Michael Dadson On Trauma Counselling and The Importance of Finding The Right Therapist
Trauma-Informed Care and Skilled Trauma Treatment
Trauma-informed care recognizes the effects of trauma and supports safety, choice and collaboration. Choosing treatment also involves asking about specific clinical training, experience and research support.
When choosing a therapist, ask about specific treatment training as well as trauma-informed care. Our guide to trauma therapy approaches explains methods, research foundations and how our therapists connect treatment with your goals.
Dr. Dadson underscores:
Trauma-informed practice and specific trauma-treatment qualifications are related but different. Our therapists explain their relevant training, the approach they recommend, its evidence and alternatives. No approach can guarantee that PTSD will be prevented. You are welcome to ask about experience with concerns similar to yours and how progress will be reviewed.
Dr. Michael Dadson is a Fellow of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) and formerly served on its Board of Directors. His professional work has included trauma and dissociation, and he co-authored two peer-reviewed articles in the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma addressing structural dissociation, attachment, mentalization, and phase-oriented treatment.
Understanding your experiences. Working toward meaningful change. Finding care that respects you.
Military service can shape identity, relationships and a sense of purpose long after release. Work as a first responder can also carry commitments, responsibilities and experiences that other people may struggle to understand.
You may value what your service has given you while carrying experiences that remain difficult. Perhaps memories interrupt your sleep, you feel constantly alert, or being close to your family has become harder. You may be a partner or family member trying to understand what has changed while managing difficulties of your own.
Our therapists begin by understanding your experiences, what matters to you and how life is being affected now. Together, we establish meaningful goals and explore research-informed treatment options.
This website shares trauma education and clinical perspectives connected with Dr. Michael “Mike” Dadson’s work. Our purpose is to help you understand your experiences and make informed choices. For those exploring trauma counselling or PTSD treatment in Langley, care is available through Gentle Currents Therapy.
What Are the Signs of PTSD in Veterans and First Responders?
PTSD can involve unwanted memories or nightmares, avoiding reminders, changes in thoughts and feelings, and remaining unusually alert or reactive. These experiences can affect sleep, concentration, relationships and participation in everyday life.
You might recognize something more particular:
A sound, smell or situation brings an experience back with unexpected intensity.
You remain watchful in places where others seem comfortable.
Keeping busy helps you avoid memories, but leaves little room for rest or relationships.
You feel distant from people you care about, even when you want to connect.
Guilt or questions about what you should have done keep returning.
You may continue meeting responsibilities while noticing that life has become narrower or harder to enjoy. Being capable in one part of life does not explain everything you are experiencing elsewhere.
These changes deserve careful attention. They do not, by themselves, establish PTSD. Assessment considers the pattern and duration of symptoms, their impact on life and other possible explanations. You do not need to diagnose yourself before asking for help.
Can Repeated Exposure to Trauma Contribute to PTSD?
Trauma-related difficulties can follow a single event or repeated exposure to distressing events. The intensity and duration of exposure, previous experiences, ongoing stress and available support can influence recovery. Exposure does not mean that everyone will develop PTSD.
Military experiences may involve deployments, training incidents, injury, loss, violence or events within the service environment. Not every veteran has served in combat, and combat is not the only context in which trauma can occur.
First responders may encounter repeated emergencies, serious injury, death and situations in which they cannot prevent suffering. A useful counselling conversation makes room for the events themselves, their circumstances and what happened afterward.
How Can First Responder Work Affect Life Between Shifts?
A call may end while parts of the experience remain with you. You may return to another emergency before having much opportunity to consider what happened. Over time, particular calls, losses or decisions may become difficult to set aside.
Readiness, quick decisions and attention to danger can be essential at work. At home, you may notice that you remain watchful, react strongly to interruptions or find it difficult to settle into ordinary family life. A partner may experience distance where you are trying to find quiet or recover from a demanding shift.
These experiences deserve understanding in the context of your work and relationships. They do not automatically mean you have PTSD.
Our therapists explore what is happening between shifts as well as during them. Goals might include sleeping more comfortably, responding differently to reminders, communicating what you need or feeling more present with the people you care about. If occupational exposure continues, we consider that reality when planning treatment and reviewing progress.
Yes. Symptoms can emerge months or years after an event, and they can fluctuate over time. Recognizing longstanding difficulties later is different from symptoms first emerging later; both warrant thoughtful exploration.
You may wonder why something you once managed now feels harder to carry. Counselling can help you explore when changes began, what seems to bring them forward and how they connect with life now. You do not need a complete timeline or a detailed account of every experience to begin.
How Can Counselling Support Life During and After Military Service?
Military service can shape identity, relationships, values and a sense of belonging. You may take pride in your service while carrying experiences that remain difficult to understand or discuss.
Leaving the military can bring changes in structure, responsibility, camaraderie and purpose. Some veterans seek counselling during that transition. Others have built civilian lives and come years later because memories, losses or relationship difficulties need attention. Canadian transition research recognizes the importance of integrating military and civilian identities and developing meaningful connections after service.
Your service history deserves curiosity rather than assumptions. What did service mean to you? What do you value and want to preserve? What has become difficult, and what would you like to change?
Counselling can make room for grief, distressing experiences and questions about identity alongside your strengths, commitments and hopes. Goals may involve reconnecting with family, understanding a troubling experience, finding community or participating in meaningful work and activities.
Our therapists explore these concerns with you. Transition difficulties do not automatically mean PTSD, and treatment should reflect your individual circumstances.
Partners and family members also have their own experiences of military life and its changes. Their concerns, goals and wellbeing belong in the conversation.
How Can PTSD or Operational Stress Affect Family Life?
Partners and family members may have lived through deployments, separations, relocations, reunion and changes in responsibilities. They bring their own experiences of service life and transition.
A partner may feel uncertain about how to approach a difficult conversation. Someone who has served may want closeness while finding questions or ordinary disagreements overwhelming. Children may notice changes without understanding them.
Veteran and family accounts collected by the Atlas Institute describe difficulties with connection, identity and supporting loved ones, alongside the importance of family members’ own wellbeing.
Family members deserve space to talk about their own needs. Supporting someone you love should include attention to your health, boundaries, relationships and access to support.
Depending on the people involved and their needs, care may include individual counselling, relationship work or referral to an appropriate family service. We can discuss which form of support may fit and what each person hopes might change.
Research strongly supports specific trauma-focused psychotherapies, including Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and Prolonged Exposure (PE). These are defined treatments with particular methods and training requirements.
Understanding treatment means asking how an approach addresses your concerns:
Distressing memories and reminders: treatment may help change how those memories affect you in the present.
Persistent guilt or self-blame: the work may include examining beliefs about responsibility in the context of what happened.
Avoidance: carefully planned work may help you regain participation in situations or activities you value.
Difficulties with connection: counselling may include understanding protective responses and practising different ways of communicating and relating.
The approach depends on assessment, your preferences and the clinician’s qualifications. Different therapists offer different treatments. Your therapist explains the recommendation, its research support, what the work involves and what alternatives you can consider.
How Does Our Therapists’ Training Inform Your Care?
Our therapists bring different areas of training and experience. Understanding those differences can help you consider who may fit your needs.
Carlie Dinwoodie’s training includes EMDR, alongside experience supporting people with distressing memories, childhood trauma, attachment injuries, grief and shame. Her work also draws on cognitive behavioural and attachment-based approaches.
Dr. Michael “Mike” Dadson’s training includes Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Levels I and II, alongside clinical work addressing complex trauma, dissociation and relationships. His background also includes group-based trauma work and supporting military-to-civilian transition.
These approaches attend to different aspects of experience: memories, beliefs, emotions, physical responses and relationships. Their research foundations and applications differ. Your therapist explains how their training relates to your concerns and the treatment they recommend.
Goals should connect with the life you want to live. You may want to sleep more comfortably, respond differently when reminded of an experience, feel more present with your family or return to an activity you have been avoiding.
Together, we make those goals specific enough to review. What would improvement look like? What has changed between appointments? What remains difficult?
Your feedback helps guide decisions about continuing, adjusting or reconsidering treatment. Respecting your choices and pace includes explaining the purpose of difficult work and discussing concerns openly.
How Does Sequential Trauma Narrative Inform Our Work?
Dr. Michael “Mike” Dadson developed Sequential Trauma Narrative (STN) as a clinical framework informing our understanding of trauma treatment and recovery.
It brings attention to four connected domains:
Capacity: being able to manage distress and remain present enough to participate.
Coherence: making sense of experiences and how they have affected your understanding of yourself.
Connection: developing trust, relationships and a sense of belonging.
Contribution: participating in activities, responsibilities and communities that give life meaning.
For a veteran, these questions might involve feeling more settled at home, understanding a troubling experience, reconnecting with family or finding meaningful participation after service.
These domains help organize clinical thinking alongside your goals and relevant treatment research. Evidence supporting particular treatments or component ideas remains distinct from research evaluating STN as a complete framework.
Some experiences raise painful questions about responsibility, loyalty, fairness or what should have happened. Moral injury describes distress associated with events that conflict with deeply held values. It can involve guilt, shame, anger or betrayal and can occur with or without PTSD.
These concerns deserve an accepting, thoughtful conversation. Counselling may involve understanding responsibility in context, exploring what an experience has meant and considering how you want to live in relation to your values. You can raise these concerns without having to decide in advance what to call them.
How Do I Find a Counsellor Who Understands Military or First Responder Experience?
Relevant professional credentials and treatment training matter. So does a willingness to understand your service, occupational culture and individual experience.
You can ask about experience with veterans or first responders, the approaches a clinician provides and how treatment will connect with your goals. Notice whether explanations make sense and whether your questions are welcomed.
Our therapists bring different backgrounds and areas of training. We can help you explore fit and discuss referral options where another clinician or service may be more appropriate.
Dr. Michael “Mike” Dadson, PhD, RCC, CCC, is the Clinical Director of Gentle Currents Therapy. His background includes former national executive and clinical leadership with the Veterans Transition Network.
Research on Group Treatment for Military-Related Trauma
Dr. Michael “Mike” Dadson co-authored a peer-reviewed evaluation of the Veterans Transition Program, published in the International Journal of Group Psychotherapy in 2014.
The study involved 56 veterans whose military-related trauma was affecting their lives. Participants completed measures of posttraumatic stress and depressive symptoms before and after the programme. The researchers reported improvement across the measures, offering encouraging evidence for further investigation of this group-based approach.
Before-and-after findings require careful interpretation: they do not, on their own, establish what caused improvement or predict an individual’s outcome.
For someone considering counselling, this research offers an example of treatment developed and evaluated specifically with veterans. It also illustrates an important commitment in care: checking whether the work is helping.
Your own progress deserves that attention. Together, we identify changes that matter to you and review how treatment is affecting your symptoms, relationships and participation in life.
Can We Discuss Confidentiality, Fees and Funding Before Beginning?
Yes. You are welcome to ask practical questions before deciding whether to begin.
Ask your therapist to explain confidentiality and its limits, record keeping and how requests for information or reports would be handled. Where an employer, insurer or funding organization is involved, clarify the arrangements and any information-sharing requirements.
Our team can explain current fees and help you explore available access pathways. Benefits and third-party funding depend on eligibility, authorization and the clinician involved; confirm coverage before relying on it.
Family members are also welcome to ask about support for themselves and which services may fit their needs.
Support can also include connecting with others who understand service life. Veterans Affairs Canada explains peer support for military members, veterans and families through OSISS, and separately identifies peer support for RCMP members and veterans. These are independent support options; you do not need to contact our clinic to explore them.
Exploring Care in Langley
You can begin with what matters now: sleep, memories, relationships, military or occupational experiences, or something you have not yet found words to describe. You do not need to wait a month after an event to ask for support if distress is severe, worsening or affecting daily life.
Our therapists listen with curiosity and care, explain treatment options and work collaboratively toward meaningful change. Our Statement of Care expresses the commitment guiding that work: every person is welcomed with dignity, compassion and hope.
Some of these experiences can occur with PTSD, but they can also have other causes. This list is not a diagnostic test. Assessment considers your experiences, the pattern and duration of symptoms, how life is affected and other possible explanations. Learn how PTSD is assessed from the National Institute of Mental Health.
People can experience different emotional and physical responses after a traumatic event. This list is educational and does not establish what is causing a symptom.
Sudden confusion or new difficulty speaking needs immediate medical assessment. Do not assume these symptoms are caused by emotional trauma. Read about sudden confusion and difficulty speaking.
