In Defense of Trauma Therapy
Hey fellow humans, Laurie Belanger LCSWR here, back to chat with you about a few of my favorite things. It’s been a hot minute since I wrote a blog, so if I’m new to you, Hello! I’m your friendly neighborhood trauma therapist. I run a private practice in Western New York, USA, specializing in all things complicated and messy. I’ve also been known to run a class, training or workshop when inspired. I love working with the neurodiverse of all ages, and with people who have gone through very challenging experiences across their lifespan.
Being a Trauma Therapist sometimes requires an explanation, even today in 2025. Here are some of the questions I hear all the time:
What is a Trauma Lens or Trauma-Informed Lens?
What makes something Trauma Therapy?
What makes a Therapist a Trauma Therapist?
How do we know if something is Trauma Informed?
Isn’t the word Trauma getting overused?
What does it mean when people say Big T trauma and Little t Traumas?
I thought it might be helpful if I answered these questions here, as briefly and simply as possible, one blog at a time. Explaining things simply so that they can be useful to everyone is the challenge I have set for myself this year.
Last summer I taught a graduate course at UB Graduate School of Social Work attempting to answer similar questions for new social workers. Today, I’d just like to help any interested person get some clarity around, “What is the Trauma Lens?.”
What do people mean when they use the terms Trauma Lens or Trauma-Informed Lens?
These are terms that many Trauma Informed Professionals have started using when trying to communicate outside (and sometimes inside) of their field about the differences between:
Process (a therapy technique, strategies for schools, practical knowledge distributed to organizations about the prevalence of trauma), and
Philosophy (how we understand a concern: case conceptualization, philosophy of care, therapeutic orientation).
When a professional says they are utilizing a Trauma Lens, they are letting you know that they look at the situation/problem/symptom/difficulty through a philosophical orientation that states: much of what we experience as distress/disruption/negative seeming behaviors, is rooted in experiences (not all, just many and not rarely).
This is opposed to conceptualizing the origin of a difficulty through, for example, the Medical Model. The Medical Lens looks at difficulties in terms of: disease/illness/injury as the primary (not only, just often) root of the problem.
There is also the Cognitive Lens, that views the way cognition (the way we think about things and the content of these thoughts) is conceptualized as being the root source of difficulties.
If you’ve heard of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), and most of us have, this is a therapy process using the Cognitive Lens to understand difficulties. Beck (1976) outlined three levels of cognition: Core beliefs, Dysfunctional assumptions, and Negative automatic thoughts. These are the beginnings of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and how a therapist looking through the Cognitive Lens might view your difficulties.
Chances are, if you’ve ever been to general mental health therapy before, you’ve been exposed to a blend of the Medical Lens and the Cognitive Lens.
If you feel depressed, someone thinking about mental health through a Medical Lens will often offer medication as a primary option.
Someone thinking about mental health through the Cognitive Lens will often offer to help you notice and alter your negative automatic thoughts and assumptions (and many other cognitively oriented techniques for improving wellbeing).
Someone thinking about mental health through the Trauma Lens will often want to understand your personal history of experiences and how they may have affected you. They consider your history of experiences (possible traumas) and its possible effects for both your body and your mind. The idea is that your experiences impact how you think- especially when we look at your entire personal development. Similarly, your body and nervous system is impacted by the experiences you’ve had, especially if we consider your entire personal development. A professional looking through the Trauma Lens is interested in how your Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) functions as an important part of your mental health. This is considered just as important as how you think, the emotions you share, and the medical conditions that you may have developed. Through the Trauma Lens, they are all interrelated and connected.
Embracing multiple lenses in therapy
This is NOT an exhaustive list. There are many different philosophical lenses to view human difficulty through.
My personal and professional opinion is that a solid quality therapist (whether they call themselves a trauma therapist or not) will embrace multiple lenses in order to do a quality assessment and treatment plan for a client. I am also coming at this from a mental health point of view. An Occupational Therapist might also use multiple lenses, with luck—one might reply and get a conversation started. In any event, keeping an open mind and approaching a difficulty from more than one direction often leads to better results in my experience.
Why is all of this important for non-therapists to know?
Well, because two therapists may offer the same form of Trauma Therapy—let’s say EMDR Therapy for example (a popular and evidence based trauma therapy). One may approach your case conceptualization (why there’s a problem) and treatment plan (what shall we do about it) in a very cognitive manner (centered on your thoughts/beliefs). The other may be more focused on the somatic (body reactions, physical symptoms of distress). A third might balance both fairly equally.
Confusing, right? Like finding a therapist isn’t hard enough?
Finding a good fit can mean swifter results
While it’s difficult to sort through the therapists available to you, finding a good fit increases the chances you’ll see swifter results. Sometimes, we really need to slow down in order to speed things up.
If you’re searching for a trauma therapist who will be a good fit for you, consider one who will help you do what you are not as naturally good at.
If you are great at explaining with words about your feelings and beliefs, but don’t know what I’m talking about when I say where do you feel that emotion in your body—you might do well to seek out a more somatically oriented therapist that will help you learn to do that.
If you’re great at getting in touch with your body and “felt sense”, but struggle with naming your internal negative beliefs and inner dialog—consider seeking out a more cognitively focussed therapist who can help you find a way to do that too.
If you are truly fortunate you’ll stumble on a therapist who very comfortably embraces helping you learn to better connect with, and promote the health of, both the body and the mind.
One way to start asking a professional about this is to ask about their Philosophy of Care. Mention the Trauma Lens and see what you get back. It’s not rude to want to understand how your therapist views human problems in general. Most therapists (myself included) are happy to tell you about our therapeutic journey to become the professionals that we are today. Feeling comfortable with your therapist’s approach to helping is an important part of finding a great fit. It’s not about right or wrong, it’s about alignment and empowering your choice.
Helping you find a good “fit” in your therapist
I hope this blog helped answer the question, “What is the Trauma Lens” for you. With luck, it will help someone seek out a good therapeutic “fit” when on the hunt for a mental health therapist.
Stay tuned for the next blog, “What makes something trauma therapy?” I promise to always keep it pretty simple and give you my honest no-nonsense take on it. This is likely not going to match the fancy definitions found in journals and textbooks. I might even annoy some of my colleagues with these blogs, yet I believe people ought to have a sense of what mental health providers have to offer them in plain, jargon-free language. So, we shall see where this all goes. Feel free to reach out any time.
Until next time, friends and strangers. May you feel reasonably safe and may your nervous system believe you.
Laurie
