In-person trauma counselling in Bendigo or online
Living with trauma, trying to exist with hypervigilance—scanning for threats—can be exhausting. A listening ear and a witness might be what you need to collate that frazzled self you no longer recognise.
Hi, I am Frederikke Jensen. My work with people who have experienced trauma and my ongoing professional development in the area of trauma have provided me with understanding of how trauma shapes our work, relationships, and sense of self. Each person’s experience is subjective, and trauma therapy is therefore individualised. Therapy can be accessed in person by appointment, or online if suitable.
My approach to trauma work & frequently asked questions
In my work with people who have experienced trauma, I use narrative therapy, and I am also informed by the research & thinking in psychodynamic psychotherapy. Bringing the psychodynamic orientation to my work as a narrative therapist means I bring rigorous research knowledge and an understanding of attachment & human development.
For me, narrative therapy helps me bring a broader systemic lens to trauma therapy, as destructive and oppressive forces in our culture and community also impacts us as individuals. Gendered violence and discrimination are examples of this.
Both my narrative therapy training and psychodynamic orientation that I draw from bring the craft of noticing what is going on for you as a client (centering your experience), and what is going on between us (two minds thinking together). This is important in trauma counselling as there are almost always relational aspects of psychological wounding.
Talk-based trauma therapy has been widely used for decades. There is also evidence that the therapist effect accounts for the majority of good outcomes in therapy. This becomes even more important when we as therapists work with people who have experienced relational trauma.
A safe therapeutic frame for trauma therapy
Trauma can shatter our perception of safety, trust and sense of self, and leaves an aftermath of shame, fear, helplessness, and (with good reason) disavowed anger or difficulty trusting others. Therefore, pacing and trauma-sensitive practice is important. Likewise, meeting regularly and frequently for therapy also provides the continuity crucial in trauma therapy.
Some of the traumatic experiences I help people with are:
Relational trauma done to you by others in a close relationship, such as family violence, sexual violence, or emotional violence.
Childhood trauma such as neglect, emotional abuse, and physical violence.
Growing up with parents who were distant, controlling, had addictions or were impacted by their own emotional and psychological struggles.
Bullying that took place in the past or that has happened at work recently or in other contexts.
Vicarious trauma through work or in close relationships with others who have experienced trauma.
A traumatic loss of someone close to you, such as suicide or violence.
Why mourning may be a part of therapy for trauma
Traumatic experiences can rob us of many things, such as our sense of self, our safety in the world, our ability to use our bodies and the trust we are able to meet other people with. Grief and being able to mourn what we have lost is therefore also an essential part of trauma therapy for some people. You can read more about how I work with people who are grieving on my grief and loss page.
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Every person that I see for counselling is different. I am offering therapy for the whole of you—not just therapy for specific symptoms of trauma, or therapy for the part of you that is a doctor, nurse, teacher or social worker.
Therapy that encompasses all facets of you is more likely to help you live, work and love more fully. This is because our struggles are usually woven into the fabric of who we are as a person, what we have experienced in our early life, the culture we grew up in or events that have happened to us.
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I do talk therapy, but that does not mean I ignore how you feel in your body, sometimes incorporating somatic techniques. I may also ask you to tell me how and where feelings and sensations live. However, not everyone resonates with being asked about how their body feels, and we may need to pay attention to that.
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I don’t just jump straight into working with trauma, but that does not mean that I won’t listen to your experiences if something comes up in our initial conversations when we are getting to know each other. In the beginning, I am more structured in our first four conversations, as I am working to help us both understand what brought you to therapy and how I can help you.
Generally, we work with trauma as it emerges naturally in sessions. You might sometimes speak about explicit traumatic experiences, or trauma may emerge more subtly through dreams, nightmares, feelings, or bodily sensations. -
In trauma counselling, we work carefully with pacing so that overwhelming material is approached gradually. I help you gently turn towards the thoughts, feelings and sensations that come up when we touch on tender spots in your psyche. Turning towards does not mean bluntly barging through the door into an “encapsulated room” where something painful has been banished.
We pendulate, going near what is overwhelming, and then moving back to a safe enough space. We come back and look at it more closely, and over time, the intensity lessens.
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As a helping professional, such as a nurse, social worker, doctor, or therapist, it can be difficult to grasp that our own trauma is equally as painful and worthy of tender care. It can be easier to soothe the pain in others compared to going closer to the pain or fear we have in ourselves. Once we have discovered we are good at helping others, it can become harder to pay attention to those feelings in ourselves.
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Trauma is often connected with grief and loss. Resilience to life’s difficulties, including a greater capacity to bear life's difficulties, may not develop until you have mourned your losses.
I help people get to a place where trauma and pain can be spoken about, be felt and eventually mourned. What people mourn in relation to trauma and loss is different:
Some people may mourn lost time, not being able to live life fully for years;
Others may mourn the traumatic loss of a loved one or friend to suicide or an accident;
Some people may mourn not having received the understanding, protection, or care they needed when difficult experiences occurred.
Mourning as a therapeutic process (whether with a therapist or not) involves turning towards what has been lost—whether that is a person, a job, a sense of safety, or something else—and saying, in a different way, “hello again”. It is a transformative process rather than a forgetting.
You can read more about grief and loss in a post I wrote called “Grief counselling as a different “hello again“”. I also offer suicide bereavement counselling as I used to work for StandBy and have experience with traumatic loss.
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A lot of people experience trauma in their lives. Although this may sound obvious, having intellectual knowledge about trauma, or working as a mental health professional yourself, is not an automatic protection against it.
If you see me for therapy, it is my job to facilitate our time and space together, so we can make room for you to immerse yourself in the process of therapy and feel safe enough to be yourself. This may take some time, and being able to “be yourself” and bring the whole gamut of human feelings, such as fear, rage, despair, joy and envy, may be an important part of trauma therapy. There are many reasons why helping professionals may benefit from their own therapy, which I have written about in a blog post.
If you are considering trauma therapy
If you would like to talk with me about whether therapy might be helpful, you can get in touch to arrange a conversation.
“Together, we explore the stories and experiences shaping your life, with curiosity and care.”