Trauma Counselling
Trauma isn't always loud. Sometimes it's just the thing that quietly shapes how you respond to everything.
If you’ve been carrying something for a long time, whether it’s a specific event or a pattern of experiences that have left their mark, trauma counselling can help. At TDE, we work with adults whose trauma history shapes their present, including those whose previous attempts at trauma work didn’t quite land and those still working out whether what they’ve been through “counts” as trauma at all.
What Trauma Can Look Like
Single-Event Trauma
A specific incident, or several, that has left a lasting mark on how you feel safe in the world. This might be an accident, an assault, a medical experience, a sudden loss, or another defined event whose impact hasn’t fully integrated.
Childhood and Developmental Trauma
The experiences that shape someone before they have the resources or language to make sense of them. This includes abuse and neglect, but also less visible patterns: chronic emotional unavailability, instability, parentification, or growing up in environments where your needs were consistently deprioritised.
Complex Trauma (CPTSD)
Trauma that comes from sustained or repeated exposure rather than a single event. Often relational, often beginning in childhood, often shaping core beliefs about self, others, and safety. Complex trauma frequently shows up in adulthood as relational difficulty, chronic hypervigilance, dissociation, or a sense of “something is wrong with me” that has no obvious source.
Relational Trauma
Trauma that happens in close relationships, including childhood attachment wounds, abusive partnerships, friendship betrayals, and family system dysfunction. The body learns to brace for the people closest to it, and that learning often persists long after the relationships end.
Medical and Systemic Trauma
Trauma from healthcare experiences, including being dismissed, mistreated, misdiagnosed, or having serious symptoms ignored. For adults who’ve spent years being told their experiences weren’t real, or whose neurodivergence or chronic illness has been missed repeatedly, medical trauma is a real and under-recognised pattern.
Cumulative Relational Trauma in Gifted and Neurodivergent Adults
For many neurodivergent and twice-exceptional adults, trauma isn’t a single event. It’s the long-term psychological cost of being chronically misunderstood, held to impossible expectations, dismissed when struggling, or told the difficulty wasn’t real because the ability looked so high. Relational trauma is particularly relevant here. Growing up being misunderstood or misperceived by caregivers, teachers, and peers leaves a mark, and that early relational pattern often gets compounded in adulthood through similar dynamics in friendships, partnerships, and workplaces. This kind of trauma is often missed because it doesn’t fit the standard picture.
Trauma from Late Identification or Misdiagnosis
The cumulative impact of years spent looking for the right framework for your experience and being offered the wrong ones. Many adults arrive at neurodivergent identification carrying real grief and anger about the time, energy, and self-understanding lost along the way.
Vicarious and Secondary Trauma
Trauma absorbed through caring for others, working in helping professions, parenting children with significant needs, or being repeatedly exposed to others’ suffering. The nervous system doesn’t always distinguish between direct experience and sustained exposure.
Meet our team
Visit our team page to learn about our practitioners, their backgrounds, and their work style. This can help you choose the practitioner who best fits your needs.
Tiarni Mudford
Mental Health Social Worker | Therapeutic ADHD Coach
Emma Read
Organisational Psychologist | Therapeutic ADHD Coach | Leadership Coach
Lynsey Allison
ADHD Coach | Leadership & Careers Coach
Shristi Chand
Counsellor & Psychotherapist | Therapeutic ADHD Coach
Jonathan Righetti
Counsellor & Psychotherapist | Therapeutic ADHD Coach
Darren Monsiegneur
Counsellor & Psychotherapist | Therapeutic ADHD Coach
George Mudford
Mental Health Social Worker | Therapeutic ADHD Coach
Dani Bultitude
Founder | Head of Clinical Practice | Principal Therapeutic ADHD Coach
What Trauma Counselling Can Address
Our counsellors work with a range of ways trauma shows up in adult life, including:
- The lasting impact of childhood experiences, including attachment wounds and emotional neglect
- Complex trauma (CPTSD) and the long-term effects of sustained relational stress
- Trauma from abusive or destabilising relationships
- The cumulative cost of being chronically misunderstood, dismissed, or held to impossible standards
- Medical and systemic trauma, including misdiagnosis and dismissed symptoms
- Trauma connected to late-identified neurodivergence and the grief of “what if I’d known sooner”
- Hypervigilance, dissociation, and chronic nervous system dysregulation
- Shame, self-blame, and the internal narratives that trauma builds
- Difficulty trusting yourself, others, or both
- Trauma that’s resurfaced during a major life transition
- Vicarious and secondary trauma from caring or helping roles
- Trauma that hasn’t fully resolved with previous therapy
Other Related Services
ADHD Counselling
A space to work with the emotional load that often shows up alongside ADHD, including the relational and developmental trauma that many neurodivergent adults carry.
Therapeutic ADHD Coaching
Useful when trauma is tangled up with executive function, avoidance, freeze responses, or daily capacity. Sessions can move between trauma work and practical strategy as needed.
Assessment Services
For adults who suspect their trauma history sits alongside an unrecognised neurodivergent profile. We assess for ADHD, autism, AuDHD, and the broader picture.
Careers and Workplace Support
For adults whose work environment has been a source of trauma, or whose trauma history makes professional life harder to navigate. We support clients with workplace dynamics, boundaries, communication, and recovery from work-related distress.
Intersectional ADHD Support
For adults whose trauma sits alongside ADHD and the broader picture, including autism, giftedness, hormonal health, and identity.
What Often Changes First
The constant bracing softens. Clients often notice they can be present in their own body for longer stretches, that situations they used to brace for don’t trigger the same physiological response, and that the internal narrative becomes less harsh. Trauma work takes time, but the early shifts often come from feeling genuinely held in the work, sometimes for the first time.
Your Next Step
You don’t need to know what to call what happened to you, or have your history neatly organised, before reaching out. Many of our clients didn’t. They just knew that something was still shaping their present, and they wanted support that could meet it properly.
If that sounds familiar, start with a conversation. We’ll work out the right fit together.
