Widely Used Trauma Therapies
You already have some understanding of trauma — what it is, how it works, why the body responds the way it does.
Now the question is: what actually helps?
This path surveys the major evidence-based approaches for working with trauma — what each one is, how it works, what it’s designed to address, and what it isn’t suited for.
This is not a training path. It will not make you a practitioner of any modality. What it will do is give you a clear, honest map of the landscape — so you can make informed choices about your own healing or understand the work you may already be doing with a therapist.
What you’ll find in this path:
- EMDR — how bilateral stimulation works with traumatic memory
- Somatic approaches — working with the body’s held responses
- ACT — acceptance, defusion, and values-based living
- DBT — emotional regulation and distress tolerance skills
- IFS — understanding the internal system of parts
- How these approaches relate to each other — and when each tends to be most useful
Each modality has its own sub-path. You can move through them in sequence or go directly to the one most relevant to you.
Or choose a modality directly:
- EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
- Somatic Approaches
- ACT — Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
- DBT — Dialectical Behaviour Therapy
- IFS — Internal Family Systems
- How These Approaches Relate
A quiet note:
Some of these approaches, particularly EMDR and somatic work, involve engaging directly with difficult material. The articles here are educational — they describe these approaches; they do not guide you through them.
If you are currently working with a therapist, this path may help you understand and deepen that work. If you are not, it will help you identify what kind of support might be most useful to seek.