What is Trauma Informed Somatic Coaching

Trauma informed coaching is about understanding how the nervous system learns to protect us and how those protective patterns can continue long after the original experiences have passed.

Many people already know what they want to change and they understand their patterns intellectually but when pressure increases, their body responds automatically and they shut down, become overwhelmed, people-please, freeze, overwork, avoid or react emotionally. This isn’t a lack of insight or motivation, it’s a nervous system doing what it learned to do to stay safe.

Trauma informed coaching works with this reality rather than pushing against it. Instead of asking, “Why can’t you just move on?” we ask, “What is your nervous system responding to right now?” The focus is not on endlessly revisiting the past but on understanding how past experiences are shaping present day regulation, behaviour and capacity.

The key principle is “capacity building”.

I support people to gradually widen their capacity to cope so they can stay present with challenge, emotion, uncertainty and growth without becoming overwhelmed or shut down. It’s capacity in the presence of challenge not absence of. As capacity increases, people don’t need to force change because change becomes available.

This is why trauma informed coaching sits so well between therapy and traditional coaching. It honours the impact of the past without keeping people anchored there. The work is always in the present moment helping the nervous system feel safe enough now to move forward.

Regulation comes BEFORE transformation.

Once the body feels safer, people can access clarity, creativity, motivation, connection and joy. They can take action not from survival, but from choice and trauma informed coaching is not about staying focused on pain, it is about removing the physiological barriers that prevent growth.

Just as important is the role of the practitioner.

Trauma informed work requires us to keep doing our own inner work as own nervous systems are our primary tools. Continued self reflection and regulation practices, supervision ensure we are not coaching from our own unprocessed material or over-identifying with our clients’ experiences.

This work is not about rescuing or fixing others, it is about walking alongside them while they build the internal safety to lead their own lives. I work with someone 121 to level me up.

Trauma informed coaching supports people to understand themselves with compassion, regulate in the present and move forward with confidence and agency.

That is the work.

And when done with integrity, it remains deeply relevant, ethical and needed.

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