Birth trauma counselling – 6 ways it can help

Are you one of the 1 in 4 women who feel trauma surrounding the birth of your child?

Do you find yourself feeling grief, anger, sadness, rage or fear when you recall the events from your birth experience?

Please know that what you’re going through is real and valid, and you’re not being dramatic for thinking you may need some help – no matter how long ago your birth was.

You know you need something to help you process your birth experience, but you’re unsure of how birth trauma counselling or therapy can help. But what kind of help is available to you?

Here are 6 ways that birth trauma counselling can help you process and heal from your experience:

1 Clarity 

You might be feeling really confused about your experience…. What actually happened to me?  Why did my birth look so far from what I had planned? Why is my postpartum so different from what I had imagined?

Through birth trauma counselling you can gain clarity surrounding the events that took place – in pregnancy, birth and postpartum – and why those events are impacting your current emotions, behaviours, relationships and physical health.

2 Exploration 

You might be feeling dismissed by close friends and family when you mention how you feel, which is making you question yourself too… why do I feel so low when my baby is well?  Why do I feel so sad and angry when my birth ended with a healthy baby? Or perhaps you don’t now hold a healthy baby in your arms. Why do I feel like this? Am I even allowed to feel this way?

Birth trauma counselling can provide a space to safely express and explore your thoughts, feelings, body sensations and actions, without judgement. No-one can tell you what you can and can’t be feeling right now.

3 Tools

Once you’ve been able to start to explore the experience and the effects it is having on you now, you’ll need tools to support you. Birth trauma counselling can help you discover skills and improve coping strategies to adaptively respond to reminders and emotions associated with your birth experience.

4 Processing 

You may also be experiencing physical symptoms as a result of the traumatic memories. Birth trauma counselling can help you to reduce post-traumatic emotional, psychological and physiological symptoms through the use of therapeutic approaches, such as EMDR, to help your brain and body heal from the trauma it has experienced.

5 Relationships 

You may have found that your experience has strained relationships with others and yourself. Grief, anger, sadness and trauma can be difficult emotions to sit with. Birth trauma counselling can help you to learn more about yourself, and develop a healthier relationships with yourself, your child, and those around you following your experience.  Couples counselling focusing on perinatal difficulties is also available to support your relationship through trauma recovery.

6 Planning

You may also be feeling a bit stuck right now. Perhaps you just can’t see that this will get any better. Maybe the path to healing seems too far away. Birth trauma counselling can help you to set achievable goals for moving forward with your birth experience, then develop a realistic approach to achieving them. This may include planning for future births.

If you’re reading this and feel that it resonates with what you need, you’re not alone. Many women benefit from birth trauma counselling. You can learn more about what I do here, or get in touch via the link below.

Birth trauma counselling – Get in touch. 

I would truly love to speak with you.

Fiona x

My name is Fiona Rogerson and I am an ACA accredited trauma and perinatal Perth counsellor and Hypnobirthing (Mongan Method) Educator. I work with women and men to overcome emotional and psychological hurdles surrounding traumatic experiences, as well as conception, pregnancy, postpartum, parenting and identity.  I am also available to provide professional development training and workshops to various organisations.  I am based south of the river in Perth, in Success and Bedfordale, also working online.  To work with me, email at fiona@fionarogerson.com.au or phone 0402 017 425 or message via my contact page.