Soft Places for Sharp Stories: A Person-Centred Approach to Trauma

There are stories we carry like splinters. Long after the event, they live on in the body, in the breath, in the places we avoid without knowing why. Trauma has a way of lingering—of taking a single moment or series of moments and echoing them across time, almost like a concertina effect. And yet, even these sharp-edged stories can begin to soften in the right kind of space.

In person-centred therapy, we offer that kind of space—not by knowing, fixing, or interpreting, but by being. By meeting someone exactly where they are, without judgement or agenda. And though it sounds simple, it asks something pretty radical of us: trust. Trust in the client, in their capacity to heal, and in the relationship that holds it all.

Carl Rogers spoke often of the “actualising tendency”—the inherent drive within all living things to grow, to evolve toward wholeness. He believed that given the right conditions, a person could access their own wisdom, and become more truly themselves, even in the aftermath of pain. Especially in the aftermath of pain.

Those conditions are:

• Empathy — not just understanding with the mind, but really feeling with the other person. It’s a kind of emotional tuning-in that says, I’m with you in this and I can understand what it feels like to be in your situation.

• Congruence — the therapist being genuine, not hiding behind a professional mask. It’s when we bring our real, honest selves into the room. This doesn’t mean we share all our thoughts - that wouldn’t be therapeutically useful!

• Unconditional Positive Regard — the kind of deep acceptance that says, You don’t have to earn your worth here. It’s a wholehearted welcome, no matter what you bring or which part of you shows up (when Disappearing Woman shows up for me it can be quite a challenge for a therapist!).

  
  

Working with trauma, these conditions become not just supportive, but essential. Trauma disrupts trust—in self, in others, in the world. So to sit with someone in a way that says, You are welcome here. All of you, can be a kind of reweaving. A slow stitching back together of what was torn.

But here’s the paradox: the more gently we approach trauma, the more deeply it can be met. Eugene Gendlin, a student of Rogers, extended this gentleness into his work, developing what we now call Focusing. He noticed something curious in successful therapy sessions—not just what was said, but how people spoke from their felt sense. That fuzzy, pre-verbal knowing in the body that says, Something’s not quite right here, even when words haven’t arrived yet.

Gendlin invited us to listen for that felt sense—to turn toward it with curiosity, not force. When working with trauma, this can mean recognising the body's wisdom, its pacing. Sometimes, the most compassionate thing we can do is to not dive into the content right away, but instead to ask, “What would feel safe enough right now?” and trust the answer might be silence, might be tears, might be a tight chest that says, Not yet.

This work is slow, and it should be. Trauma doesn’t respond well to urgency or cleverness. But it does respond to presence. The kind that waits without pushing. The kind that listens to what isn’t said yet.

I often think of the Irish word fáilte—welcome—not just as a greeting, but as a kind of promise. To say fáilte romhat is to say, You are received here, just as you are. There is healing in that kind of welcome. Especially for the parts of ourselves that have felt unwelcome for so long. 

Of course, this isn’t the only path. Other trauma therapies—like EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), somatic experiencing, or sensorimotor psychotherapy—may work more directly with the nervous system and can bring relief more quickly. These approaches can be especially useful for people who feel stuck or overwhelmed by traditional talk therapy. There’s no one-size-fits-all. What matters most is finding what feels safe, what feels right—for you.

In person-centred work, we don't treat the person as a problem to be solved. We don't mine their memories for meaning or dissect their pain. Instead, we hold space for their experience to unfold at its own pace. We walk beside, not ahead.

And slowly—sometimes imperceptibly—something shifts. The splinter begins to surface. The sharp edges begin to dull. The story, once frozen in time, begins to thaw.

So much of trauma is about what was too much, too fast, too alone. In person-centred therapy, we offer the opposite: just enough, just slowly, together.

That’s how healing begins.