Summit Counselling Services — Specialty
Trauma TherapyWe are resilient by nature. But sometimes, after a traumatic experience, we get stuck — and we need help finding our way through.
Trauma is not about what happened to you. It's about what happened inside you as a result. Summit's registered psychologists specialize in trauma treatment — helping you process what's stuck, regulate what's been dysregulated, and rebuild what's been fractured.
Understanding Trauma
Trauma is not the event. It's what gets stuck inside you.
The thought of trying to resolve your trauma can feel so overwhelming that you may be wondering if therapy could even help — if you could find some peace and relief. Trauma can be disturbing, and it can lead to debilitating anxiety. When you think about your trauma or encounter a trigger that reminds you of it, you may feel keyed up or on edge, like something terrible is about to happen.
Your sleep may become disturbed by insomnia and nightmares, or you may have panic attacks — shortness of breath, rapid heart rate, extreme fear. Living with symptoms like that is exhausting. Depression, brain fog, memory problems, and difficulty concentrating often follow. Physiologically, you might have changes in appetite or gastrointestinal problems, as well as body aches and pains.
Trauma doesn't just live in memory. It lives in the body — in the nervous system's continued attempt to protect you from something that has already passed. Effective trauma therapy works at that level, helping the body and mind process what they couldn't process at the time of the event.
We human beings are resilient. Trauma doesn't make you broken — it makes you someone who experienced something overwhelming and hasn't yet found the way through. That's what therapy is for.
"Trauma is not what happens to you. It's what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you." — Gabor Maté
Signs trauma may be affecting you
- Feeling keyed up, on edge, or easily startled
- Intrusive memories, flashbacks, or nightmares
- Avoiding people, places, or situations that trigger memories
- Emotional numbness or feeling disconnected from yourself
- Persistent anxiety, dread, or fear that feels out of proportion
- Difficulty trusting people or feeling safe in relationships
- Physical symptoms — tension, pain, digestive issues — with no clear cause
- Difficulty concentrating, memory problems, or brain fog
- Irritability, outbursts, or difficulty managing emotional reactions
- Sleep disturbances — insomnia, nightmares, hyperarousal at night
- Depression, low mood, or loss of interest in things that used to matter
- A sense of being changed, damaged, or that the world is permanently unsafe
Types of Trauma
Trauma takes many forms — all of them valid
One of the most important things to understand about trauma is that its severity is not determined by the "size" of the event. It's determined by its impact on your nervous system.
Big T Trauma
Events widely recognized as traumatic — accidents, assault, sexual violence, natural disasters, witnessing death, war, life-threatening illness, or sudden catastrophic loss. These events overwhelm the nervous system's ability to cope in the moment.
Small t Trauma
Events that may not appear "serious enough" to outsiders but are deeply distressing to the individual — emotional neglect, bullying, repeated criticism, medical procedures, relationship loss, humiliation, or chronic invalidation. Small t traumas often go unrecognized and untreated, yet have significant lasting impact.
Complex Trauma (C-PTSD)
Repeated, prolonged, or chronic traumatic experiences — often in childhood or within close relationships. Complex trauma affects not just memory and anxiety but a person's entire sense of self, their ability to trust, and their capacity for intimate relationships. It requires a different therapeutic approach than single-event trauma.
Childhood & Developmental Trauma
Trauma that occurred during critical windows of development — abuse, neglect, household dysfunction, or caregivers who were sources of fear rather than safety. Developmental trauma shapes the nervous system, attachment patterns, and self-concept in ways that can affect every domain of adult life.
Relational & Betrayal Trauma
Trauma caused by the person you depended on — a partner, parent, or trusted figure. The wound is compounded by the fact that the source of harm was supposed to be a source of safety. See also our betrayal trauma page.
Sexual Trauma
Sexual assault, abuse, coercion, or violation. Sexual trauma often carries additional layers of shame, self-blame, and social silence that complicate healing. Our therapists are trained to work with sexual trauma with the sensitivity and expertise it requires. See also our sexual trauma page.
First Responder & Occupational Trauma
Cumulative trauma from repeated exposure to suffering, violence, or crisis in professional contexts — for paramedics, police, firefighters, nurses, social workers, and others whose work takes them into other people's worst moments. See our first responders page.
Medical & Somatic Trauma
Traumatic medical experiences — difficult diagnoses, invasive procedures, ICU stays, labour and delivery, or chronic illness — that leave the body in a state of fear and hypervigilance. The body remembers what the mind may try to rationalize away.
Resilience & Recovery
Getting stuck is not a character flaw. Getting unstuck is possible.
Humans are remarkably resilient — the capacity to recover from adversity is built into us. But resilience is not the same as immunity. When an experience exceeds what the nervous system can process and integrate at the time, it gets stored differently — not as ordinary memory, but as a live charge that continues to affect perception, emotion, and behaviour long after the event has passed.
This is not weakness. It is not a failure to cope. It is a normal response to an abnormal experience — and it is one of the most treatable presentations in the psychological literature. The right approach, matched to the right person, produces meaningful change even in longstanding and complex presentations.
At Summit, we have registered psychologists with training in every major evidence-based trauma treatment area. Whether you're coming in immediately after a traumatic event or decades later, whether your trauma is clearly defined or diffuse and hard to name — we have psychologists who know how to work with it.
How Trauma Presents
Trauma affects your body, mind, and relationships
Trauma symptoms don't always look like what people expect. They can be subtle, confusing, and easy to attribute to other causes.
Hyperarousal
Feeling constantly on edge, easily startled, unable to relax. The nervous system stuck in a state of threat detection — scanning, vigilant, exhausted by its own alertness.
Intrusion
Intrusive memories, flashbacks, nightmares, and unwanted images that arrive without permission. The traumatic material surfacing without warning into present-day experience.
Avoidance
Avoiding people, places, situations, conversations, or even thoughts that might trigger trauma memories. A strategy that provides short-term relief but often maintains the trauma long-term.
Emotional Numbing
Feeling disconnected, flat, dissociated, or emotionally unavailable — to others and to oneself. A protective response that also shuts out positive experience, connection, and joy.
Negative Cognition
Persistent negative beliefs about self, others, or the world: "I am damaged," "No one can be trusted," "The world is permanently dangerous." These beliefs feel like truth rather than trauma.
Somatic Symptoms
Body aches, tension, gastrointestinal symptoms, chronic pain, fatigue, and physical sensations that have no identifiable medical cause — the body's way of holding what the mind couldn't process.
The Treatment Process
How trauma treatment actually works
Evidence-based trauma treatment follows a phased approach — moving through stages that build on each other, at a pace your nervous system can tolerate.
Safety & Stabilization
Before processing trauma, we build internal safety. Grounding skills, nervous system regulation, and a therapeutic relationship that feels secure enough to do the work. Trauma processing without this foundation can cause retraumatization — this phase is not optional.
Processing & Integration
Using evidence-based approaches, we work with the traumatic material — not by repeatedly recounting it, but by changing how it's stored and experienced. The memory loses its charge. The past becomes past. The nervous system stops responding as though the threat is present.
Reconnection & Growth
Rebuilding the things trauma takes: trust in yourself and others, the ability to be present, a coherent sense of self, and engagement with life. For many people, this phase includes not just recovery but a degree of post-traumatic growth — a deepened understanding of resilience, connection, and what matters.
Treatment Methods
Evidence-based approaches — matched to you
We have registered psychologists in every major trauma treatment area. No single approach works for everyone — your therapist will match the method to your specific history, presentation, and goals.
EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing — one of the most extensively researched trauma treatments available. EMDR changes how traumatic memories are stored, reducing their charge without requiring you to narrate the experience in detail.
Learn about EMDR at Summit →Somatic Experiencing
Trauma lives in the body. Somatic Experiencing works with the physiological dimension of trauma — completing incomplete biological threat responses and returning the nervous system to regulation. Particularly effective for shock trauma and for people who feel "stuck" even after years of talk therapy.
Learn about Somatic Experiencing →Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART)
A newer evidence-based approach that combines eye movements with imagery rescripting — allowing people to change how traumatic memories feel and look, without requiring extensive verbal processing. Often produces significant results in fewer sessions than traditional approaches.
Learn about ART at Summit →Trauma-Focused CBT
Cognitive Processing Therapy and other CBT-based approaches address the thought patterns that trauma installs — the negative beliefs about self and world that feel like truth but are actually distortions created by the traumatic experience. Highly effective, particularly for single-event trauma and PTSD.
Learn about CBT at Summit →Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT)
Works at the level of core emotional experience — the grief, shame, fear, and rage that sit underneath trauma's surface symptoms. Particularly effective for relational trauma, attachment wounds, and complex PTSD where the emotional impact is as prominent as the intrusive symptoms.
Learn about EFT at Summit →Attachment-Based Approaches
For trauma rooted in early relationships with caregivers — developmental and complex trauma that has affected the fundamental capacity for safety and connection. Attachment-based work uses the therapeutic relationship itself as a corrective experience, building the secure base the client never had.
Learn about Attachment Therapy →Book a Session
Trauma therapy in Edmonton, St. Albert & Windermere
Trauma therapy is available in person at all three Summit locations, and virtually for clients anywhere in Alberta. Your first consultation is always free.
Wîhkwêntôwin ᐄᐧᐦᑫᐧᐣᑑᐃᐧᐣ (Oliver)
Grandin Plaza, 2nd Floor
Edmonton, AB
Common Questions
Trauma therapy — your questions answered
Our Therapists
Psychologists who specialize in trauma treatment
Summit has registered psychologists and therapists with specialized training across the full range of trauma presentations — from recent single-event trauma to longstanding complex PTSD. Start with a free consultation to find the right fit.
Related Support
Other areas we work with
Getting stuck is not forever. Let's find your way through.
Reach out through our contact form, or call us at 780-217-4665 for a free consultation. We'll talk about what you're experiencing and whether we're the right fit.
We acknowledge that our practice is located in Treaty 6 territory, on the traditional lands of the Cree, Saulteaux, Niitsitapi (Blackfoot), Métis, and Nakota Sioux Peoples, including our Brewery District office in Wîhkwêntôwin ᐄᐧᐦᑫᐧᐣᑑᐃᐧᐣ (Oliver). We recognize that healing and reconciliation is a responsibility shared by all and are proud to partner with organizations that help Indigenous community members access culturally safe mental health care.