Stuck in a Loop? Break Free with Trauma-Informed Care

Do you ever feel like you're caught in a repeating pattern, replaying old scenarios in your mind, or reacting to current situations in ways that feel familiar yet unhelpful? Perhaps you find yourself overwhelmed by intense emotions, struggling with constant anxiety, or feeling a persistent sense of unease that you can't quite shake. This feeling of being "stuck in a loop" is a common, often distressing, experience, and it's frequently a sign that unresolved trauma is subtly (or not so subtly) influencing your present.

Trauma, in its many forms, can leave lasting imprints on our minds and bodies, shaping our responses to stress, relationships, and even everyday challenges. At Kate Newby Counselling, I understand that true healing begins with recognising the impact of these past experiences. Through a compassionate and empowering trauma-informed approach, I can help you understand these loops, gently untangle their roots, and discover new pathways to freedom and well-being.

The "Loop" Defined: When Your Past Dictates Your Present

Being "stuck in a loop" means experiencing:

• Repetitive Thoughts: Constantly replaying past events, criticisms, or perceived failures.

• Recurring Emotional States: Frequently feeling anxious, angry, sad, or numb, even when current circumstances don't seem to warrant it.

• Behavioural Patterns: Finding yourself repeating self-sabotaging actions, withdrawing from relationships, or reacting impulsively, despite knowing it's not serving you.

• Hypervigilance: Feeling constantly on edge, scanning for threats, or experiencing an exaggerated startle response.

• Difficulty Moving Forward: Feeling paralysed by indecision, fear, or a sense of hopelessness.

• Flashbacks or Intrusive Memories: Experiencing vivid recollections of past traumatic events, often triggered by seemingly benign situations.

These loops are often the nervous system's way of trying to protect you based on past threats. They are learned responses that, while once adaptive, now keep you trapped, hindering your ability to live fully in the present.

Trauma: A Broad Spectrum of Impact

It's important to remember that trauma isn't only about "big T" events like combat, severe accidents, or abuse. "Little t" traumas – such as bullying, neglect, chronic stress, relationship breakdowns, or repeated experiences of feeling invalidated or unsafe – can also significantly impact our internal landscape, leading to these persistent "loops." What defines trauma is not the event itself, but its overwhelming effect on an individual's nervous system and psyche, leaving them feeling helpless and out of control.

What is Trauma-Informed Care? A Foundation of Safety and Empowerment

Trauma-informed care is a fundamental shift in perspective. It's not a specific therapeutic technique, but rather an overarching framework that guides how support is delivered. It operates on the core understanding that many individuals seeking help have experienced trauma, and that these experiences profoundly influence their current struggles and responses.

Key principles of trauma-informed care include:

• Safety: Ensuring physical, psychological, and emotional safety for the client and the therapist. This is paramount.

• Trustworthiness & Transparency: Building trust through clear communication, consistency, and respecting boundaries.

• Peer Support: Recognising the value of shared experiences and mutual understanding.

• Collaboration & Mutuality: Partnering with clients in their healing journey, sharing power and decision-making.

• Empowerment, Voice, & Choice: Focusing on building on strengths, fostering resilience, and giving clients agency over their healing process.

• Cultural, Historical, & Gender Issues: Recognising and addressing how cultural, historical, and gender-based biases and experiences of trauma can impact individuals.

Crucially, trauma-informed care prioritises "What happened to you?" over "What's wrong with you?" It views challenging behaviours not as defiance, but as understandable coping mechanisms developed in response to overwhelming experiences.

Breaking Free: How Trauma-Informed Care Untangles the Loop

By integrating these principles, trauma-informed counselling provides a powerful pathway to liberation from repetitive patterns:

• Establishing a Safe Container: Before any deeper processing can occur, the first step is to create a truly safe and predictable environment. This means physical comfort, emotional predictability, and a non-judgmental stance, helping the nervous system to finally relax its hyper-vigilant state.

• Focus on Regulation & Resourcing FIRST: Unlike traditional therapy that might dive immediately into traumatic narratives, trauma-informed care prioritises building coping skills and self-regulation tools. This might include mindfulness techniques, grounding exercises, or breathwork, equipping you to manage overwhelming emotions before exploring difficult memories.

• Empowerment and Reclaiming Control: Trauma often strips individuals of their sense of control. Trauma-informed care actively seeks to restore this by giving you choice in the pace and direction of therapy, honouring your boundaries, and highlighting your inherent strengths and resilience.

• Understanding Your Responses, Not Judging Them: Instead of labelling behaviours as "bad" or "wrong," we explore them as intelligent (though sometimes outdated) survival strategies. This perspective fosters self-compassion and reduces shame, which are vital for healing.

• Addressing the Impact, Not Just the Event: The focus isn't solely on recounting traumatic events but understanding how those events have shaped your nervous system, beliefs, and relationship patterns. This allows for healing the lingering effects rather than just revisiting the pain.

• Building New Neural Pathways: Through consistent practice of new coping mechanisms, emotional regulation, and processing experiences within a safe context, your brain can gradually rewire, creating new, healthier responses and breaking free from the old "loops."

• Holistic Approach: Recognising that trauma impacts the mind, body, and spirit, trauma-informed care often considers the interconnectedness of physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts in the healing process.

Finding Your Path to Freedom with Kate Newby Counselling

If you've been feeling stuck in repeating patterns, navigating persistent anxiety, or struggling with the lingering echoes of past difficult experiences, trauma-informed care offers a deeply respectful and effective path forward.

At Kate Newby Counselling, my person-centred approach is inherently trauma-informed. I provide a genuinely safe, confidential, and non-judgmental online space where your comfort and agency are paramount. I understand that healing is not a linear process and that building trust takes time. My focus is on empowering you with tools to manage distress, process experiences at your own pace, and gently guide you towards a place of greater calm, clarity, and control.

Online counselling offers a unique advantage for trauma recovery, as it allows you to engage in therapy from the comfort and safety of your own environment – a place where you feel most secure and in control. This can significantly reduce the potential for overwhelm often associated with leaving your home to attend appointments.

You don't have to stay stuck in the loop. With the right support and a trauma-informed approach, true healing and liberation are within reach.

Ready to break free and create new pathways for your future? Contact Kate Newby Counselling today to schedule your confidential online session and begin your journey towards lasting healing and peace.