The bottom line: Trauma-informed care improves safety and awareness but often stops short of supporting real recovery and long term change. Genuine healing requires active, evidence based approaches that help people rebuild emotional regulation, bodily safety, and a sense of control over their lives, with clear benefits for mental health and well-being. For healthcare practice and public policy, this means shifting resources towards integrated healing interventions rather than relying on recognition alone.
Trauma can alter how people think, feel, relate, and function long after the original event has passed. Its effects often extend beyond psychological distress, shaping physical health, relationships, and a person’s sense of agency. Trauma-informed care has emerged as a response to this reality, aiming to create safer environments and reduce the risk of retraumatisation. While this framework is valuable, it often stops at recognition rather than recovery. Acknowledging trauma does not, on its own, enable healing or personal growth.
Meaningful recovery requires active engagement with trauma’s psychological, emotional, and physiological consequences. Healing involves understanding how trauma operates, rebuilding internal and external resources, and restoring a sense of control and self-worth. When individuals are supported to participate actively in their healing, outcomes extend beyond symptom management to include improved mental health, stronger relationships, and greater social participation. This distinction between awareness and action is central to moving from trauma-informed care towards genuine trauma healing.
What is trauma?
Trauma is a psychological and emotional response to experiences that overwhelm an individual’s capacity to cope. These experiences may be acute or prolonged and can include interpersonal loss, violence, neglect, displacement, or systemic adversity. Trauma does not produce a uniform response. Its impact varies depending on factors such as age, prior experiences, resilience, and access to social support.
At a biological level, trauma disrupts the stress response system, particularly the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. Persistent activation of this system can impair mood regulation, memory, attention, and emotional control, contributing to anxiety, depression, and increased vulnerability to substance use. Trauma also interacts with social and structural factors such as poverty, discrimination, or housing insecurity, often compounding its effects.
Understanding trauma therefore requires more than recognising symptoms. It demands attention to the broader context in which trauma occurs and an appreciation of how personal history and systemic conditions shape recovery. Without this depth of understanding, interventions risk addressing surface distress while leaving underlying wounds untouched.
Healing processes beyond trauma informed care
Healing from trauma involves approaches that actively support emotional regulation, cognitive processing, and reconnection with the body and others. Evidence-based modalities such as cognitive behavioural therapy, mindfulness based practices, somatic experiencing, and peer support each address different aspects of trauma’s impact.
Cognitive approaches help individuals identify and reframe trauma-related beliefs that maintain fear, shame, or self-blame. Somatic approaches focus on restoring a sense of safety within the body, recognising that trauma is often stored physically as well as psychologically. Mindfulness practices support awareness and emotional regulation, allowing individuals to observe internal experiences without becoming overwhelmed. Peer support offers validation and connection, reducing isolation and reinforcing the possibility of recovery.
No single method is sufficient on its own. Effective healing often involves integrating multiple approaches in ways that reflect the individual’s needs, preferences, and lived experience.
My experience of trauma and recovery
Several years ago, my life changed abruptly. The marriage I believed was stable ended without warning. One evening, over dinner, my husband told me he wanted a divorce. The decision had already been shared with others before it was shared with me. Within days, I was asked to leave the home we had built together.
What followed was not just grief, but a profound loss of autonomy. I was blamed for the breakdown of the relationship and told repeatedly what I should have done differently. The emotional weight of those messages lingered long after I physically left. I moved in with a friend, carrying my belongings and a growing sense of disorientation.
In the weeks that followed, I watched from a distance as my former partner moved on quickly. Seeing evidence of his new life was painful and destabilising. It reinforced a feeling of being disposable, easily replaced, and fundamentally inadequate. These experiences echoed earlier vulnerabilities and intensified the trauma.
Recovery did not arrive suddenly. It unfolded unevenly. I found a small apartment and began rebuilding routines. Some days felt manageable. Others were marked by rumination and sadness. Over time, I learned that healing did not require erasing the pain, but allowing it to exist without defining me.
A turning point came when I began to forgive myself. I recognised how much of my identity had been shaped around meeting someone else’s expectations. Reclaiming my autonomy meant reconnecting with my own values, interests, and relationships. I returned to learning, travelled, and gradually rebuilt a social world that felt supportive rather than conditional.
Later, I formed a new relationship, one grounded in patience and mutual respect. It did not replace what was lost, but it reflected who I had become. When I eventually encountered my former partner again, I noticed something unexpected. I no longer felt diminished. His choices no longer determined my worth.
The trauma left scars, but it also reshaped my understanding of resilience. Healing was not about returning to who I was before, but about integrating the experience into a more grounded and self-directed life.
Final thoughts
Moving from trauma-informed awareness to genuine healing requires a shift from passive recognition to active engagement. Understanding trauma and its effects is necessary, but insufficient without pathways that support recovery and growth. Evidence-based interventions such as cognitive behavioural therapy, somatic approaches, mindfulness, and peer support provide practical tools for addressing trauma’s psychological and physiological dimensions.
Empathy and compassion are not abstract ideals in this process. They are active practices that validate experience, sustain support, and create conditions where healing can occur. Trauma-informed care offers a foundation, but healing practices represent the work itself. Prioritising active healing is not only clinically effective, but ethically necessary if survivors are to regain agency, restore well-being, and break cycles of unresolved trauma across generations.
Rev. Dr Phillip Fleming is the chief executive officer and director of the division of peer support services at Mindful Living. He holds credentials in peer support, EFIT, and an honorary Doctor of Divinity.