Birth Trauma Counselling
Have you ever wondered if birth trauma counselling could help? Is it something you’ve explored but you’re not sure if it’s the right thing for you? Do you wonder if your experience is bad enough to be called birth trauma and if you even need or would benefit from birth trauma counselling? Let me help you decide with an overview of what it is and how it can help.
So what is birth trauma?
The Birth Trauma Association describes it as:
“Birth trauma is a shorthand term to describe symptoms of distress you might experience after having gone through, or witnessed, a traumatic birth. In some cases, these symptoms can be enough for a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).”
In my experience, it is not just related to your experience during the birth. For some mums, it’s about what happened afterwards or on the build up to the birth. It can also be about how things were dealt with, the information that you received or a general feeling of being unheard and needing to fight for what you wanted.
These experiences not only affect how you feel about the birth of your baby, it can also impact on future decisions about your family plans.
How can Birth Trauma Counselling Help?
When you go through an experience like giving birth, once your baby is born, the focus changes onto being a parent and everything that comes with learning about your new baby and how to manage the changes that having a baby brings.
Your birth partner will have experienced much (but not all) of your birth journey with you so you are unlikely to explore the whole story together.
Those close to you will know most of the story but probably not all as they will have been aware of much of it as you were going through it or will have been updated from time to time.
Those not close to you only need the edited highlights and those you don’t know will learn very little of your experience other than how life is with a new baby (the standard script that you share with anyone).
There are two main reasons to seek birth trauma counselling.
- You want to work through it and explore your feelings with someone in a focused way that can help you process the experience.
- You don’t want to worry those close to you by trying to talk through it with them. There is a risk with talking to close friends and family that you won’t share everything for fear of upsetting them.
How does Birth Trauma Counselling Work?
Birth trauma counselling allows you to tell your story in a safe place where there is no fear of upsetting anyone. Telling your story allows you to process what happened and release the feelings and emotions relating to the birth of your baby.
We explore aspects of the birth that feel they need a little more focus and then we look to the future and explore what can be taken from the experience to help create change if you decide to expand your family at some point. Each individual birth story will have a different focus relating to what is affecting the client so this is not by any means a format that is set in stone.
Birth trauma counselling can help anyone who is struggling with an aspect of birth whether they were giving birth or supporting someone else who was giving birth. It doesn’t matter what the challenge was or how long ago it was since the birth, if it is bothering you in some way, then it is worth exploring.
If you would like to find out more about how I can help support you with any aspect of birth trauma, please do get in touch and we can arrange a chat to see if I can help.
You can find out more about birth trauma counselling here: Birth Trauma and PTSD following birth
You can also find out more information at The Birth Trauma Association