Questions, gently answered

Trauma affects everyone, more than most of us realise.

It doesn't always look dramatic. It doesn't always have a name. It can be the weight you carry from a childhood that was hard, a loss that never quite healed, a relationship that left its mark, or years of feeling that something inside you just isn't right, without being able to say exactly what.

Trauma is not a weakness or a disorder. Trauma researcher Peter Levine describes it as a wound rather than an illness, one that can be transformed and healed by drawing on the natural self-healing capacity that already lives within every person.

Not everyone who has been through something difficult will develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But trauma, in its many forms, shapes how we see the world, how we relate to others, and how we move through everyday life. Often in ways we don't even notice.

Trauma researcher Onno van der Hart's work points to something simple at the core of most traumatisation: a profound sense of isolation, of having felt truly and utterly alone.

Acknowledging that something is going on inside you: that is the first step. You don't have to know exactly what it is. You just have to be willing to look.