and helping it learn to fully embrace the present. Healing doesn’t mean reliving painful experiences, it means letting your brain and body recognize the past no longer need to affect your present day experiences, so you can continue to move forward with freedom and clarity.
-
Many clients come to me after they’ve already tried talk therapy and other ways of healing. Having understanding helps, but when trauma continues to exist in the nervous system, old patterns persist in your day-to-day life. I use gentle, evidence-based methods of healing, including Brainspotting, Emotionally Focused Therapy, and Internal Family Systems, so that your brain and body can fully integrate past experiences and create the safety you need to move forward with freedom and clarity.
-
No. With somatic healing approaches like Emotionally Focused Therapy, you don’t have to go into detail about what happened for it to be effective. You’re in control of how much you want to share as we reprocess your experiences.
-
No. There’s no need to relive your pain in order to heal. Emotionally Focused Therapy is a gentle and effective ways of healing. I’ll make sure that you stay grounded, calm, and comfortable throughout the process, helping you go at a pace that feels safe. Processing painful experiences shouldn’t be retraumatizing, and you will always have control over where you want to go in session.
-
Clients from small and interconnected communities often have to navigate this additionally complex and personal concern. As part of the healing process, we can discuss ways to honour your experiences and relationships while creating space for your healing.
-
Part of our work might look like regular talk therapy. Trauma therapy still requires that we get to know some of your history and present experiences to connect the dots and establish why you’re feeling the way you do. More insight creates more opportunities for healing, and talk therapy can allow us to explore patterns that you may not have noticed yet.
At other times, we’ll use somatic approaches like Emotionally Focused Therapy, to help your brain and body get past what feels stuck.
As a general rule, I help with whatever you feel is the most important, whether that looks like insight or somatic work, I’m happy to collaborate.
-
Schedule a free consultation with me. During the consultation, we can discuss the kind of help you are looking for and see if we will be a good fit going forward. Click here to schedule yours, and I’ll send you an email with more information.
A consultation isn’t commitment, it’s a chance for you ask me questions and to get a sense if I’m the right person for you. My goal is to give you a sense of clarity, relief, and the confidence that healing is possible.
If you choose to work with me, your sessions are personalized, and you can work on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, whichever feels the best for you.
Counselling With Wren
Contact
counsellingwithwren@gmail.com
209-2150 Western Parkway, Vancouver, BC
As an uninvited guest on stolen, ancestral territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), S’ólh Téméxw (Stó:lō), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), I commit myself to the continued work of assessing and responding to the ongoing impact of colonization.