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Anxiety Therapy

Emotional and Psychological Trauma

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Trauma is a difficult and painful experience. It can affect people in many different ways, including the way they think, feel, and act.

Traumatic events are often intense or terrifying. People who go through traumatic experiences may have flashbacks to the event or nightmares about it happening again.

They might also avoid certain triggers that remind them of what happened during their trauma such as an anniversary date of when it occurred.”

What does emotional trauma look like?

Trauma is defined as the emotional, physical and psychological effects of an event or situation that exceeds a person’s ability to cope.

What does emotional trauma look like?

While it may seem like there is a lot of information out there about what emotional trauma looks like, the reality is that any one person’s experience with trauma is different. Some people who are emotionally traumatized have physical scars all over their body from self-harm or abuse while others might not have anything wrong with them outwardly. The truth is that you never know what someone has been through just by looking at them.

When people suffer with emotional trauma, they might feel worried and scared. They might feel angry and irritable. They might have an obsession or compulsion. When someone has these feelings, they can be really sad and depressed. Some people also feel ashamed or guilty for feeling that way.

We can see it in ourselves in the way we talk to ourselves, how we sleep and eat, what we do with our free time.

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What is psychological trauma?

Psychological trauma can lead to lasting emotional and psychological difficulties following distressing or traumatic experiences. It’s usually triggered by specific events or happenings, but It can also have an unclear or uncertain origin.

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Psychological trauma isn’t something people are born with; it’s something they acquire over time through repeated exposure to traumatic events, such as neglect from their parents.

These negative experiences shape moods and dictate ways of coping in unpredictable ways that often worsen over time if not treated correctly.

Most people don’t actually realize they’re dealing with psychological trauma until its symptoms start showing up.

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How emotional psychological trauma affects the body?

Negative stress has a strong connection with health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and obesity.

Exposure to trauma or chronic stress has been shown to have deleterious effects on one’s physical body. It can lead to inflammation which reduces the efficiency of internal organs like the heart.

The hormones that are released in response to negative experiences also increase, for example cortisol that causes weight gain and lowers reproductive hormone levels (the ones responsible for youth).

People who experience trauma often report feelings of exhaustion, confusion, sadness, anxiety and agitation. They may also detach from others or feel like they are “numb.”

You might experience any or all of these symptoms as a result of stress. When people are stressed, they can become more tired and have tense muscles.

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Hypnotherapy

Can trauma change your personality?

Yes. Trauma can affect a person’s personality and change the way they behave. It has been thought that this is because trauma causes it to be difficult for someone to think about the past or the future, and this means that they are always thinking about what was just happening (which is often scary), which prevents them from dealing with future problems in their daily life

Traumatic events underlie all sorts of problems like post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, addiction and many other issues caused by stressful occasions. In addition to these types of symptoms, long-term effects of traumatic experiences may include extensive changes in personality such as decreased self esteem and increased anxiety or fearfulness – even without any related psychological trauma later on in life

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Does your body remember emotional trauma?

The body remembers emotional trauma because the nervous system is a central player in the immune responses, and this begins with the brain.

Brain chemicals (neuropeptides) serve as important communication molecules between different parts of the nervous system and these communications are part of normal functioning.

With trauma, they do more than just communicate–they literally talk to each other, raising alarm signals that go throughout your body to mobilize resources where needed.

In this way, physical effects such as stomach aches, headaches and trouble sleeping may originate from mental and emotional distress that has gone unresolved for too long.

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Does the body hold trauma?

Young woman feeling stressed

Yes, the body does hold trauma. Evidence of this can be found in the fact that people with PTSD have a nervous system which can be overly sensitive to stimuli.

Many people may feel tense or even frightened when stress is experienced through smell, taste, or touch. Thoughts of past traumatic experiences could also trigger fright in some cases, for example if a person becomes anxious or panicky at the thought of being restrained again even though they’re not restrained now. Some people might have flashbacks to traumatic memories while dreaming and may misinterpret these dreams as warnings against something that will happen in real life even though there’s no particular danger at that moment.

Why does trauma affect personality?

Trauma is a normal response to an abnormal event. When faced with trauma, we respond in the way our brain has been taught – fight or flight. This adaptive function of the human psyche that helped us reach this point in history will not suddenly disappear anytime soon, but when activated it does have long-term effects on personality and behaviour. The type of trauma and individual’s coping mechanisms are what dictates the severity of these effects.

Trauma is an emotional response to a perceived threat in our environment. It can be overwhelming and indescribable because it occurs at the deepest levels of our being: the physiological, psychological and spiritual.

For some people, life’s challenges become unmanageable when their coping mechanisms are overwhelmed by anxiety due to trauma or other negative emotions they feel and this in turn impacts the way they see the world and the language they use with themselves adversely affecting their personality

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Ian Young

Ian Young

Training & Development

Tagline: Grounded, real and genuinely hard to forget.

Ian is an experienced therapist whose work spans trauma, addiction, anxiety and recovery. His approach is shaped as much by lived experience as by professional training and that combination makes him exceptionally relatable to the people he works with.

People who’ve worked with Ian consistently say the same thing — he gets it in a way that goes beyond what most trainers can offer. He doesn’t just understand the subject. He understands people.

Within Piece of Mind Training, Ian also plays a key role in business and strategic development, bringing a practical, grounded perspective to how the organisation grows and evolves.

David

David Gowans

Training & Development

Tagline: He’s seen mental health crisis at its most acute. And he knows what actually helps.

David’s background is probably unlike anyone else you’ll meet in a mental health training room.

Twenty-three years on the frontline of emergency services first as a police officer, now as an HCPC-registered practising paramedic. He hasn’t studied stress, trauma and burnout from a distance. He’s carried them, in uniform, responding to people at the absolute worst moments of their lives. He understands the culture that makes asking for help feel like the hardest thing in the world because he’s lived inside that culture.

That frontline experience sits alongside his clinical practice as a qualified hypnotherapist and accredited EFT practitioner. David works with real people navigating real challenges every single week. What he brings to Piece of Mind Training isn’t theoretical. It’s current, grounded and built entirely from the inside out.

As part of the team, David delivers training, practises as a therapist and plays a key role in the development and direction of the organisation making sure that everything Piece of Mind produces is professionally rigorous and genuinely human.

David is responsible for development and ensures that Piece of Mind Training programmes are grounded in real-world application. Not what the textbook says should happen. What actually works when it matters.

Iona

Iona Russell

Growth & Partnerships

Tagline: She’s written the book. Literally.

Iona has spent more than twenty years working at the intersection of human potential and real-world impact — across psychology, coaching, education, broadcasting, the charitable sector and social policy, in both the UK and the USA.

She is a Master Positive Psychology Coach and twice bestselling author who has supported hundreds of people through coaching qualifications and worked alongside some of the most respected names in positive psychology and personal development. As a keynote speaker and leadership advisor, she helps organisations rethink what success and human flourishing actually look like.

But what drives Iona’s commitment to mental health work goes deeper than her professional background. She lost her brother to suicide. That experience — and everything it taught her about the gap between what people are going through and the support available to them — shapes everything she brings to Piece of Mind Training.

At Piece of Mind, Iona leads our partnerships, builds community impact and drives our growth across Scotland and beyond. She brings commercial insight, deep human understanding and a personal reason for being here that no CV can fully capture.

Ann

Ann Stewart

Head of Training

Tagline: The person who makes sure the learning delivers every time.

Ann has spent her career helping people make sense of the things that are weighing on them and finding a way forward when everything feels tough.

Her background is genuinely rare. A qualified teacher, certified hypnotherapist, coach and First Aid for Mental Health practitioner, Ann brings together an understanding of how people learn with a deep, practical knowledge of how people struggle. She still works directly with adults and young people every week supporting those experiencing anxiety, low confidence, emotional distress and the kind of quiet difficulties that don’t always have a name but make everyday life feel impossibly hard.

As a trainer, Ann knows that the best mental health training doesn’t just inform people, it changes how they see themselves and the people around them. She brings that belief into every session she delivers, whether she’s working with a room full of HR professionals or a team who’ve never talked about mental health at work before.

As a therapist, trainer, teacher and mum of three, Ann understands that most people are dealing with far more than anyone around them realises. That understanding is the foundation of everything she does.

At Piece of Mind Training, Ann leads on training quality and consistency, making sure that what we promise is what every learner experiences, every time.

Andy Griffiths

Andy Griffiths

Founder

Tagline: The man who built this because he needed it himself.

Qualifications include:

Clinical Hypnotherapy

NLP

Psychotherapy

CBT Coaching

Trauma-Informed Practice.

Andy is a practising therapist, clinical hypnotherapist and the founder of Piece of Mind Training. He’s spent over a decade working with clients across anxiety, trauma, panic disorder and complex mental health presentations not as a theorist, but as someone who has experienced many of these challenges himself.

His personal journey through mental health struggles, panic disorder and years of pretending everything was fine is the reason Piece of Mind Training exists. He built what he wished had existed when he needed it most.

As a trainer, Andy is known for his directness, his warmth and his ability to make people feel genuinely seen. He doesn’t stand behind a slide deck and talk at people. He brings the subject into the room.

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