Taproot Psychology

Healing from trauma is often imagined as a solitary journey — something deeply personal, private, and done alone. But in trauma therapy, we know something different to be true: healing happens in connection. Not just insight, not just coping skills, but deep, embodied healing.

This is especially evident in a trauma therapy retreator therapy retreat for women, where healing unfolds not only through structured sessions, but through shared experience, being witnessed, and being emotionally met by others who truly understand.

What Changes When We Are Witnessed and Believed?

From experience, something profound happens when a person is deeply witnessed, believed, and emotionally met during healing — particularly in a retreat setting.

Often, one of two things shows up first:

Relief — a softening, a sense of “I don’t have to hold this alone anymore.”
Or the wound — the pain of recognising, often for the first time, I was hurt, and I was left to believe it was my fault.

Both are important. And both need space.

In a therapy retreat, this witnessing doesn’t come from just one therapist, but from the entire group. Being believed and validated by multiple people creates a powerful sense that what has been held in the body for years — sometimes decades — can finally be felt, named, and released. There is often a deep bodily shift: tension softens, breath deepens, and there is a growing capacity to see one’s younger self through kinder eyes.

This is something one-to-one therapy can begin, but a trauma therapy retreat allows it to happen repeatedly, in different ways, and in real time.

Why Group Healing Is Different From One-to-One Therapy

Individual therapy is valuable, but it can’t replicate the lived, relational experiences that happen in a retreat environment.

On a therapy retreat for women, healing happens:

• Around the dinner table
• During walks, swims, shared silence, and laughter
• In moments of rupture, misunderstanding, and repair

These “in-between” moments matter. Trauma often develops in relationship — through neglect, abandonment, harm, or lack of protection — and therefore it must also heal in relationship.

In a retreat setting, participants don’t just talk about connection; they practice it. They experience:

• Being seen during moments of dissociation or emotional overwhelm
• Having flashbacks witnessed and supported in real time
• Learning regulation skills as they are needed, not just theoretically

With skilled facilitators present, even moments of conflict or discomfort become opportunities for repair — something many people with trauma never had growing up.

The Science Behind Healing in Connection

Research strongly supports this approach:

P. Levine wrote ‘"Trauma is not (only) what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness”. Attachment theory shows that safety and healing are co-regulated — our nervous systems settle in the presence of attuned others (D. Poole-Heller). Polyvagal theory (S.Porges, D.Dana) highlights that social connection is key to regulating the stress response. Group therapy research consistently shows that universality (“I’m not alone”) and interpersonal learning are major drivers of change. (R.Vogt)
Studies on trauma-informed group work demonstrate that shared meaning-making reduces shame and self-blame — two core trauma responses. (R. and I.Vogt)

In other words, healing isn’t just about understanding what happened. 
It’s about experiencing something different.

From Isolation to Expansion

Many people arrive at a trauma therapy retreat focused inward:

My healing. My symptoms. My work.
But then something shifts.
As safety builds, healing expands beyond the individual and into:

• Relationship with the body
• Connection to others
• Shared humanity and common values
• A sense of community

This movement — from restriction to expansion — is a hallmark of trauma healing. When people feel safe enough, they no longer need to armour constantly. They can choose when and how to connect, rather than being driven by fear, collapse, or over-protection.

Importantly, participants don’t have to arrive as their “healthiest self.”
They are welcomed with all of their wounds and all of their parts.

There is a deep sense of:

I belong here.
I will receive support when I get stuck.
I don’t have to do this alone.

Why a Retreat Environment Matters

A therapy retreat offers something modern life rarely allows:

Time
Slowness
Permission to feel
Distance from everyday demands
Being removed from your usual environment allows your nervous system to downshift. This creates the conditions for risk — the healthy risk of being seen, supported, and met by others in ways you may never have been before.

At Rooted Trauma Retreats, structured therapeutic work is woven together with shared meals, playfulness, nature, psycho-education, and rest. Participants are supported to make sense of their experiences — understanding why their thoughts, behaviours, and coping strategies developed, rather than judging themselves for having them. This meaning-making is a crucial part of healing.

Experience Healing in Connection

If you are longing for deeper healing — not just insight, but felt safety, connection, and repair — a trauma therapy retreat may offer what individual work alone cannot.

The Rooted Trauma Retreats invite you to experience healing in connection:

📅 October 13–18, 2026
📍 Quinta Pomar Retreat Venue - Santa Luzia, Algarve Portugal
🌿 A trauma therapy retreat for women

Led by experienced, compassionate facilitators - Dr Kelly Savery and Theres Fickl
Grounded in safety, choice, and embodied healing
You don’t need to arrive fixed.
You are welcome exactly as you are.

👉 Click for more information and to learn more about the Rooted Trauma Retreats experience.