Coaching and Counselling Services

I would like to encourage you to think on trauma as a wound, think of a time when you cut yourself or fell with force, with a cut, the healing would involve scar tissue forming.

Larger the cut, larger the injury, larger the scar, longer the healing, and perhaps damage to nerve endings so you wouldn’t feel, and it would be much less flexible than your normal tissue.

Trauma is when there is a loss of feeling and rigidity in responding to the world. This is a response to a wound.

I can be difficult even painful attempting to connect with others and your environment. The isolation of the trauma creates a fear reaction.

You may not be aware of it but your whole life becomes regulated by fear and pain.

And then to survive we develop soothing strategies, which can be dangerous and become addictive.

Addiction not my favourite title or word.

For me, addiction and word addict is very derogatory, and tend to steer away from using it.

Let us look not why the addiction, but rather what is the pain.

The substance abuse or behavioural challenges is the symptom, lets search for the cause.

For me the cause tends always to be rooted in childhood trauma, It may not have been a physical trauma or a devastating natural disaster.

Trauma can be formed more subtly in the infants developing brain.

I like to think of trauma, internal suffering and psychological pain as the cause, which is hungry to feel Satiated, one clutches for stimulation to gravitate away from the hurt.

By learning to work with the cause rather than the symptom one can become responsible to manage this negative wound in far more healthy ways.

I became aware of my own addiction to substances in 1993 and made effective changes in eradicating it from my life.

I have been sober from alcohol since 2006 and work my recovery of co-dependency.

For all challenges, I have adopted many healthy strategies and utilised guidance from the 12 step process.

Do you feel you are stuck in grief? Struggling to move on?

This can be normal for many through the loss of a loved, or the loss experienced learning of a terminal illness.

To learn that grief is an antidote to trauma—Grief is a healthy outlet for what we’re feeling.

While trauma leaves us stuck in our sadness, grief abates and eventually allows us to tap into an innate sense of action.

Grief, shouldn’t be confused with pain, suffering, or fear.

As your therapists, I will help you to keep trauma in check so as to identify what stage of grief you are in then work through the several stages.

Healing is a highly subversive act in our culture. My role is to help you make the connections, allow yourself to move on and work with change.

Let us take depression very seriously, be that upon ourselves and in others.

If in ourselves, let us learn to be vulnerable and learn of our pain, to speak openly about it. 

Let us not be limited by our stiff upper lip, big boys don’t cry conditioning, which has been so prevalent in our society.

If we are given insight to it within another, let us find the patience and compassion to hear that pain, to invite it to exist without judgment, without easy answers, without blame.

Let us learn together how you can be a more effective listener if you live with someone with depression.