Hana Greenfield
Counsellor
(Bachelor of Counselling, PGCert -Trauma Response)
Born and raised in southern India, I have travelled extensively, worked internationally and call Tāmaki Makaurau home.
As a counsellor, my practice is shaped by hands-on experience in working with sexual harm and family harm survivors, trauma-training, first-hand experience of the benefits of trauma-counselling and, knowledge of community support networks and resources. I am currently invested in completing a masters degree in trauma responsive practice using a feminist and indigenous lens, learning about anti pathologizing practice and a range of somatic interventions to help understand and process trauma.
As a woman of colour, I am able to work cross-culturally. I have a useful, growing understanding of race theory and privilege, migration, indigenous cultures, feminist theory, anti-discriminatory practice, social construction and human development - all of which underpin my practice. I predominantly work with women who belong to marginalized ethnicities.
I am most passionate about creating internal safety, finding ways to navigate rupture and repair in relationships and being present in trauma-informed ways with my clients.
"Trauma is a Greek word for wound. Literally that's what it means. So when you understand that, then you realize...trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you.
....Trauma is not the event that inflicted the wound. So, the trauma is not the sexual abuse, the trauma is not the war. Trauma is not the abandonment. The trauma is not the inability of your parents to see you for who you were. Trauma is the wound that you sustained as a result.
....So my wound wasn't that my mother gave me [away temporarily] to a stranger [when I was a child]. My wound was that I made that mean that I wasn't lovable and I wasn't wanted and I was being abandoned, which is a good thing. Because if the trauma was what happened to you, guess what? It'll never unhappen.
....But if the trauma wound happens inside you, the wound that you're carrying? That can heal at any time."
- Dr. Gabor Maté
“Trauma decontextualized in a person looks like personality. Trauma decontextualized in a family looks like family traits. Trauma decontextualized in people looks like culture.”
- Resmaa Menakem
