TRIUMPH OVER TRAUMA
Be Set Free
Welcome
If you have found your way here, then I imagine the chances are you are searching for a way to resolve feelings and behaviours that keep repeating, no matter what you do or who you speak to. In fact, you may be experiencing that the more you do to try and fix things, the worse it gets. What I honour is that something inside of you is what brought you here. It is not just your curiosity. It is something deeper. I imagine there is a feeling you have been carrying that will not quite let go, no matter what you have tried.
I may not know your exact feeling, however I can assure you in my past I have carried unwanted feelings and behaviours too.
My name is John and I am a counsellor with over 35 years of experience, working with people who are carrying the weight of things that have happened to them, sometimes long ago and sometimes only recently, and no matter what they have tried, they have not been able to escape them. I am not going to pretend that I have all the answers, but what I do have is a deep understanding of how trauma sits inside a person, how it shapes the way we see ourselves and the world around us, and how it can quietly run our lives without us even knowing it is there. I have that understanding because I have studied it, yes, and more than that – I have lived it, worked through it and can safely say I am on the other side of it.
Triumph Over Trauma is not just a name. It is my story. That is how it came to be the title of this website. I believe that working together, we can write your triumph over trauma story too.
I work a little differently from what you might expect. I do not sit with a clipboard asking you “How does that make you feel?”, or “Tell me a bit more about that”. I sit across from you as a person who listens in order to experience you, to get who you are beneath what you think, feel and do. We work together and we go to where the real stuff is. Not to relive it, but to make peace with it and to meet the parts of you that have been carrying the pain, and to let them know that they do not have to carry it anymore.
The work is gentle and it is respectful and it moves at your pace, not mine. And I have to say that it goes deeper than most people expect, often bringing real relief sooner than they thought was possible.
There are moments in life when something happens and the world no longer seems the same. We keep going and we function and we do what needs to be done. But something inside remains unsettled, as though part of us is still frozen in that moment. We cycle through patterns that we do not fully understand. Shame, blame, regret, resentment. And underneath it all, a hollow feeling that does not go away. And beneath all of it may be anger. An anger that has been pushed down and bottled up because it never felt safe to express it. And then there are those moments it leaks out sideways or erupts when we least expect it. Then the whole cycle begins again.
If that sounds familiar to you then I want you to hear this: You are not broken. You are carrying something that needs to be seen and heard and processed, not pushed down or managed around.
There is another way. It may not happen overnight, but with patience and kindness and compassion there is a journey back home to yourself. To you, the “who” that is at the mercy of the what you think, feel, and do.
I approach counselling as a collaborative process where you are not reduced to symptoms or labels. You are met as a person with a story that makes sense when it is finally listened to with care.
Be set free does not mean forgetting what happened, it means you are no longer being defined by it.
If something in these words resonates with you then you are welcome to begin with a simple conversation. There is no pressure and no expectation. Just a space to be heard.