Sometimes, Trauma.

21/12/2025

On the shortest day just a thought: Maybe sometimes, the mirage of our future healed selves prevents us from stepping in - to love the messy, turbulent selves we are today.

17/12/2025

It's such a stressful time of year for so many people. Sometimes, there are historic body-held memory of traumatic Christmases - or sometimes there are no memories, showing the dissociation that was needed to get through. We also have a higher here-and-now potential for conflict. Regulation is about building safety in the body. This video shares 6 very practical breathing exercises that can be used for Regulation.

Breathing in a way that helps us to soothe and calm the nervous system can be at the heart of any "Phase One, Safety and Stabilisation" phase in trauma thera...

10/12/2025

This note to myself was attached to the Christmas lights when we put up the tree. I totally forgot that it existed. It reads: “Hannah, do yourself a favour and put these on the front of the house or garden room and buy new ones for the tree (you prefer white/cream lights anyway). These are a KING MARE to take off the tree! (Hope you had a good 2025 and are okay). xx

Every year at this time, I encourage clients to write a letter to themselves that is full of love and support and that has a voice of kindness. I have been doing this now for maybe 15 years and still find it a meaningful process. Finding additional care notes like this hold a similar function: past me takes care of present me. Present me can advocate and set intentions for future me.

Someone in the family went out and bought Christmas lights for the tree and put them up. Without seeing the note, I put the old lights along the hedge and some lights on the garden room. I found the note on the floor under the hedge after I had done it. I have no memory of writing it.

This is the best part of the magic I believe can come from writing little love notes to yourself: somehow you remember what you wrote unconsciously as an invitation. Sometimes you do things you forgot you challenged yourself to to - or asked yourself to do as a defiant act of self love. A letter to yourself does not have the hardness of a “resolution” list. It’s the gentleness of an intention, spoken from a kind place. On 31st December I will get to read the letter I wrote to myself in January. This is what New Year is for me. I’m looking forward to it, especially as I know that the main force behind this idea is to always be loving and kind to yourself.

05/09/2025

“Secure”, “Disorganised”, “Anxious” or “Avoidant”…
…how our caregivers have held us, or abandoned us, has a deep impact on subsequent experiences of relationship. These Attachments in early childhood inform our ability to let go of unhealthy relationships or dynamics.

This is an original story/image poem about attachment and relationship from Sometimes Trauma.

In the UK, children at 8 go on a residential school trip for a working week. For many, it's the first time away from home.

Sometimes, being prepared to defend our inner child takes a "Dark Night" moment. The process of personal growth is hard for us all.

This poem was written at a time of great change in my life, as I became prepared to defend, (and change), what I was allowing myself to let in and what I knew I needed to let go of.

https://youtu.be/-sD_7iq9NPA

"Sometimes, Trauma" is an organisation specialising in working with clients and therapists within the Trauma Therapy field, providing therapy, groups, one-to-one supervision, couple/family work and psychoeducation to those that can benefit from it.

You can find more information at www.sometimestrauma.com. This organisation is run by Hannah Duncan/(HanJan) who is a therapist with over 20 years' experience of working as a therapist and facillitator.

“Secure”, “Disorganised”, “Anxious” or “Avoidant”……how our caregivers have held us, or abandoned us, has a deep impact on subsequent experiences of relations...

17/07/2025

Sad that the world lost this giant poet this week. Glad that these words and many others are echoing in the wake.

13/07/2025

https://youtu.be/-sD_7iq9NPA?si=ag0BpMPdZ1ImSBnn

Here is the latest audio poem from the Sometimes Trauma Therapy Sandwich collection. It features a very beautiful clarinet quartet arrangement which is worth listening to for itself! In this poem, we are looking at Attachment and how sometimes you have to break your own attachment pattern to protect the vulnerable child parts of yourself, as well as (in this case) the very real vulnerable child you are trying to protect from your own relational choices.

“Secure”, “Disorganised”, “Anxious” or “Avoidant”……how our caregivers have held us, or abandoned us, has a deep impact on subsequent experiences of relations...

30/06/2025

Midsummer and the evenings are just delicious. It strikes me - as I come back home from a walk by the coast path - that this garden room is a pretty peaceful and wonderful place to come for therapy.

(And my fish all let me stroke them this evening as they begged for food like little water dogs!)

28/05/2025

I am working for a part of my holiday this week, and find myself doing sessions from an old Victorian hotel in Stranraer. I usually look out over fields and trees from Devon. Today I am looking at an old ferry port and the blue, blue sea. The sparrows I hear calling are the same accompaniment to both places!

28/01/2025

This weekend Sometimes Trauma will be doing their first live training event: a retreat day in Devon with lots of somatic practice and a focus on the delivery of a toolkit for those working through trauma. It's an exciting threshold for us: combining live music with meditation and emotional regulation practice.

Dave and I have worked tirelessly on this throughout this month. Yesterday he was able to put together this regulation video to go alongside the original Memento Mori practice we will be doing. See the YouTube link below to have a listen to the music and see the outline if you are interested! I also attach copies of the Toolkit we will be sharing with the therapists who attend and which I will make available to my trauma clients.

https://youtu.be/4FtFBl5lr3Q?si=xbXoCQBDrnYNZlHX

05/01/2025

https://youtu.be/MYO_qr4Mewo?si=LdYinG8MpY6Cj3gE

Facebook memories tell me that this song was uploaded a year ago yesterday. It's an original love song to all those on a therapeutic journey trying to brave change and conquer fear.

Hopefully 2025 will see more poetry, music and regulation videos from Sometimes Trauma, all offered with the hope of spreading one key message: trauma is not a life sentence and with befriending of nervous systems, changing of meanings and great bravery, safety is possible.

1st February will also be the first in-person Retreat CPD event from us in Devon, which is simultaneously terrifying and very exciting!

This is a love song for anyone who embarks upon a therapeutic journey or a process of intense self-development. It is often a great risk or a time of uncerta...

30/10/2024

It’s been a vital part of my working life for the past decade to ensure I have regular holidays away from the pressures of working with complex trauma and managing a busy family/emotional life. The capacity to become vicariously traumatised is great in the work I do, so the priority has to be to spend as much time as I can doing the things I love. This October, it has been to travel to the Pyrenees in my camper for some hiking and cycling.

04/10/2024

This moment of slow, torturous drama on my therapy room door earlier in the week got me thinking: if you are keeping your head down only, you might miss the view. You might get frustrated because of how long the travel takes or how alien the landscape is! Progress in therapy (or outside of it…) is progress, however tough going it may seem. Making new neural pathways and slowing down our autonomic nervous system responses may take time, but it is entirely possible to make this change happen.