Why Trauma Isn’t Just About What Happened — and How Therapy Helps
Dr. Gabor Maté once said: “Trauma is not just what happened to you, but what happened inside of you as a result of what happened to you.” You can read more about his perspective on trauma here.
This idea reshapes the way we think about healing. Trauma is not only about the past event itself. It is about how that moment reshaped your sense of safety, trust, and connection — both with yourself and with the world. Healing, then, is less about “fixing” the past and more about restoring what was missing at the time: safety, attunement, and compassionate connection.
Why Relationships Matter in Healing
Human life is built on relationships. When we hear the word “relationship,” we often think of couples or family therapy. But relationships are much broader and more fundamental than that:
Relationship to self — how you speak to yourself in moments of struggle.
Relationship to your body — how you experience and respond to emotions, thoughts, and sensations.
Relationship to caregivers and children — how early patterns of attachment continue to shape your life.
Relationship to the world — how safe, supported, or connected you feel as you move through daily life.
When trauma disrupts any of these connections, it can leave you feeling isolated, unsafe, or “stuck.”
How Therapy Helps Restore Connection
Psychotherapy is not just about talking through your story. It is about experiencing something new in the presence of a safe and supportive professional.
In the therapy room, the relationship itself becomes part of the healing. A safe, attuned, and compassionate connection can help repair what trauma once disrupted. Over time, this new relational experience allows your nervous system to relearn trust, safety, and self-compassion.
One approach I often use in this work is Accelerated Resolution Therapy, which helps clients resolve painful memories and feel relief more quickly than traditional talk therapy alone.
This is why therapy can be so transformative — because healing doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens through connection.
Why a Human Relationship Matters
Healing through therapy depends on something uniquely human: our nervous systems are wired to co-regulate. When we are in the presence of a safe and attuned other person, our body naturally begins to calm. This is reinforced by the science of mirror neurons — the brain’s way of “reflecting” another person’s emotional state.
This means that in a session with a trained therapist, your body can literally borrow calm and safety until it learns to hold it on its own. This is not something that can be replicated with an AI chatbot or digital program. Insight is valuable, but healing requires attunement — the felt sense of safety created when two nervous systems meet.
This is why therapy can be so transformative — because healing doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens through connection.
A New Way Forward
If you’ve ever wondered why talking about your struggles hasn’t been enough, it may be because healing requires more than insight. It requires relationship.
Therapy gives you a safe and supportive connection where you can begin to rebuild trust in yourself, your body, and the world around you. That is the foundation for lasting change.