Fiona Rogerson - Trauma and Perinatal Counsellor & Birth Educator, Perth

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Fiona Rogerson - Trauma and Perinatal Counsellor & Birth Educator, Perth Specialist counselling and EMDR for birth trauma, perinatal trauma, PTSD & cPTSD. Perth + Aus-wide.

When we ask you to stop a behaviour without understanding what it's doing FOR you, we can accidentally take away the thi...
09/09/2026

When we ask you to stop a behaviour without understanding what it's doing FOR you, we can accidentally take away the thing that's helping you feel safe without addressing why you need it.

And when that doesn't work, guess who often gets blamed?
You do.

I know I shouldn't check, but I still do.
I know I'm overthinking, but I can't stop.
I know I need to let go of control, but I don't know how.

This is why I don't think the answer is simply getting better at overriding your anxious parts.

If checking helps you feel certain, we need to understand why certainty feels so necessary. If planning for every possible outcome helps you feel safe, we need to understand what feels unsafe about not being prepared.

But often, understanding WHY it's there isn't enough either.

If a part of you learnt that it needed to stay alert because of something that happened to you during your birth (or even when you were a child), there may be experiences we need to actually work through and process.

Because if that anxious part is still responding to an experience that taught it “this is how I keep us safe”, insight alone won't change the response.

So yes, we can work on the checking, overthinking, reassurance seeking or need for control. But we can also work with why those behaviours became necessary in the first place, including processing the experiences that taught your parts they needed to protect you this way.

And this is why I don't love the idea that some people simply have an “anxious brain” or an “anxious personality.”

Because when we call anxiety your personality, it can sound like this is simply who you are, and therefore something you'll always need to manage.

I just don't believe that's the whole story.

You can have parts of you that carry a LOT of anxiety without anxiety being who you are.

And when we understand what those parts are protecting you from, and work with the experiences that taught them they needed to, we have somewhere much more useful to go in counselling.

If you're tired of being told you're “just an anxious person”, send me a DM. We can talk about what working on it differently could look like.

The more modalities I've trained in, the less interested I've become in making the therapy fit the modality.EMDR can be ...
30/08/2026

The more modalities I've trained in, the less interested I've become in making the therapy fit the modality.

EMDR can be incredibly effective, and there are times when I think it's absolutely the right direction for someone. But I don't think being a trauma therapist means every painful part of someone's experience needs to become something we process.

Sometimes we're grieving something that can't be changed.
Sometimes the impact of what happened is now playing out in a relationship.
Sometimes there are patterns, beliefs or difficulties in the present that need our attention.
Sometimes there is a traumatic experience that is continuing to intrude into life now and processing it makes complete sense.

But often, it's not one or the other.

Good therapy can move between different ways of working depending on what we're trying to achieve and the person sitting in front of us.

This is crucial, particularly when people seek out EMDR specifically. I absolutely want to know why you're interested in it and what you're hoping it might help with. But I also don't want you to feel like you've signed up for a particular treatment before we've even understood what you need.

You don't need to arrive knowing whether you need EMDR, talk therapy, grief work, couples work or some combination of them. That's part of what we work out together.

And if EMDR does make sense, we'll talk about why. If we think something else would be more useful, we'll talk to you about that too.

Because having more tools should give us more choice in therapy, not more reasons to use the same tool.

If you know something still isn't right after your birth, you don't need to know what kind of therapy you need before reaching out. That's our job to work out with you.

Head to the link in my bio to book with us.

This is one of the reasons I don't love advice that starts with 'behaviour change'... Leave the baby with your partner a...
26/08/2026

This is one of the reasons I don't love advice that starts with 'behaviour change'... Leave the baby with your partner and go for a walk. Stop checking. Let him figure it out. You need to learn to let go.

But when you do it and spend the entire time anxious, watching the clock or fighting the urge to check in, it's very easy to conclude that YOU are the problem. You're too controlling. Too anxious. You don't trust your partner enough. You need to relax.

Often women already arrive in counselling with those explanations firmly attached to themselves so they don't need it coming from us too.

Because once we understand that, the work becomes much more specific.
We might be working with a traumatic memory that still feels incredibly present.
We might be working with beliefs about responsibility or blame.
We might be rebuilding a sense of safety after an experience where you had very little control.
Or we might be working with guilt, uncertainty, trust or separation.

And sometimes we'll discover that the birth isn't actually where we need to go at all.

That's the point. Counselling shouldn't be a predetermined set of strategies attached to a symptom. Two people can be doing exactly the same thing for completely different reasons, and understanding what's driving it is what helps us work out what will actually help.

It can also change the way you understand yourself. Instead of, “Why can't I just relax and let him do it?”, we can start to make sense of why letting go feels so difficult in the first place.

And THAT gives us somewhere useful to work from.

If you recognise yourself in this, we'd love to support you. Head to the link in my bio to book a session.

When you don't recognise something as connected to your birth, you tend to find another explanation for it. You think yo...
24/08/2026

When you don't recognise something as connected to your birth, you tend to find another explanation for it.

You think you've become anxious. You're suddenly terrible with medical appointments. You're overly sensitive to certain things. You can't cope like you used to. You're being ridiculous because logically you KNOW you're safe.

Sometimes women have been living with these reactions for years before they make the connection back to what happened. Part of that is on the way we've talked about birth trauma.

We've made it quite easy to recognise when someone is having vivid memories of the birth, nightmares about it or becoming distressed when they talk about what happened.

We've been much less good at talking about what it can look like when the memory isn't presenting itself so neatly.

When you don't have the image, the story or even a conscious thought about the birth to connect to the reaction, all you're left with is what happens in your body NOW. And without the context, that response can feel completely irrational.

That's why recognising birth trauma isn't always about asking, “Do you still think about the birth?” Sometimes we need to look at what has changed since it.

What can you no longer tolerate?
What situations suddenly make you feel unsafe?
What does your body react to before you've even had time to think?
What have you started avoiding without really understanding why?

Because the connection to the birth isn't always obvious until we start looking at what your body has been responding to ever since. And once that connection is made, something that has felt confusing or completely out of proportion can finally have some context.

If you're recognising some of this in yourself, it may be worth exploring what your body has been trying to tell you.

We'd love to help you make sense of it. Head to the link in my bio to book with us.

Snapping at your partner.Rage when your child won't listen.A disproportionate reaction to something tiny, followed immed...
20/08/2026

Snapping at your partner.
Rage when your child won't listen.
A disproportionate reaction to something tiny, followed immediately by shame.

It's so easy to make anger the problem. I see it everywhere... '5 ways to be a calmer parent'. But anger isn't always the problem. What's underneath it is.

When someone comes to us after birth and says she's become angry, irritable or constantly on edge, we're interested in what came BEFORE the anger started.

Because for many women, anger and rage are manifestations of the 'fight' response that engages when there is a level of threat.

So where was the threat that was the catalyst here?

Did you feel powerless during your birth?
Were decisions made around you?
Were you dismissed when you knew something wasn't right?
Did you spend the days afterwards holding everything together because there was a baby who needed you?

What happens if we only focus on the anger? We teach you to notice it earlier. Take a breath. Walk away. Ground yourself. Communicate differently. Regulate before you respond.

All useful things. But if we stop there, we're trying to turn down the response without asking why your system keeps producing it.

And when the anger itself becomes the problem, every time you snap can feel like another failure.

You knew what to do.
You had the strategies.
You promised yourself you wouldn't react like that again.
But you did.

This is where we need to get curious about why THIS situation produces THAT response. Because sometimes the present moment is touching something your body already knows very well.

Powerlessness.
Loss of control.
Not being heard.
Not being able to make something stop.
Feeling responsible for keeping everybody safe.

For us, this is where therapy needs to go deeper than symptom management.

Of course we want to give you ways to manage what's happening NOW. Sometimes those strategies are exactly what you need while we do deeper work.

We want to also understand why the anger emerged in the first place, what threat your system is still responding to, and how we can work with that at the source.

If this hits home, we'd love to support you.

Head to http://www.fionarogerson.com.au to book.

They went home from the hospital with a completely different version of what happened.They remember being scared.You rem...
17/08/2026

They went home from the hospital with a completely different version of what happened.

They remember being scared.
You remember being trapped inside it.

They want to move on.
You want them to understand why you can't.

And suddenly you're fighting about bottles, bedtime or who's more tired, when the real argument started months ago during your birth.

Sometimes what comes home after a traumatic birth doesn't look like trauma. It looks like resentment.
Distance.
Snapping.
Not wanting to be touched.
Feeling furious that they don't seem changed by something that changed you completely.

That's often the part nobody prepares you for. Because you thought once you were both home, you could put the birth behind you. Instead, it followed you into your relationship.

This is why birth trauma cannot be seen as something that happened to one person, in one room, on one day.

We need to look at what happened afterwards too.

What did each of you experience during the birth? What meaning did you each make of it? What trauma responses are in play now for each of you? What happened when you tried to talk about it afterwards? Where did you stop understanding each other? And what is still being played out between you now?

Couples who have been through a traumatic birth don’t necessarily need to be taught to communicate better.

Sometimes they need someone who understands trauma AND relationships to recognise that what looks like a communication problem is actually an injury that has never been properly addressed.

That's a really important distinction in how we work. We're not interested in helping you argue more politely about who's more tired while completely missing why there's so much hurt underneath the argument.

We want to help you understand what happened, process what you're each carrying from it, and repair what happened between you afterwards.

Couples work must be informed by both trauma therapy and relationship therapy, rather than treating the two as separate problems, or it will lead nowhere.

Head to http://www.fionarogerson.com.au to book a session with us. We would love to support you.

They went home from the hospital with a different version of what happened.They remember being scared.You remember being...
17/08/2026

They went home from the hospital with a different version of what happened.

They remember being scared.
You remember being trapped inside it.

They want to move on.
You want them to understand why you can't.

And suddenly you're fighting about bottles, bedtime or who's more tired, when the real argument started months ago during your birth.

Sometimes what comes home after a traumatic birth doesn't look like trauma. It looks like resentment.
Distance.
Snapping.
Not wanting to be touched.
Feeling furious that they don't seem changed by something that changed you completely.

That's often the part nobody prepares you for. You thought once you were both home, you could put the birth behind you. Instead, it followed you into your relationship.

This is something we support couples with every single day.

Our work isn't simply about helping you communicate better or giving you strategies for the next argument. We help you understand what happened during the birth, how each of you experienced it, and what you're both still carrying from it.

Because often the fight you're having now isn't really about who's more tired or who should have done the night feed. There's something underneath it that hasn't been understood, processed or repaired.

We work specifically with birth trauma, perinatal mental health and couples, so you don't have to choose between working on what happened to you and working on what's happening in your relationship now. We understand how closely the two can be connected.

You DON'T have to wait until your relationship is falling apart to get support.

Head to the link in my bio to book a session with us. We would love to support you.

Most people assume that when someone struggles to ask for help, it's a personality trait. They're independent, private, ...
12/06/2026

Most people assume that when someone struggles to ask for help, it's a personality trait. They're independent, private, stubborn, or just used to doing everything themselves.

What if it's actually a threat response?

One thing I see often after traumatic birth is a shift from "people help me" to "I have to do everything myself".
Because when you needed support most, support didn't come. Or the people you trusted didn't listen. Or you asked for help and were minimised, dismissed, or ignored.

The brain is always looking for patterns. If a traumatic experience taught your nervous system that your needs wouldn't be met, asking for help can start to feel uncomfortable. Not because you're incapable of receiving support, but because some part of you no longer expects it to be there when it matters. Or worse, because asking for help became linked with rejection, abandonment, shame, or disappointment.

You carry more than you should. You tell everyone you're fine when you're not. You become the person who handles everything because relying on someone else feels harder than doing it yourself.

Your partner sees someone who won't let them in. You see someone who should know you need help without having to ask. They feel pushed away. You feel unsupported. Resentment builds.

What many couples don't realise is that they're often not dealing with a communication problem. They're dealing with the aftermath of trauma.

Birth trauma doesn't just affect how you feel about the birth. It affects how safe it feels to be vulnerable, trust others, depend on people, and ask for what you need. All of that shows up in relationships.

This isn't who you are. It's something your nervous system learned in response to what happened.

When couples understand these patterns as protective rather than intentional, blame gives way to understanding.

If birth trauma has left you feeling disconnected, resentful, misunderstood, or stuck in the same arguments, perinatal-focused couples counselling can help you understand what's happening underneath and rebuild connection.

Find more details via the link in my bio. We would love to support you.

Attention Counsellors 📣 Only 2 places left across my four upcoming closed supervision groups!These are the BEST when it ...
05/06/2026

Attention Counsellors 📣 Only 2 places left across my four upcoming closed supervision groups!

These are the BEST when it comes to support for you and your work.

Shoot me a DM to join!

Address

6/640 Beeliar Drive, Success
Perth, WA
6164

Opening Hours

Monday 8:30am - 5pm
Tuesday 8:30am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Telephone

+61402017425

Website

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