True2You Therapy, Counselling, Creative Arts & Play Therapy

03/04/2026

When trauma is triggered, the mind can enter a state known as age regression, where you emotionally respond as the younger version of yourself who first experienced the pain. In these moments, your reactions may feel overwhelming because they are rooted in past wounds rather than the present situation. It can be confusing, as your current self is replaced by the feelings and coping mechanisms of that earlier age. This shift often brings up intense emotions that may not seem proportional to the current circumstances. Understanding age regression allows you to recognize that these responses are not weaknesses, but signals from unresolved experiences that need attention. By acknowledging this process with awareness and compassion, you can begin to support your younger self and respond from a place of present strength. This awareness gives you the opportunity to heal and integrate those past experiences, empowering you to react more consciously in the future.

02/04/2026

Trauma doesn’t always live in the stories people tell.

Often, it lives in the systems that developed to survive it.

This visual highlights an important clinical reality: under overwhelming stress, the brain’s ability to encode a clear, verbal narrative can shut down. Instead of being stored as an organized story, traumatic experiences are often held as implicit sensory fragments and procedural survival patterns.

That’s why clients may say, “I know I’m safe, but my body doesn’t feel that way.”

Some ways this shows up in practice:

• Implicit memory can surface as emotional flashbacks, overwhelming shame, or sudden fear without a clear narrative context.
• Procedural memory stores learned survival behaviors—automatic responses like avoidance, hypervigilance, or difficulty trusting others.
• The body holds the record, often through physical sensations such as numbness, tension, dizziness, or protective postures.

These patterns aren’t signs of pathology—they’re signs of adaptation.

Understanding the difference between narrative memory and survival-based memory systems helps clinicians approach trauma treatment with greater compassion and precision. It also explains why trauma healing often involves more than cognitive insight alone.

At Academy of Therapy Wisdom, we explore approaches that work with both the mind and body—helping therapists support integration, regulation, and healing for trauma survivors.

If you’d like to learn more about working with fragmented trauma parts, comment “Training” below and we’ll send you a link to Dr. Janina Fisher’s FREE webinar: Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors.

How do you see implicit or procedural trauma patterns showing up in your clinical work?

11/03/2026

Not all trauma looks the way people expect.

Sometimes it’s the quiet moments that leave the deepest wounds —
being ignored when you needed comfort, walking on eggshells around someone, or being told your feelings were “too much.”

Experiences like these can shape how we see ourselves, how safe we feel with others, and how we process emotions.

If any of this resonates with you, please know:
your experiences are valid, and healing is possible. 💜

I created a Recovery Trauma Workbook to help you gently explore your experiences, understand your patterns, and begin rebuilding self-trust at your own pace.

You can find the workbook here:
🔗 recoverytraumaltd.gumroad.com

Healing isn’t about blaming — it’s about understanding, reclaiming your voice, and learning that your feelings matter.

27/02/2026

🌋 When anger shows up… it’s often protecting something deeper

Anger gets a bad reputation.

We’re taught to calm it down, push it away, lower our voice, be the “bigger person”, stop being “too much”.

But anger is not the problem.

Anger is information.
Anger is movement.
Anger is protection.

If you imagine this visually, anger is often described as the tip of the iceberg.

Above the surface we see the heat, the sharpness, the reactivity.

But underneath?

There’s hurt. Grief. Shame. Fear. Feeling unwanted. Powerlessness. Overwhelm. Loneliness.

And here’s the neuroscience bit (because you know I love this 🧠✨):

Anger is a mobilising emotion.

It lives in the sympathetic nervous system — the same system that prepares your body for action.

Your heart rate increases, your breathing changes, your muscles prime, adrenaline flows.

This is not your body trying to sabotage you.

This is your body saying:

⚠️ “Something matters here.”
⚠️ “A boundary has been crossed.”
⚠️ “There is an unmet need.”

Anger gives us energy to act, whereas emotions like sadness or shame collapse us inward.

That’s why anger so often needs movement to be processed.

Not suppression.
Not overthinking.
Movement.

Because when that activation has nowhere to go, it doesn’t disappear… it turns into:

shutdown
anxiety
people pleasing
resentment
passive aggression
chronic tension
emotional numbness

🔥 Primary vs secondary emotions

Most of us weren’t allowed to feel our primary emotions.

Primary emotions are the vulnerable ones:
→ “That hurt me”
→ “I feel rejected”
→ “I’m scared”
→ “I feel invisible”

If those weren’t safe to express, the nervous system learned to use anger as a secondary emotion — a protective layer.

Not because you’re aggressive.

But because anger is safer than being seen in your pain.

Especially if you grew up with:

“Stop crying”
“Don’t answer back”
“You’re fine”
“Be grateful”
“Good girls/boys don’t get angry”
“Children should be seen and not heard”

You weren’t taught how to process anger.
You were taught how to suppress it.
And suppressed anger doesn’t disappear — it gets redirected.

Into:

over-compliance
self-criticism
burnout
tolerance of things that actually hurt you
difficulty accessing your voice or boundaries

Because anger is the emotion that says:

🛑 This isn’t okay for me
🛑 I matter too
🛑 Something needs to change

At its core, anger is not about losing control.
It’s about pointing to something that needs care, attention, or protection.

🌿 Healthy ways to process anger (without hurting yourself or anyone else):

Because it’s a high-energy emotion, it needs a physical outlet first, reflection second.

Try:

walking fast
shaking out your arms
hitting a pillow / boxing bag
stomping
loud singing in the car
pushing against a wall
breathwork with strong exhales
writing the uncensored version in a journal (not the polite one)

Then — once the nervous system settles — the curiosity comes in:

✨ What boundary was crossed?
✨ What did I need in that moment?
✨ What did this remind me of?
✨ Is this anger protecting hurt, fear, shame, grief?

That’s where the healing is.

Because the goal is not to “get rid of anger”.

The goal is to:

💚 feel it safely
💚 understand it
💚 let it move through
💚 let it guide you back to your unmet needs

Anger, when listened to, becomes:

→ clarity
→ self-respect
→ boundaries
→ change
→ voice

Not destruction — but transformation.

So if anger shows up for you…
instead of asking:

❌ “What’s wrong with me?”

try:

✅ “What is this trying to protect?”

That’s where your deeper emotional world lives.
And that’s where real self-compassion begins.

🌿
Into the Wild Counselling

22/02/2026

🧠🧘🏻‍♀️We have to show, not just tell, our nervous system that it can experience safety, calm, connection, and groundedness. We do this through new experiences, new ways of relating, new ways of coping and interfacing with the world…

And this is why effective therapy will integrate the mind AND body into the therapeutic work, as well as emphasize the importance of seeking out/cultivating these new types of lived and felt experiences. 🤍

✨So, if you’re constantly feeling stressed and/or anxious, and it feels like nothing’s working, it could be that things aren’t taking “root” because your nervous system can’t be tricked by quick hacks or temporary bandaids… it’s got to, repeatedly, feel and deeply experience safety. For many of us, this means changing deeply rooted ineffective patterns and habits - so it may take some time, but it’s possible!

13/02/2026

Trauma healing isn’t a straight line — and it’s rarely just about talking it through.

In effective trauma therapy training at Academy of Therapy Wisdom, clinicians learn that real healing follows phases. Here’s what that roadmap actually looks like in practice:

1️⃣ Safety & Stabilization
Before processing trauma, the nervous system needs safety. This means building trust, predictability, and regulation skills so clients aren’t overwhelmed.

2️⃣ Awareness & Mapping
Clients begin noticing triggers, body sensations, relational patterns, and survival responses (fight, flight, freeze, fawn). You can’t change what you can’t track.

3️⃣ Regulation & Resources
Therapy focuses on expanding the window of tolerance through grounding, co-regulation, and bottom-up skills that build resilience.

4️⃣ Processing Trauma Safely
Only when sufficient stability is present do we gently process traumatic memories — at a pace the nervous system can tolerate.

5️⃣ Integration & Identity
Clients begin making meaning of their experiences, rebuilding a coherent sense of self, and strengthening relationships.

6️⃣ Growth & Reconnection
Healing shifts from symptom reduction to connection, purpose, creativity, and post-traumatic growth.

At the Academy of Therapy Wisdom, we focus on helping therapists move beyond insight-only models and integrate body-based, nervous-system informed approaches that truly stabilize trauma survivors.

If you’re a therapist who wants practical, bottom-up tools you can use immediately:

👉 Comment “System” below and we’ll send you a link to Linda Thai’s FREE webinar on Bottom-Up Strategies for Trauma Stabilization.

Save this post for your clinical toolbox.
Share with a colleague who works with trauma.
Follow for more trauma-informed insights.

03/01/2026

01/12/2025

THE MASKING CYCLE

Many children hold everything in all day, only releasing their distress when they reach the safety of home. This visual shows how easily a young person can get pulled into the masking cycle — not because they’re coping well, but because they’re trying hard not to be seen as struggling.

Trigger → Something overwhelms their system — a demand, sensory overload, change, or social pressure.

Big Emotion → They feel it intensely but don’t feel safe enough to show it openly.

Dysregulation → Their nervous system moves into stress mode, making it harder to think clearly or stay flexible.

Misunderstood Response → Adults may miss the early signs, interpreting their behaviour as overreaction or defiance.

Shame or Fear → The child begins to worry about being judged, punished, or seen as “too much”.

Suppression or Escalation → They either mask harder, pushing everything down, or become more overwhelmed — and the cycle continues.

If you’re supporting a child who masks, our Masking Toolkit walks you through identifying triggers, strategies to reduce the pressure and help them feel safe enough to be their authentic selves.
Link in comments below ⬇️ or via Linktree Shop in Bio.

28/11/2025

It takes the body time to calm — not just a few deep breaths.

When a child is overwhelmed, their nervous system can take 20–60 minutes to fully settle after a surge of stress hormones. A heightened sense of justice (more common in neurodivergent children) can drive the chemical changes for longer). That’s why calm can’t be rushed. They need safety, patience and connection — not pressure to “get over it.”

Understanding this is at the heart of brain-based parenting. Regulation isn’t instant; it’s built through co-regulation and trust.

This also demonstrates why a child needs longer than 5 minutes out of class after an incident.

There is a full range of calming strategy prompts in our toolkit below.

NOW AVAILABLE IN THE RESOURCE STORE - to accompany our series on social media.

The Child Brain Explained: How the Upstairs & Downstairs Brain Shape Behaviour, a Toolkit for Parents & Educators - available for only £3.75 until 3 November 2025

Electronic download available at link in comments ⬇️ or via our Linktree Shop in Bio.

26/11/2025

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rachel-morse-0204143b_traumainformed-education-childdevelopment-ugcPost-7397682083781054464-od65?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAAbXhQMB2xHKnnaDO9lE5fOeSANGpInyLyU

Why don’t traditional consequences work for children with developmental or relational trauma? I’ve been asked this twice today—once by a teacher unsure why students need wellbeing or time-out passes, and once by a parent worried that empathising with a child meant excusing their behaviour. The...