When I finished my training, I remember feeling a mixture of excitement and fear. Excitement because I had finally stepped into a profession I deeply cared about. Fear because I knew there were whole areas where I didn’t feel equipped — none more so than trauma.

Like many of my peers, I worried that I might do more harm than good if I worked with clients who had experienced something deeply traumatic. What if I re-traumatised them? What if I couldn’t contain them, or didn’t know what to say? Underneath it all was a sense of helplessness — the feeling that we hadn’t been given enough practical teaching on how to work with trauma.

One day I brought this concern to supervision. I was lucky. My supervisor at the time — still one of the finest CBT therapists I’ve ever met — didn’t just reassure me with words. She invited me to shadow her in her sessions.

That was the turning point.

I watched as she worked with people who hadn’t just been through one traumatic event but many. I saw her guide them through re-living, carefully and compassionately, and I witnessed the shifts happening right in front of me. It was the most powerful training I could have asked for. Suddenly, trauma work wasn’t something to be feared — it was something that could be done, and done well.

Those sessions built my confidence. When I returned to my work in the IAPT service, I began taking on clients with PTSD. Before long, whenever a trauma case came in, it was sent my way. Not because I was fearless, but because I now had a map — a lived example of what good trauma therapy looked like.

That experience set the foundation for everything that came after. When I left the NHS and moved into private practice, referrals from insurance companies followed. Many of their clients had been through road traffic accidents or workplace incidents, which meant the majority of my caseload was trauma-focused. The more I worked in this area, the more skilled and confident I became.

It was during this time that I first trained in EMDR. As I continued specialising in trauma, I began experimenting, adapting, and blending elements of EMDR (particularly bilateral stimulation) with CBT techniques. Over time, I developed my own way of working with trauma — one that suited me and, more importantly, worked for my clients.

Today, my recovery rates, measured by the IES-R scale, are close to 100% for single-incident trauma. That still amazes me, but it also reinforces what I felt in those early sessions with my supervisor: trauma therapy, done well, is life-changing.

Now, a new chapter is opening. With the results I’ve seen, I feel a responsibility to pass on what I’ve learned so that other therapists can feel confident in this work too. That’s why I’ve created a training programme — combining the techniques I’ve found most effective from CBT and EMDR — designed to give therapists practical tools they can start using straight away.

Looking back, my journey unfolded step by step: from identifying a gap in my knowledge, to learning from a gifted supervisor, to building confidence through experience, to developing my own approach and now teaching others. None of it was clear at the beginning, but the path revealed itself as I walked it.

Working with trauma can feel daunting at first. But it is also some of the most rewarding work you can do. To see a client move from being defined by what happened to them, to reclaiming their life and their future — that transformation is nothing short of extraordinary.