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Fiona Rogerson - Trauma and Perinatal Counsellor & Birth Educator, Perth

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Perth, WA
Fiona Rogerson - Trauma and Perinatal Counsellor & Birth Educator, Perth

Specialist counselling and EMDR for birth trauma, perinatal trauma, PTSD & cPTSD. Perth + Aus-wide.

08/04/2026

Birth trauma can leave two people carrying the same day in completely different ways.

I often see mums needing to talk about the birth because their body is still trying to make sense of what happened. They want their partner to sit with them in it, to acknowledge how hard it was, and to help hold some of what came after. So when he goes quiet, looks away, changes the subject, or says he does not know what to say, it can feel incredibly lonely.

I see again and again that his shutdown is not always about not caring. Sometimes it is freeze. He feels the helplessness, guilt or fear underneath it all, and his system just stops. He goes blank, quiet, distant.

Sometimes it is flight. He gets busy, changes the subject, focuses on what needs doing, or pushes to move on because slowing down feels too exposing.

Sometimes he could not protect you in the moment, and talking about the traumatic birth brings that sense of failure straight back.

Sometimes his confidence took a real hit after the birth, and now he is frightened of saying the wrong thing and making it worse. I often find that for some partners, silence feels safer than getting it wrong.

That does not make it any less painful for you. But it can sometimes help to understand that one of you may be reaching for the conversation, while the other is backing away from it for reasons that live in the nervous system, not just in the relationship.

This is often the work in couples counselling after birth trauma. Not just helping you communicate better, but helping both of you make sense of the fear, shame, freeze, flight and disconnection underneath the silence, so the conversation starts to feel safer for you both.

Head to the link in my bio to find out more about couples counselling, or send me a DM and we can talk about whether it's the right fit for you both.

07/04/2026

Doing it all on your own after a traumatic birth is NOT a sign that you are coping well.

I see this every day. Mothers who look incredibly capable on the outside, the ones who keep going, keep organising, keep showing up, and rarely ask for anything. But underneath that, there is often a deep exhaustion. A constant scanning. A sense that everything rests on their shoulders. Feel that too?

Because somewhere along the way, their nervous system learned that relying on other people was not safe.

After trauma, self-sufficiency can feel like the only option. Not because you truly want to do motherhood alone (most of us want to feel deeply held and nurtured, right?!), but because needing support can feel too exposed, too risky, too disappointing.

So you push through. You tell yourself it is just easier this way. You minimise your own needs. You become the one everyone can count on, while quietly feeling like no one really sees how much you are carrying.

This response makes complete sense! It's often a protective pattern, shaped by trauma. And while it may have helped you survive at one point, it can make motherhood feel even heavier than it already is in the wake of birth trauma.

Changing this is not about forcing yourself to suddenly be more open or more dependent on people, it's about slowly building enough safety in your body to believe that support might be possible. That your needs can be met. That you do not have to hold everything on your own to be okay.

If this feels close to home, DM me to make a time to speak with us. We would love to support you to feel less like you have to hold it all on your own.

16/03/2026

Self-gaslighting is what happens when you begin to doubt your own experience, when you minimise your pain, justify what happened, or convince yourself that you’re “overreacting.”

After birth trauma, it might sound like this:

“It wasn’t that bad.”
“Others have had it worse.”
“I should be grateful.”
“The staff were just doing their job.”
“Maybe it’s just me.”

These thoughts can creep in quietly. They often show up as your mind trying to make sense of something overwhelming. If you can explain it away, minimise it, or compare it to something worse, then maybe you don’t have to feel how painful it actually was.

But what it often does instead is silence your own experience.

Many women I work with spent months, sometimes years, convincing themselves that what happened during their birth “shouldn’t” affect them this much. They try to be the reasonable one. The grateful one. The one who moves on.

And yet the body keeps remembering. The thoughts come back at night. The anger or sadness appears in unexpected moments. Parenting feels heavier than they imagined it would.

You don’t need to justify what happened to you.
You don’t need to compare your story to anyone else’s.

Your experience matters because it happened to you.

Healing often begins in a very simple place, when you stop arguing with the part of you that says something about that wasn’t okay.

If you’re ready to start making sense of what happened and begin working through it, send me a DM and we can find a time that suits.

10/03/2026

If you’ve ever had even one of these thoughts and wondered what’s wrong with me, this is for you 👇🏽

Comment PARENTING below and I’ll send you my guide
7 Signs Your Birth Trauma Is Impacting Your Parenting.

09/03/2026

When your child cries, does your body go straight to alarm?

Your heart races. Your chest tightens. Your thoughts start scanning for what’s wrong. Everything in you mobilises to stop the sound as quickly as possible.

Many mothers assume this means they’re not coping well enough. That they need better parenting strategies, more patience, or stronger regulation. But often what’s happening has very little to do with parenting ability.
It’s your nervous system remembering.

For many women who experienced birth trauma, labour was the first moment their body felt completely out of control. Pain escalating, people moving quickly around you, decisions happening that you didn’t feel part of, a sense that something might be going wrong.

In those moments your nervous system shifted into survival mode because it had to.

The difficulty is that when the baby arrives safely, the nervous system doesn’t always register that the danger has passed. The protective response can stay active long after the birth itself is over.

So when your baby cries now, your brain isn’t just hearing a sound. Your nervous system is detecting threat. Your body responds before logic has a chance to step in.

From the outside it can look like anxiety. From the inside it feels like pure fear.
Most parenting advice assumes the problem is behavioural. Regulate. Respond differently.
But when the nervous system is still operating from protection, regulation won't even scratch the surface of what's really going on.

This is where trauma therapies like EMDR can help. They work directly with the nervous system to process the moments where your body first learned that loss of control and danger. As those experiences are processed, that response begins to settle. Your child's cry gradually becomes what it was always meant to be, information about a need rather than a signal that something terrible might happen.

If parts of this feel familiar, comment PARENTING below and I’ll send you my free guide '7 Signs Your Birth Trauma Is Impacting Your Parenting'.
It explains the ways birth trauma can quietly show up in everyday parenting moments, and what actually helps the nervous system begin to feel safe again.

26/02/2026

You did not fail your birth.

Most mum who’ve experienced a traumatic birth, somewhere along the way, decide that they did.

Maybe the birth did not go to plan. Maybe you froze. Maybe you agreed to something you swore you would never agree to. Maybe you didn’t speak up. Maybe you still replay the moment where everything changed and think, that was it, that was where I failed.

When birth becomes overwhelming, frightening or medically urgent, your nervous system shifts into survival. It doesn’t prioritise your plan or your preferences. It does not measure how articulate or assertive you are being. It scans for safety. It narrows your focus. It pulls you into whatever response it believes will get you and your baby through.

Freeze is not failure. Compliance is not failure. Going quiet is not failure. These are wired survival responses. Afterwards, when you are safe and your thinking brain is fully back online, it can look back at those moments and judge them harshly. It tells a neat story… I failed… I should have done more.

But trauma often involves the loss of control. Not the absence of strength. Not the absence of love. Not a flaw in you as a mother.

Many women carry the belief that they failed their birth. That they did not advocate enough. That they let themselves or their baby down. These beliefs grow from shock and helplessness. They are attempts to make sense of something that felt terrifying or chaotic.

Sometimes what needs attention is not your perceived failure, but the trauma your body is still holding from that room.

If this is you, if the words ‘I failed’ still sit heavily in your heart, DM me and we can gently begin to untangle it together.

24/02/2026

Why does the sound of my baby crying feel like a siren going off in my body?

You are not scared of your baby.
You are scared of what happens inside you when they cry.

That panic.
That heat.
That trapped feeling.
That split second where you want it to run, and then hate yourself for your inability to cope.

No one prepares you for the fact that love and activation can coexist.
You can adore your baby and still feel your nervous system fire like you are under threat. And when that happens, most parents do not reach for compassion. They reach for self judgement.

They tell themselves to be better. Calmer. More patient. More grateful.
But a triggered nervous system is not a parenting failure, it's a trauma response.

Which is why I created a free guide, '7 Signs Your Birth Trauma Is Impacting Your Parenting'.

Not to pathologise you.
Not to label you.
But to help you recognise patterns that make sense in context.
Because once you can see the pattern, you stop turning it into a verdict about who you are.

Comment the word PARENTING below and I'll send it to you.

23/02/2026

On the hard days, remind yourself...

That replaying it doesn’t mean you’re stuck, it means something in you is still trying to make sense of it.

That just because it’s in the past doesn’t mean your body feels finished with it.

That loving your baby and grieving your birth can exist in the same breath.

That other people being “over it” doesn’t mean you should be.

That feeling triggered by hospitals, check-ups, or even pregnancy announcements isn’t dramatic or selfish, it’s protective.

On the hard days, the shame can get LOUD. The self-blame can creep in. The “I should be fine by now” thoughts can feel convincing.

That’s when you come back to this:
What happened to you matters.
Your nervous system responded the way nervous systems do when something feels overwhelming or unsafe.
And healing rarely moves in a straight line.

If today is a hard day, save this post and keep coming back to it. Let the reminder be louder than the self-criticism.

💛

12/02/2026

You might not agree, but these are my thoughts...

Most parenting advice is built on one quiet assumption that a mothers body feels basically safe most of the time.

Safe to pause.
Safe to reflect.
Safe to choose a response instead of reacting.

BUT trauma changes how the nervous system reads the world.

If your body has learnt through birth, childhood, relationships, or medical experiences that you did not get a say, that your boundaries were not respected, or that you had to override yourself to get through something hard, parenting is not neutral. It can feel like pressure. Exposure. Loss of control. Urgency without escape.

And parenting is FULL of moments that mirror those exact sensations.
Noise. Touch. Demand. Unpredictability. Being needed when you have nothing left to give.

So when advice says, “Just stay calm.”
Or, “Just regulate first.”
Or, “Just take a breath.”
It can land like failure when your body is already in survival mode.
Because you CANNOT access calm when your nervous system is trying to keep you safe.
You cannot logic your way out of a trauma response.
And you cannot strategy your way into safety.

This is why traumatised parents often feel like parenting advice works for everyone else but not for them.

If this you right not, it's not because you're trying less. You're not doing it wrong.
It is because the advice is skipping the most important step, helping the body feel safe enough to choose differently.

When safety comes back online, parenting strategies suddenly make more sense.
Your nervous system is no longer fighting to protect you.

If you have ever felt like parenting advice works in theory but falls apart in real life, there is usually a reason.

My free guide, 7 Signs Birth Trauma Is Impacting Your Parenting, helps you quickly spot patterns you might not have linked back to birth or earlier experiences, so you can start joining the dots for yourself.

Comment PARENTING below and I will send it to you.

01/02/2026

Not all trauma responses look like fear or collapse. Many look like coping too well.

One of the hardest parts of postnatal trauma is how invisible it can become, even to the person living it. You might be functioning, ticking boxes, getting on with things. But underneath, your nervous system is stuck in survival mode, doing whatever it takes to avoid feeling that level of helplessness again.

That’s why so many mums come into counselling unsure if what they went through even “counts” as trauma. They’re not having flashbacks. They’re not falling apart. But they’re chronically tense, detached, overwhelmed by small disruptions, or panicked when things feel out of control.

These are adaptations.

And they make complete sense. It’s common for trauma to show up through the body, through parenting patterns, through habits that once helped you cope, but are now making daily life feel harder.

Understanding these responses for what they are is often the first step in moving forward. They're not weakness. Not personality flaws. Not overreacting. Just a nervous system trying to stay safe, after facing previous threat... even if the danger has passed.

If any of these responses feel familiar, you’re not broken. You’re responding in ways that once made perfect sense.

Ready to take the next step in moving forward? Head to the link in my bio to book your session.

29/01/2026

Loneliness in motherhood isn’t always about being alone. It’s about feeling unseen.

You can have people around you, a partner in the house, even a baby in your arms, and still feel profoundly disconnected.

Because what so many mothers we support are starved of after a traumatic birth isn’t company. It’s attunement.

That feeling of being noticed. Considered. Emotionally responded to.

And in the absence of that, it’s just easier to turn inward and start to question yourself. Especially when you’re watching other mums, online or in real life, who seem to be coping better, bonding faster, smiling more. Comparison quickly becomes self-judgement. “What’s wrong with me?” becomes the question that plays on repeat. And the isolation deepens.

Often, the groundwork for that loneliness is laid during birth itself... When your needs were minimised. When your preferences were overruled. When you were treated like a body, not a person. Those experiences send a clear message that your needs are secondary, and that your voice doesn’t matter.

So you begin parenting from that place. Doubting what you feel. Hiding what you need. Holding in the tears because “at least the baby is okay.”

And the world affirms it. The expectations of early motherhood are built around sacrifice and silence. Around performing strength, even when you’re running on empty.

This is the kind of loneliness that cuts deep, not because you're physically alone, but because so many parts of your experience have gone unseen, invalidated or pushed aside.

Did you feel that too?

If it resonates, drop a ❤️ in the comments below.

28/01/2026

Out of ideas of how to save your relationship?

Most couples aren’t failing. They’re just unsupported in the hardest transition of their lives.

Because nothing quite prepares you for how parenthood changes the ground beneath your relationship. The pressure, the resentment, the constant background noise of exhaustion... it all adds up. And slowly, the version of “us” you knew becomes harder to recognise.

This is about how much load your relationship has had to carry without enough room to process any of it, not about how much you love each other.

You might be interpreting the distance as disconnection, when really it’s depletion. You might be assuming the arguments mean something is broken, when really, they’re a signal that something deeper needs tending.

So often in trauma work, I see that conflict isn’t always a sign of rupture. Sometimes it’s a scrambled attempt at reconnection, through frustration, protest, or sheer survival mode. The goal isn’t to fix the relationship in one conversation. It’s to slow the cycle down enough that both people can come back into view again.

If you’re at the point where it feels like nothing is working, that might be the clearest sign that support isn’t just helpful, it’s necessary.

Details are in the link in my bio.

Address

6/640 Beeliar Drive, Success
Perth, WA
6164

Opening Hours

Monday	8:30am - 5pm
Tuesday	8:30am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Telephone

+61402017425

Website

https://fionarogerson.com.au/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_term=profile&utm_content=homepage&utm_campaign=b

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Who is Fiona Rogerson?

Thank you for being here. My work has developed from a culmination of my own personal experiences of birth and motherhood (which included secondary infertility, IVF, pregnancy loss, instrumental birth, postnatal depression and breastfeeding struggles, but ultimately beautiful positive birth) together with what I witnessed to be similar experiences of other mothers through my initial work as a professional pregnancy and birth photographer which first began in 2009, together with my work as a birth/postnatal doula and antenatal educator. What I found to be a crucial but missing element for the parents I worked with, and for myself as well, was genuine, professional support that could help them navigate perhaps the most intense phase of their life... their perinatal period.

Through my counselling I provide a safe, supportive space for mothers and fathers to feel validated and fully heard, unravel and identify confusing and troubling thoughts and emotions, find clarity among their feelings, and discover strategies and tools to move forward toward achieving fulfillment and happiness. I provide confidential support in all areas of perinatal difficulties for women and men, including birth trauma and debriefing, pre and postnatal anxiety, low-self-esteem, loss of identity, fertility, unplanned pregnancy, and grief and loss.

Dare to walk a different path. I will light your way.