Trauma Therapy
AKA Therapy for PTSD, C-PTSD, and Dissociative Disorders
CUCUMBER offers trauma therapy with a focus on attachment, developmental, relational, and sexual trauma. We understand trauma not just as something that happened, but as a disruption in safety, connection, and self-understanding that continues to echo through the body, emotions, and relationships.
Our approach is integrative, combining relational, somatic, and emotion-focused methods to support you in reconnecting with safety and stability while gently exploring the impacts of trauma. We can then move at your pace in supporting you in the processing and integration work.
Together we move towards honouring the intelligence of your survival strategies that kept you safe when needed—while guiding you toward a new way of being in the world. Trauma therapy is not about fixing what’s broken; it’s about reclaiming the parts of you that had to go into hiding.
We use a range of approaches, including parts-work popularised with the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, memory processing through the FLASH Technique (developed from EMDR), and Emotion-Focused Therapy.
What is Trauma?
Trauma is not just trauma memories.
It is the exile of the parts of us that we learnt were too vulnerable to exist.
& In their place grew protective parts that learnt strategies to survive at all cost.
Trauma is a term used to describe the way the brain coped with a terrifying experience.
Terror and fear is not objectively measured, but unique to each person who has differing risk factors that determine how likely they are to develop trauma related symptoms, PTSD, CPTSD, BPD, or DID.
Trauma is the combination of the brain’s ability to make sense and meaning of a situation breaking down under threat, and the resulting fragmentation of that memory being unable to be processed.
These fragmented parts of a trauma memory can include sensory information (sounds, visuals, sensations, smells, tastes), environmental information (location, time of year, day, weather), relational information (to the subject of fear or vulnerable targets), thoughts and feelings, beliefs, and bodily sensations.
When similar stimuli is experienced, these are called triggers. When enough micro-triggers or one macro-trigger is activated the trauma memory network activates. Meaning you re-experience the trauma anew.
Re-experiencing trauma puts the body back into a similar physiological state to when the original trauma was experienced. Meaning, whatever is being experienced in that moment can also become a trauma memory - compounding over time.
To protect against this, the brain does something amazing. It tries to avoid the triggers internally and externally.
Unfortunately, over time triggers become harder and harder to avoid. Meanwhile, the protective parts of ourselves become stronger and dominate our decision making.
What is Trauma Therapy?
Trauma therapy can only occur if the person is no longer experiencing new traumas. If they are still frequently overwhelmed by fear, in a context that makes sense for them to be afraid, then attempting to support their body to regain a felt-sense of safety would go against their attuned instincts.
This person would be better suited for crisis support therapy. Helping them survive, identify where they can make changes to be, and feel, safer, and gain hope for life afterwards is more helpful in that time.
Trauma therapy is best suited for people who are resourced emotionally, relationally, and through the stability of their home and income.
It is a challenging process to undo layers of survival patterns by helping that part of self to recognise the newfound safety and soften, allowing the core pain to be experienced and understood.
Depending on what age the trauma was experienced, may mean that part of you stagnated and didn’t have the chance to develop. All of this is explored with kindness.
If trauma is the inability for the mind to make sense of memories involving terror, then trauma therapy is all about the mind being able to finally open back up those memories and make sense of them.
The trauma memories will always be painful, but they can be remembered at a distance, not re-experienced.
Your inner protector can finally drop their diligent guard, and allow softness, connection, and trust into life again.
How Does Trauma Impact Development?
Trauma responses exist on a spectrum.
This spectrum does not reflect the level of functionality of a person, or their level of distress. It exists primarily in reference to how the brain responds to trauma.
If an adult with a healthy childhood and plenty of healthy relationships - including to themself, a singular traumatic experience can still be debilitating as the brain tries and fails to process the memory. But it will be easier to recover from in therapy.
However, if a child experiences or witnesses the distress of inconsistent, neglectful, misattuned, incongruent, emotionally hostile, anxious, physically abusive, or sexually abusive caregivers then that child has no resources to build upon.
It is not just a memory that becomes fragmented but their developing sense of self. This can range from symptoms aligning with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to Dissociative Identity Disorder.
The impact of attachment trauma and sexual trauma can not be underestimated in its impacts on our adult relationships and sense of self
As humans we need to be loved, accepted, and belong with others. We need to feel safe and recharge. When we are unable to do so because we are triggered, or have our protective parts take charge to defend our safety, against people we are trying to love or be sexual with it can be incredibly distressing.