​

​

A third of children and young people in the UK experience trauma and more than half globally. Childhood trauma is an important issue: not only is it very common but its impact on survivors’ mental health and physical health is complex and severe.

​

Childhood trauma changes the mind, the brain, and the body. Traumatic memories are held in the body in the form of unprocessed emotions and physical sensations that impact survivors’ sense of self and their ability to connect with others, making it very difficult to live life.

​

Mainstream therapies are not well adapted to childhood trauma and they are not helping survivors as much as they should. Specifically, they are limited when it comes to the embodied aspects of trauma. Therefore, survivors are calling for trauma-informed care and different approaches to healing.

​

New interventions focused on the embodied experience of trauma are now beginning to appear. It is clear that these need to be developed further as they have the potential to benefit a large number of people. To do this, it is important that we understand how survivors experience trauma in the body, how this affects their sense of self and their relationship with others, and what supports their healing. This is what this survivor-led research project aims to do.

​

The purpose of the project is to explore whether and how survivor-led body-based interventions focused on the embodied experience of childhood trauma help strengthen survivors’ sense of self and their ability to connect with others.

​

The objectives are:

1. To explore survivors’ perspectives on how their sense of self and relationship with others are impacted by the embodied experience of childhood trauma

2. To explore whether and how survivors’ sense of self and relationship with others change as a result of 10 sessions of Trauma-Focused Movement Language (TFML) and explore whether this change (if any) supports healing