Healing from Trauma in a World That Keeps Hurting You: A Trans-Centered Approach
What does healing look like when the harm hasn’t stopped?
For many trans people, trauma isn’t just something that happened in the past — it’s something that happens again and again. Misgendering at the doctor’s office. Getting kicked off insurance for transitioning. Being harassed in public. Denied housing. Denied care. Denied safety.
Trauma, for us, isn’t rare. It’s structural.
Why Traditional Trauma Care Doesn’t Work for Us
Most trauma therapy models are built around an assumption of safety — that if you just process the past, you’ll be okay in the present. But what if the present isn’t safe either?
Here’s what mainstream trauma care often gets wrong:
It focuses on individual healing, ignoring systemic harm.
It centers neutrality over advocacy — even when neutrality equals complicity.
It asks trans people to be “resilient” without ever creating conditions where resilience isn’t necessary.
We don’t need care that erases the ongoing violence we face. We need care that helps us survive it — and imagine something beyond it.
Our Approach at The Source
At The Source, we treat trauma not as a flaw inside you, but as a response to what’s happened around you. Our trans-centered approach includes:
Narrative safety — you’re in control of how your story is told.
Intersectional care — we name and address the ways racism, fatphobia, ableism, and transmisogyny compound trauma.
Community-based recovery — we don’t believe you have to heal in isolation or through silence.
Skills for surviving a world that’s still violent — and dreaming of one that’s not.
We believe that healing doesn’t mean becoming “normal.” It means reclaiming your life on your terms.
