Trauma therapy and PTSD
In Wrocław and online, in English
Trauma is not what happened. Trauma is what stayed — in the nervous system, in the body, in the way you respond to situations that are objectively safe by now.
This is why the question „was what happened to me serious enough” is beside the point. What matters is whether your system still behaves as though the threat were ongoing.
How it can show up
- memories, images or dreams that return and cannot be stopped
- reactions out of proportion to the situation — sudden fear, anger, the urge to leave
- avoiding places, people or topics, sometimes without realising it is avoidance
- constant tension, vigilance, sleep problems, chronic exhaustion
- feeling cut off from emotion, a sense of unreality, gaps in memory, watching yourself from outside
- physical symptoms with no medical explanation
- a pattern in relationships that is hard to break even when you can see it repeating
PTSD and complex PTSD
We usually speak of PTSD when symptoms follow a single event, or a series of events with clear boundaries: an accident, an assault, a disaster, a sudden loss.
Complex PTSD concerns situations where difficult experiences were prolonged and took place within a relationship there was no way out of — most often in childhood. Alongside the symptoms typical of PTSD, there are lasting difficulties with emotion regulation, self-worth and closeness.
The distinction matters practically, not just diagnostically: the two require a different pace and a different order of work.
Developmental and relational trauma
Not every difficult childhood contains a single event you can point to. Sometimes the harm comes from what was absent — from the lack of response, from chronic dismissal, from having to be an adult too early, from being a child whose states were of no interest to anyone.
Such experiences are rarely remembered as harm. Far more often as „that is how it was in our family” or „I am making too much of it”. Their trace shows in how relationships work today.
Dissociation
Cutting off is one of the most effective ways of surviving a situation you cannot escape. The problem is that the mechanism does not switch itself off once the threat has passed.
Dissociation is often mistaken for detachment or for being cold. In reality it usually signals that the system is protecting itself against something it does not yet have the resources for. In therapy I treat it as information rather than as an obstacle, and work with it directly.
I completed a full certification programme in the assessment of trauma-related disorders — the introductory and the advanced workshop, forty hours devoted to recognition alone.
How trauma therapy proceeds
The work usually has three stages, and their order is a condition of safety rather than a formality.
The first stage is stabilisation: understanding what is happening, and building the capacity to manage arousal and shutdown. This stage is often the longest and is the one most often skipped in a hurry — I see the consequences in people who come to me after an earlier attempt that did not work.
The second stage is processing the difficult experiences. Here I most often use EMDR.
The third stage is integration — not so much „closing the past” as reclaiming room for what comes next: relationships, work, plans, pleasure.
We move to the second stage when you are ready for it. Never on a schedule.
Do I have to describe what happened in detail?
No. This is one of the most common fears about starting trauma therapy and one of the most common reasons for postponing it.
Processing methods do not require a detailed account of the event. What is needed is contact with what remains of it — and that is not the same thing. You decide what you put into words, and when.