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It might have been ‘just a routine blood test’ but that didn’t stop me passing out. Again. From a teenager through into adulthood, even the word ‘medical’ could render me light-headed. For a long time I didn’t understand why I was such a ‘wuss’, as I saw it.

Dr Nick Read, a retired medical professor and now a psychotherapist, explains the link between trauma and irritable bowel syndrome - and what can be done about it.

What do you do when the worst thing you think could happen to you does happen? In this searingly honest and vulnerable piece, I talk about how I coped with a double loss of attachment figures and how what I had feared the most actually became a springboard towards new growth.

You’ve come a long way. Misdiagnoses, mistreatment, maltreatment even—but eventually you’re here. You’ve found a therapist willing to work with you – either privately or on the NHS – and so now you’re expecting it just to happen. Right? Wrong!

Rather than engaging with mental health services because we trust that they will be helpful, many of us – rightly or wrongly – fear any involvement with them partly because we fear losing further control by being ‘sectioned’. We fear losing our liberty, losing the right to make decisions about our life, and losing the right to choose the kind of treatment we receive.

‘Can we heal?’ she asked, quivering with the significance of what she was saying, as if her very life depended on it. ‘Can we really heal?’ I could well understood the agony in her eyes. I lived for many years overwhelmed by trauma, the symptoms of unhealed suffering. And if recovery is impossible, then why are we even trying?

The beginning of understanding was really just that—a beginning. Little did I know how much I had to learn and how much I really didn’t know. When my peer supervisor mentioned to me this strange word ‘dissociation’, it was an entirely new concept to me. Now I wonder how that can be.

If you don’t have an LPA, many decisions will be taken on your behalf either by medical professionals or your next of kin or relatives.  In situations where you have a domestically violent partner or spouse, or abusive parents, this could put you in a very worrying situation.

It feels a long time ago now, the time when my abuse sat silent within me. It’s been over ten years. Back then, I didn’t understand any of the dynamics of abuse. The things that had happened, the things that had been done to me, the things I had been made to do – they sat silently within me as heavy weights on my soul, fetid non-reminders of my badness, this toxic mush that I thought was me.

Suddenly, like a party popper, out came her words. ‘It happens all the time. People will be talking to me and I can’t remember what they’ve been saying. I used to think I was just forgetful. But it’s not that. It’s like they can be talking to me and I know rationally who they are but it’s as if I’ve never met them before in my life

Coming to terms with flashbacks – understanding what they are, learning how to manage them, and eventually figuring out how to reduce them – is a cornerstone of recovery. Carolyn Spring explains what goes in the brain during a flashback and how to learn to manage them.

How can we explain the experience of dissociation? Using an analogy from the superhero movie 'Avengers Assemble', one survivor explains what life is like for her to live with multiple parts of the personality.

Recovery from trauma is hard work, but it is possible. However, there are number of things that inhibit that process, and this article looks at ten of them.

My role as a psychosexual therapist is to help a client understand what ‘language’ their body or their behaviours are speaking. Once people understand their triggers and behaviours, they are more likely to allow a change, if that’s what they want.

The 'trauma traffic light’ represents three physiological states that the body can shift gear between, depending on levels of threat or security in the world: the green zone, the amber zone or the red zone. Join me as I explain this concept that I developed from Stephen Porges' polyvagal therory.

After sexual abuse, it's very common to have difficulties in your sexual relationship. But is that just the way that it is and we have to just accept it? Or is there a way towards a fulfilling sex life after trauma?