What is STAR Counselling

At STAR Counselling, our team of counsellors are trained and experienced in trauma counselling. This approach is called Trauma Informed Practice which is a careful and specialist type of therapeutic work.

The STAR Counselling team ‘work through a lens’ that is grounded in an understanding of how the effects of sexualised trauma, complex sexualised trauma, abuse, assault or rape (recent or non-recent) can manifest neurologically, physically, emotionally, psychologically, sexually and impact on social or interpersonal relationships; creating disconnection, because of what has happened. It’s important to remember that Trauma is a natural response to unnatural circumstances.

The effects of sexualised trauma may be experienced as;

PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is delayed recovery from trauma)
Anxiety, Hyper-arousal (feeling on the edge of perceived threat) and/or feeling
Overwhelmed
OCD behaviours (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)
Depression, Hypo-arousal (feeling flat or underwhelmed)
Flashbacks
Unwanted or intrusive Memories and Triggers
Dissociation (a feeling of disconnection from yourself, your thinking, your body, contact boundaries, time or space)
Disordered Relationship with food / sleeping, nightmare’s and dreaming
Unhealthy Coping Strategies: addictions

STAR counsellors recognise that your response, to what has happened to you, as being adaptive rather than pathological. They will help you to understand how the effects of trauma are impacting you and, most importantly, will help you understand:

Why this happens (the neurobiology of threat)
Somatic experiencing (how the body holds traumatic shock)
How to manage and reduce the affects you are experiencing; with the outcome being a full recovery.