Touchstone Counseling Services

09/25/2025

✨ The Trauma Timeline: 3 Key Stages ✨
Trauma doesn’t always look the same across a lifetime. It often shows up differently in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood — and understanding this timeline helps therapists support healing at every stage.

Step 1 – Early Childhood
Attachment wounds, developmental delays, or behavioral regressions may emerge. Early safety and secure connection are vital foundations.

Step 2 – Adolescence
Trauma may surface as identity struggles, risk-taking behaviors, dissociation, or conflict in relationships. Support at this stage often means fostering regulation and belonging.

Step 3 – Adulthood
Unresolved trauma can evolve into C-PTSD, relational difficulties, or chronic stress patterns. Therapy focuses on integrating the past and building resilience for lasting healing.

💡 Trauma is not just an event — it’s an imprint that can change shape over time. Recognizing these shifts helps us meet clients exactly where they are.

👉 Want to learn more about trauma-informed therapy?
Comment “training” below and we’ll DM you Dr. Janina Fisher’s FREE webinar on working with attachment and trauma.

📌 Save this roadmap for your next session prep
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09/25/2025

🧠 How Trauma Rewires the Brain – 5 Key Changes Therapists Should Know

Trauma isn’t just emotional—it physically changes the brain, affecting how clients process emotions, memories, and stress. As therapists, understanding these neurobiological shifts allows you to use targeted interventions that support healing.

🧩 Amygdala (The Alarm System) – Overactive
Clients may struggle with hypervigilance, anxiety, and emotional reactivity, feeling unsafe even in non-threatening situations.

🧠 Prefrontal Cortex (The Thinker) – Impaired
Trauma can weaken emotional regulation, impulse control, and decision-making, making it harder for clients to engage in rational thinking.

🔄 Hippocampus (The Archivist) – Memory Disruptions
Fragmented trauma memories may lead to flashbacks, dissociation, or difficulty recalling details, impacting how clients process their past.

⚡ Nervous System (Survival Mode) – Dysregulated
Many clients get stuck in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses, leading to chronic stress, emotional numbness, or exhaustion.

🌱 Default Mode Network (Self-Perception) – Disrupted
Trauma can alter a client’s self-perception, leading to shame, self-blame, and struggles with identity.

💡 The Good News? The brain has neuroplasticity, meaning it can rewire and heal with the right interventions.

Want to deepen your trauma-informed skills? Comment "TRAINING" below, and we’ll send you a link to Dr. Janina Fisher’s free webinar.

09/25/2025

Educate yourself…

🛤️ Why Talk Therapy Isn’t Always Enough for Trauma Healing
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Trauma isn’t just a story in the mind—it’s an experience stored in the body. While traditional talk therapy helps with insight, it often doesn’t reach the nervous system, where trauma lives. That’s why many trauma survivors still feel stuck, even after years of therapy.
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To truly heal, we need a mind-body approach that works with the nervous system, emotions, and trauma-driven parts. Here’s a roadmap therapists can use to guide clients toward lasting recovery:
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🔹 Safety & Stabilization – Before deep work, clients need tools to regulate emotions & feel safe in the present.
🔹 Identifying Trauma-Driven Parts – Helping clients recognize & unblend from survival-based parts.
🔹 Rewiring Survival Responses – Teaching the nervous system to shift out of chronic fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
🔹 Processing Trauma Memories Safely – Healing at a pace that prevents overwhelm & retraumatization.
🔹 Rebuilding a Stable Sense of Self – Helping clients reconnect with their Adult Self & strengthen self-trust.
🔹 Integration & Post-Traumatic Growth – Moving from survival to a life built on resilience & meaning.
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Understanding these steps can help therapists offer trauma-informed care that truly supports healing. Want to learn how to stabilize trauma-driven parts before deep processing?
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💡 Comment "Training" below, and we’ll send you a link to Dr. Janina Fisher’s free webinar.
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09/25/2025

🧠 5 Signs Your Client Feels Safe in Therapy 🧠

Creating a sense of safety is the foundation of effective therapy. Here are 5 key signs that your client is feeling safe, informed by Neuroception & Polyvagal Theory:

1️⃣ Relaxed Posture
Clients who feel safe often sit comfortably with open body language, relaxed shoulders, and unclenched hands. Subtle shifts in posture can tell you a lot!

2️⃣ Steady, Calm Breathing
Breathing is a window into the nervous system. Slow, steady breaths indicate regulation and a ventral vagal state—perfect for deep therapeutic work.

3️⃣ Verbal Openness
Clients who feel safe are willing to share thoughts and emotions freely. They respond without hesitation and engage in meaningful conversation.

4️⃣ Eye Contact
Comfortable eye engagement reflects trust and connection. It signals that your client feels secure in your presence.

5️⃣ Co-Regulation with the Therapist
Attunement matters! Mirroring body language, tone, and pacing helps clients feel grounded and supported.

✨ Creating safety isn’t just a skill—it’s transformative for healing.

💬 Comment “Sense” below and we’ll send you a link to Jan Winhall’s free webinar on Neuroception and Polyvagal Training for Therapists!

09/17/2025

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DM9kfOrA1Mc/?igsh=czBmMWN0ZndoOGV1

09/17/2025

09/17/2025

If you feel like you can’t change, what might happen if you stopped resisting your feelings? When we push away emotion, we build a self that avoids. What part of yourself have you been running from?

Share a moment when you leaned into a feeling instead of resisting it. What did you learn?

Curious to explore this further? Listen to our podcast episode 96, “Emotional Inquiry,” a gentle guide to welcoming what feels too big to face. Listen, reflect, and let me know what shifts for you. Podcast link in bio

09/17/2025

How do you notice these three patterns showing up in your own conflicts?

Share a moment when you realized a fight wasn’t about the surface issue, but about one of these deeper dynamics.

Want to go further? Explore our How to Have Great Fights mini-course, available for any two Connection Course alumni, and learn how conflict can actually deepen intimacy. Link to apply for our upcoming Connection Course cohorts in bio.

09/17/2025

Instead of pushing away your feelings, what would happen if you welcomed them and let them clarify your choices? Drop a moment you avoided an emotion and how that shaped what you decided.

Want to go deeper? Listen to our podcast episode 96, “Emotional Inquiry,” where Joe and Brett guide you through a practice to reduce self-judgment, disrupt old habits, and open up new ways to communicate with yourself and others. Link to podcast in bio

09/17/2025

“Everything we should have been taught about emotions, connection, and how to be a person in middle school. No one taught us, but thankfully, these guys are here to do it retroactively.”

We love to read reviews like this one, and are so grateful to our listeners for all the ratings and reviews.

We share two episodes every month! Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

09/17/2025

Beliefs aren’t just “things to get rid of”—they often protect us. What might you be getting out of keeping a belief that holds you back?

Want more? Check out the Art of Accomplishment episode 63, How to See Through Limiting Beliefs, where Joe and Brett look at why limiting beliefs are hard to recognize, what keeps them in place, and how to work through them so life feels freer and more effortless. Link to podcast in bio

06/17/2025

This is sooooo good!

Gaslighting is a form of manipulation in which a gaslighter causes their victim to doubt their own beliefs, sanity, or memory.Learn more:→ What is Gaslightin...