Hypnotherapy vs Counselling for Trauma

When Talking Helps and When It Gets in the Way of Healing

Many people who find their way to my work are not new to healing. They have read the books, attended the workshops, and spent years in counselling or therapy. They can articulate their story clearly. They understand where their patterns come from. And yet, something remains unchanged.

The emotional charge is still there. The body still reacts. The same relationship dynamics repeat. The same inner tension returns under stress.

This often leads to a painful question. If I understand my trauma so well, why does it still have such a hold on me?

To answer that honestly, we need to talk about what different healing approaches are designed to do, and when continuing to talk can actually keep old patterns in place.

Trauma Lives in the Body, Not the Story

Trauma is not primarily a memory problem. It is a nervous system imprint.

When something overwhelming happens, the body organises around survival. Emotions, beliefs, and physiological responses become locked together in a protective pattern. Long after the event has passed, the body may still respond as if it is happening now.

This is why trauma does not resolve simply through insight. You can understand why you react the way you do and still feel hijacked by the same responses.

The body does not learn through explanation. It learns through experience.

What Counselling Is Designed to Offer

Counselling plays an important and necessary role, especially during periods of acute distress.

When someone is in crisis, grieving, navigating recent trauma, or feeling emotionally destabilised, having a safe, consistent space to speak and be witnessed can be essential. Counselling helps regulate emotion, create meaning, and reduce isolation. It can prevent overwhelm and provide a sense of containment when life feels unmanageable.

In these moments, talking is not the problem. It is supportive and often protective.

Where counselling excels is in helping people survive difficult periods and make sense of what has happened.

When Counselling Stops Helping and Starts Rehearsing

The difficulty arises when counselling continues long after the original crisis has passed.

Trauma patterns are reinforced through repetition. Every time a story is retold with emotional charge, the nervous system reactivates the same pathways. The body learns, again and again, that this experience is still relevant, still current, still defining.

This does not mean counselling is wrong. It means it has limits.

At a certain stage, continued verbal processing can keep someone organised around the trauma rather than free from it. Insight deepens, but resolution does not follow. People become very good at understanding their wounds, but not at living beyond them.

I often meet people who say, quietly and with some shame, “I am tired of talking about this, but I do not know how to stop.”

That fatigue is not resistance. It is readiness.

Processing Versus Resolving

One of the most important distinctions in trauma healing is the difference between processing and resolving.

Processing keeps the experience active in the present. It involves revisiting, reinterpreting, and integrating the story. This can be helpful early on, when meaning making is necessary.

Resolving allows the experience to complete. The memory remains, but the emotional charge no longer runs the nervous system.

Counselling is primarily a processing modality. Rapid Core Healing is a resolution modality.

They are not interchangeable, and they are not always compatible at the same time.

How Rapid Core Healing Works Differently

Rapid Core Healing does not work with the narrative mind. It works with the subconscious emotional imprint that was formed at the time of the original experience.

There is no need to relive or retell the story. In fact, retelling is often unnecessary and unhelpful. The work happens beneath language, where the nervous system stores emotional meaning.

When these emotional imprints are accessed and resolved, the body no longer reacts as if the past is present. Behaviour shifts naturally, without effort. Patterns lose their charge. Responses soften.

People often tell me, “I know what happened, but it no longer feels like it is happening to me.”

That distinction is everything.

Why Doing Both at Once Can Slow Healing

This is where it becomes important to be clear.

Counselling strengthens the narrative. It reinforces coherence around the past. Rapid Core Healing dissolves the emotional relevance of that narrative.

When someone is actively revisiting and verbalising trauma in counselling while attempting to resolve it through Rapid Core Healing, the nervous system receives mixed signals. One approach keeps the door open. The other is trying to close it.

This does not make either approach wrong. It simply means timing matters.

Trying to resolve trauma while continually rehearsing it can feel like taking two steps forward and one step back.

When Counselling Is the Right Choice

Counselling is often the most appropriate support during periods of active trauma, crisis, or instability.

If someone is feeling unsafe, overwhelmed, or emotionally flooded, stabilisation comes first. Talking, grounding, and relational support are essential during these times.

Rapid Core Healing is not designed to replace crisis support. It is not about coping. It is about completion.

When Rapid Core Healing Becomes the Right Choice

Rapid Core Healing tends to be most effective when someone feels relatively stable and is ready to move forward rather than understand more.

Signs of readiness often include feeling tired of revisiting the past, noticing that insight has not led to change, and sensing that life is being organised around old experiences rather than present reality.

There is often a quiet knowing that the work now is not to explain, but to release.

This stage is not dramatic. It is steady. And it is deeply respectful of the body’s timing.

Letting Go Does Not Mean Bypassing

One of the fears people have about resolution work is that letting go means minimising what happened.

It does not.

Letting go means the nervous system no longer needs to defend against something that is over. Memory remains intact. Wisdom remains. What dissolves is the ongoing physiological response.

As the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”

Rapid Core Healing allows understanding to stay while freeing the body to live.

Healing Is Not Endless Work

There is a subtle cultural belief that healing must be ongoing, effortful, and endlessly analytical. That belief keeps many people stuck in cycles of self examination long after it is useful.

Healing does not require constant attention to pain. At a certain point, attention keeps it alive.

Resolution allows energy to return to the present. Relationships become simpler. Choices feel less charged. Life expands.

Choosing the Right Support Is an Act of Care

There is no hierarchy here. Only timing.

Counselling supports survival and understanding. Rapid Core Healing supports completion and movement forward. Knowing which one you need is not a failure of healing. It is discernment.

If you are in crisis, talk. Be held. Be supported.

If you are stable, insightful, and ready to stop carrying the past in your nervous system, resolution work may be the missing piece.

Healing is not about telling the story better. It is about allowing the body to finally realise that the story is over.

When that happens, something remarkable occurs. Life begins to feel lighter, not because anything has been denied, but because nothing needs to be carried anymore.

Camilla Clare is a naturopath and holistic health practitioner specialising in plant based nutrition, metabolic health, and mind body medicine. Her work integrates nutritional science with clinical experience to support long term vitality and disease prevention.