Trauma Therapy — When the Past Keeps Returning
Most people imagine trauma as something that happened back then. But in truth, trauma is often what keeps repeating now. It lives on, not as memory, but as repetition – in how we react, withdraw, or find ourselves caught in the same patterns again and again.
From a psychoanalytic perspective, trauma isn’t simply an event; it’s something that was never fully registered in the first place. The mind, overwhelmed, couldn’t make sense of it – so it returns later, disguised in symptoms, dreams, or emotional flashbacks.
In therapy, we don’t aim to erase these traces, but to approach them differently. Speaking freely – without censorship, without the need to sound coherent – allows something new to emerge. Slowly, what was once unspeakable begins to take on shape and meaning.
In Lacanian terms, trauma reveals the limits of language – the points where meaning failed us. The work of therapy is to bring these points into speech, not by explaining them away, but by allowing people to find their own words, in their own time.
Trauma therapy then, is not about erasing the past, but instead about re-writing how it affects us in the here and now.
More on Trauma TherapyRecommended Reading:
- Jacques Lacan, Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis
- Trauma in Reverse: Éric Laurent (2002)
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