Applied Psychology

Trauma-sensitive Mindfulness

Apr 25, 2025 | By Saranne Durham

Reading time: 4 min

Man practising mindfulness while going to counselling with a trauma-sensitive mental health practitioner

The benefits of practising mindfulness are continually being discovered. Research shows that mindfulness can assist in the treatment of trauma-linked conditions; including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, doing so requires the expertise of a trauma-sensitive mindfulness-trained expert. This is to better prevent causing new or exacerbating existing trauma.

What is Trauma?

Trauma is defined as a set of mild to severe reactions to shocking and emotionally overwhelming situations. These may involve actual or threatened death, serious injury or threat to physical and/or emotional integrity. Traumatic events are usually spontaneous and can cause longer-term repercussions, such as strained relationships, flashbacks or physical symptoms such as headaches and nausea. Trauma, to some extent, can be subjective. Thus, what is regarded as causing trauma for one person might not be experienced as a traumatic event for another. A traumatic event can be once-off or repetitive.

The Difference between Trauma and Stress

Stress is not the same as trauma. Everyday life can be stressful, often resulting in stress-related symptoms such as headaches, anxiety, muscle spasms and nausea manifesting. However, once stress dissipates or is resolved, symptoms decrease and then disappear. In contrast, trauma symptoms don’t dissipate once a traumatic event is over. Instead, the body remains in a cycle whereby it holds and relives the trauma, and the resulting symptoms continue.

What is PTSD?

PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) is a psychiatric disorder associated with cognitive and functional impairment that can manifest as a result of trauma. PTSD occurs when someone is exposed to death or threatened death, serious injury or sexual violence. For PTSD to be diagnosed, symptoms need to be present for 6 months or longer after an event, although they may manifest immediately. Symptoms include intrusive thoughts, avoidance behaviours, changes in mood and cognitive capabilities as well as changes in reactivity and response or arousal.

PTSD may also result from witnessing an event but not being directly part of it. For example, learning about a loved one’s violent death, seeing a car accident or repeated exposure to traumatic information such as child abuse.

The Body Remembers

According to Dr Bessel van der Kolk, our bodies don’t forget trauma, instead, it often keeps score. This means that after a traumatic event, our bodies can continue to be impacted. This is because trauma starts with something that happened to us, but then also changes our brain’s responses. As a result, we battle to reconcile our thinking with how we feel. This means that our automatic reaction, even to innocuous events around us, becomes Flight-Fight-Fawn.

The Science of Trauma

The vagal nerve is a primary component of the body’s parasympathetic nervous system. It is closely associated with how crucial body functions, such as mood control, are overseen. Trauma can lead to an overstimulation of the vagal nerve. The result of which can be heightened anxiety, changes in mood and physical symptoms such as nausea and pain.

How Mindfulness Helps Heal Trauma

Mindfulness can assist in breaking the cycles that an overactive vagal nerve creates. It can assist in moving someone out of a dissociative shutdown response caused by a traumatic event. At a very basic level, mindfulness does this by linking thoughts, feelings and reactions. This is accomplished by trauma-informed mindfulness enabling someone to befriend their physical symptoms rather than pass judgement on them. In doing so, trauma-sensitive mindfulness can result in a client being able to anchor themselves to the present moment. This enables them to improve their self-regulation techniques and helps them to better manage trauma-related symptoms.

Using Mindfulness to Treat Trauma

Trauma-sensitive mindfulness is partially an informative process. Through it, clients are educated that their physical symptoms are linked to trauma and not the result of an ailment. By better understanding the origins of their symptoms, clients can successfully be taught to implement mindfulness techniques.

Importantly, only a trained professional should use mindfulness to treat trauma. This is because when mindfulness as a treatment is not approached correctly, it can do more harm than good by triggering trauma. Accordingly, a trauma-sensitive mindfulness approach differs from that of a generalised mindfulness approach.

Are you interested in learning more about trauma-sensitive mindfulness? Register for the SACAP Global Trauma-sensitive Mindfulness for the Treatment of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) workshop.

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