Inner Work · Wounds & Triggers · Therapy · Healing · Support

Healing Modalities

A complete guide to the approaches available for working with core wounds and trauma. What each method does, the level it works at, who it helps most — and how to find the right fit for where you are right now.

Key principle

Different wounds need different approaches

Most important factor

The therapeutic relationship — not the method

Starting point

Safety and nervous system regulation first

Timeline

Real change takes time — and is worth it

The most important variable is not the method. Research consistently shows that the single strongest predictor of therapeutic outcome is the quality of the relationship between client and therapist — across all modalities. A skilled, attuned therapist using a less fashionable approach will produce better outcomes than a technically expert therapist with whom the client does not feel safe. When seeking support, trust your felt sense of safety with the person as much as their credentials and approach. If you do not feel fundamentally safe with a therapist, that information matters.

Section 01

How to Choose

The landscape of healing modalities is vast and can be overwhelming. The most useful organising principle: match the approach to the level where the wound lives. Wounds formed early, pre-verbally, and stored somatically respond best to approaches that work at that level — body-based, sensory, relational, and experiential. Wounds that involve more explicit narrative and cognitive content may respond well to approaches that work at the verbal and cognitive level. Most people benefit from a combination.

A second useful principle: stabilisation before processing. Before doing deep trauma work, the nervous system needs a baseline of regulation — the capacity to tolerate activation without being overwhelmed by it. Beginning deep trauma processing without this foundation can be retraumatising rather than healing. A good therapist will spend time building this foundation before moving into direct trauma work. If a therapist moves immediately into the most painful material without establishing safety first, this is worth noticing.

Third: healing is not linear. Progress in trauma work often looks like: feeling better, then feeling worse as deeper layers are accessed, then feeling better again — at a deeper level. What looks like regression is often deepening. Having a practitioner who can hold the longer arc and help you understand what is happening is valuable.

If you are just beginning

Start With Safety

If you are new to this work, or if your nervous system is currently very dysregulated, begin with approaches that build regulation and safety rather than diving into trauma processing: somatic resourcing, breathwork, gentle body-based practices, and a supportive therapist focused on stabilisation. The capacity to be with difficult experience without being overwhelmed is a skill that can be developed — and it makes all subsequent work more effective and less destabilising.

If you are verbally oriented

Depth Psychology & IFS

If you are comfortable with verbal exploration and have a reasonable level of nervous system stability, depth-oriented talk therapies — psychodynamic, IFS, schema therapy — offer rich frameworks for understanding the wound's architecture and its role in your life. These approaches work well in combination with somatic practices that address the body-level storage of the wound.

If you have specific trauma

EMDR or Somatic Trauma Therapy

For identifiable traumatic events — single-incident trauma or repeated relational trauma — EMDR and somatic trauma therapies (Somatic Experiencing, AEDP) have the strongest evidence base for direct trauma processing. They work at the level where trauma is stored — the nervous system and the body — and produce change that is felt rather than merely understood.

Section 02

Talk Therapies

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Psychodynamic Therapy

Depth · Relational · Long-term

Rooted in psychoanalytic tradition, psychodynamic therapy explores the unconscious patterns, defences, and relational templates formed in early life that drive present behaviour. The therapeutic relationship itself becomes the primary instrument — the therapist is attentive to how the client relates to them as a reflection of how they relate to others. Excellent for understanding the deep structure of wounds and for experiencing a corrective relational experience.

Best for: Complex relational wounds, patterns that repeat across relationships, those who want depth and self-understanding alongside symptom relief. Less appropriate for acute trauma that needs specific processing.

🧩

IFS — Internal Family Systems

Parts work · Compassion · Self-led

Developed by Richard Schwartz, IFS understands the psyche as a system of distinct "parts" — each with its own perspective, feelings, and role. Protective parts developed to manage the wound. Exiled parts carry the wound's pain directly. The "Self" — a stable, compassionate inner core — learns to relate to all parts with curiosity and care rather than trying to suppress or eliminate them. Transformative for people who experience strong internal conflicts or self-criticism.

Best for: Inner critic work, shame wounds, self-sabotage, people who feel divided against themselves. Works well alongside somatic approaches for full integration.

📋

Schema Therapy

Cognitive · Experiential · Childhood focus

Schema therapy, developed by Jeffrey Young, identifies "early maladaptive schemas" — deeply held beliefs about self and world formed in childhood — and works to identify, understand, and gradually modify them through a combination of cognitive work, experiential techniques (including imagery rescripting of early memories), and the therapeutic relationship. Particularly well-evidenced for personality disorders and complex relational trauma.

Best for: Deeply entrenched belief-level wounds, patterns with long history, people who want both cognitive understanding and experiential processing.

👶

Inner Child Therapy

Reparenting · Relational · Experiential

Works directly with the younger self who formed the wound — bringing the adult's compassion, protection, and presence to the child who needed it and did not receive it. Often involves imagery, dialogue, and somatic experience. The goal is not to re-experience the original pain but to provide the wounded younger self with what they actually needed: to be seen, protected, and loved unconditionally. Particularly powerful for abandonment, shame, and rejection wounds.

Best for: Childhood-origin wounds, anyone who notices they "go young" when triggered, people who can access imagery and somatic experience. Requires some level of nervous system stability first.

🌿

ACT — Acceptance & Commitment

Third-wave CBT · Values · Flexibility

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy works not to eliminate difficult thoughts and feelings but to change the relationship with them — developing psychological flexibility, the capacity to hold difficult experience without being controlled by it, and the ability to act in alignment with values regardless of internal states. Particularly useful for building the tolerance for the discomfort that deeper wound work inevitably produces.

Best for: Building distress tolerance, values clarification, people who have tried to think their way out of emotional patterns without success, as a complement to deeper trauma work.

Section 03

Trauma-Specific Approaches

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EMDR

Eye Movement · Trauma Processing · Bilateral

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing uses bilateral stimulation (typically eye movements following a moving light or finger, or alternating taps) while the client holds aspects of a traumatic memory in mind. The bilateral stimulation appears to facilitate the processing of traumatic memories in a way that reduces their emotional charge and allows them to be integrated into normal autobiographical memory. One of the most extensively researched trauma treatments. Results are often rapid and durable.

Best for: Specific traumatic events, PTSD, intrusive memories, trauma that has not responded to talk therapy alone. Requires adequate nervous system stability before processing begins.

🌊

Somatic Experiencing

Body-based · Peter Levine · Trauma completion

Developed by Peter Levine, Somatic Experiencing works with the body's incomplete responses to overwhelming experience — the survival actions (flight, fight, freeze) that were activated but could not be completed at the time of the original threat. By gently tracking and completing these responses in the present moment, the nervous system discharges the stored activation and returns to regulation. Works primarily through body sensation rather than narrative or verbal processing.

Best for: Pre-verbal or body-stored trauma, freeze and shutdown responses, dissociation, chronic physical symptoms with psychological roots, people who find verbal processing limited.

💠

AEDP — Accelerated Experiential Dynamic

Relational · Transformance · Diana Fosha

Developed by Diana Fosha, AEDP integrates attachment theory, emotion theory, and somatic awareness in a deeply relational approach. The therapist is actively present, warm, and affirmatively engaged — providing the corrective relational experience that the wound needs directly within the therapeutic relationship. Works with core emotions, the healing experiences that arise when those emotions are fully processed, and the "tremulous aliveness" that emerges beyond the wound.

Best for: Relational wounds, attachment injuries, those who respond to warmth and relational presence, people who have felt unseen in previous therapy.

🔄

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

Body · Attachment · Pat Ogden

Developed by Pat Ogden, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy integrates somatic awareness with psychotherapeutic understanding of attachment and trauma. Works with the body's habitual postures, gestures, and movement patterns as direct expressions of the wound — and uses mindful body-based interventions to complete interrupted survival responses and develop new organismic patterns that support connection and aliveness.

Best for: Developmental trauma, complex PTSD, people who have significant body awareness or those who want to develop it, anyone whose trauma is visible in their posture and movement.

Section 04

Somatic & Body-Based

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Breathwork

Somatic · Emotional release · Nervous system

Conscious, connected breathing — particularly holotropic and transformational breathwork — can access emotional and somatic material held below the level of verbal consciousness, facilitating release and integration that talk-based approaches cannot always reach. The breath is the most direct voluntary pathway to the autonomic nervous system. Different breathing patterns produce reliably different states: extended exhale activates parasympathetic regulation; connected rhythmic breathing can unlock held emotional states. Best facilitated by a trained practitioner, particularly for deeper sessions.

Best for: Emotional release, pre-verbal material, accessing states below the verbal level, complementing talk-based work, nervous system regulation practice.

🤲

EFT — Emotional Freedom Technique

Tapping · Acupressure · Nervous system

EFT (tapping) combines verbal acknowledgement of a distressing experience with tapping on specific acupressure points on the face and body. The combination appears to simultaneously activate the stress response (through focused attention on the distress) and regulate it (through the tapping, which stimulates the body's calming response). Growing evidence base for anxiety, phobias, and trauma symptoms. Highly accessible as a self-practice tool.

Best for: Acute anxiety and distress, specific phobias and fears, as a self-regulation tool between therapy sessions, people who find physical self-touch regulating.

🧘

Yoga Therapy

Body · Breath · Nervous system · Mindfulness

Trauma-sensitive yoga — as distinct from general yoga practice — specifically addresses the disconnection from body and present-moment experience that trauma produces. Developed at the Trauma Center in Boston by van der Kolk's team, it uses simple postures, breath awareness, and interoceptive attention to rebuild the relationship between person and body that trauma disrupts. The goal is not flexibility or strength but re-inhabitation: learning to live in the body again.

Best for: Dissociation, disconnection from body, chronic freeze response, developmental trauma, as a complement to trauma-specific therapy.

🖐️

Massage & Bodywork

Touch · Somatic · Nervous system regulation

Safe, consensual touch is one of the most powerful regulators of the nervous system — activating the same oxytocin and vagal pathways that secure attachment activates in infancy. For people whose wounds include a disrupted relationship with touch, appropriate bodywork can provide direct experience of safe contact that begins to repair what was damaged. This requires a practitioner who is trauma-informed and who works in a way that prioritises consent, safety, and the client's felt sense at every step.

Best for: Touch-related wounds, chronic somatic tension, nervous system dysregulation, as a complement to psychological work. Requires trauma-informed practitioner.

Section 05

Energy & Holistic

Energy and holistic approaches work with dimensions of the person that conventional psychology does not always address — the energetic, spiritual, and systemic dimensions of wounding and healing. These approaches are not substitutes for trauma-specific therapeutic work in complex cases, but they can be powerful complements — and for some people and some wounds, they are the primary healing path.

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Energy Healing — Reiki & Variants

Energy · Subtle body · Chakras

Energy healing approaches work with the subtle energy body — the field of energy that surrounds and interpenetrates the physical body in traditions from Ayurveda to Traditional Chinese Medicine to Western energy medicine. Trauma and wounding create disruptions, blockages, or imbalances in this field that can persist after the physical and psychological dimensions have been addressed. Energy healing works to restore flow, clear held patterns, and support integration at the energetic level.

Best for: Energetic depletion, stuck grief, as a complement to psychological work, spiritual dimensions of wounding, those who are sensitive to energy.

🌳

Family Constellations

Systemic · Ancestral · Bert Hellinger

Developed by Bert Hellinger, family constellations works with the systemic entanglements across generations that shape present-day patterns. Representatives (in group work) or objects (in individual work) are placed in spatial relationship to represent family members — and the constellation reveals hidden loyalties, unresolved grief, and transgenerational trauma that the individual is carrying. Particularly powerful for wounds that seem to predate personal experience — patterns that feel "too big" to be about this life alone.

Best for: Ancestral and transgenerational patterns, unexplained recurring dynamics, grief and loss work, when individual work seems to reach a ceiling.

🌙

Shamanic Healing

Soul retrieval · Spiritual · Ancestral

Shamanic traditions understand trauma as producing "soul loss" — the splitting off of parts of the self that were too overwhelmed to remain present. Soul retrieval — a core shamanic practice across cultures — works to recover these split-off parts and restore wholeness. Whether understood literally or metaphorically, the soul retrieval framework maps onto the dissociative and fragmenting effects of trauma in ways that can be profoundly resonant for people for whom a purely psychological framework feels incomplete.

Best for: Spiritual dimensions of wounding, those who resonate with shamanic frameworks, chronic dissociation, the sense of not being fully present in one's own life.

Section 06

Self-Led Practices

Professional support is important for deep wound work — but the hours between sessions matter as much as the sessions themselves. The practices developed between sessions, the daily relationship with one's own inner life, and the ongoing cultivation of self-compassion are not supplementary to healing. They are its substance. These are the practices that support and deepen the work done in professional settings.

Self practice 01

Parts Journaling

Writing from the perspective of different inner parts — the wounded part, the protective part, the critical part, the wise part — creates a relationship with the wound's internal landscape. Not analysis but dialogue: "What does the part of me that got triggered today actually need?" This practice, done consistently, develops the Self's capacity to relate to all parts with curiosity rather than criticism — which is the internal equivalent of the therapeutic relationship.

Self practice 02

Daily Nervous System Regulation

Building a daily practice of nervous system regulation — breathwork, cold exposure, movement, meditation, or any combination — changes the baseline from which triggering events are experienced. A person whose nervous system is regularly regulated has a wider window of tolerance, returns to baseline more quickly after triggering, and has greater access to prefrontal resources during stress. Ten minutes of deliberate regulation daily produces measurable neurological change over time.

Self practice 03

Self-Compassion Practice

Kristin Neff's self-compassion framework — treating oneself with the same kindness one would offer a good friend in distress — is one of the most evidence-based self-practices for wound healing. Self-compassion is not self-pity or excuse-making. It is the recognition of shared humanity (everyone suffers), mindful awareness of the present suffering (neither suppressing nor dramatising), and self-kindness (actively offering comfort). Regular practice reduces shame, self-criticism, and the secondary suffering that wounds often generate.

Self practice 04

Safe Relationship Practice

The wounds formed in relationship tend to heal in relationship — which means that the quality of relationships cultivated during healing matters enormously. Actively choosing relationships with people who are consistently safe, who can tolerate your full range, and who demonstrate the capacity for repair after rupture provides the lived experience of relationship that the wound needs to update its conclusions. This is not therapy. It is life. But it is life pursued with awareness of what the nervous system needs in order to learn something new.