Why even trauma-informed spaces must evolve beyond pathologising language
Intro
“What if the problem isn’t that you’re broken, but that you’ve been buried under diagnoses, descriptions, and labels that never belonged to you?”
We are living in an age of increased awareness around trauma, and that’s something to celebrate. At long last, people are beginning to name the impact of abuse, neglect, violence, and emotional abandonment. But alongside this shift, another quieter danger has emerged:
We’re replacing one set of clinical labels with another.
We thankfully no longer call people “hysterical,” “mentally ill,” or “borderline” quite so freely — instead, we say “dysregulated,” “in a trauma loop,” or “presenting with complex trauma.” And while those terms may feel more informed, more compassionate… they still carry an implicit message:
Something is wrong with you. You need fixing. You are a case to be handled, not a story to be held.
Even in spaces that are proudly “trauma-informed,” the language can become what I call “diagnosis-light.” The labels may have softened, but the framing is still the same, people are reduced to symptoms, behaviours, clusters, presentations.
The tragedy is that in trying to validate people’s pain, we often subtly strip them of their power.
You Are Not Broken — You Are Responding Intelligently
What the DSM might call “avoidant attachment,” I might call a brilliant boundary in a world that once betrayed you.
What clinicians call “emotional dysregulation,” I often see as a nervous system doing everything it can to stay safe.
What’s described as “self-sabotage” may, in fact, be a part of you that learned it wasn’t safe to grow.
In my work and in my own healing, I’ve seen again and again: we are not broken. We are buried.
Buried under the shame.
Buried under the expectations.
Buried under labels we were never meant to carry.
And the work of healing? It isn’t to fix. It’s to unbury, to emerge, to uncover.
Where the Language of Care Becomes Another Cage
There’s a fine line between naming and narrowing. Between offering insight and imposing interpretation.
Even the most well-intentioned trauma professionals can fall into this, and me too at times. It’s not done out of malice, but out of training. Out of the pressure to be “evidence-based.” Out of the comfort of certainty. And sometimes, out of our own need as a clinician to feel in control.
But when we say things like:
– “They’re trauma-bonded.”
– “You’re stuck in dorsal vagal collapse.”
– “She has PTSD.”
– “This part is actively sabotaging you.”
…We also may unintentionally be doing the very thing trauma once did:
Taking away choice. Reducing. Othering.
When someone’s pain becomes a concept instead of a conversation, we lose the very heart of healing. And in that moment, the client disappears and all that’s left is a label.
We don’t want clients to disappear under the weight of anything therapeutic, we want them to reappear, all parts of them and be witnessed, worshipped and welcomed, every time.