I’m Helen Billows
you know what they told you about the trauma. but i know what they missed.
I'm a registered psychologist, EMDR consultant and fairly committed trauma nerd, with more than 7,000 trauma therapy sessions behind me.
I've spent years learning how to understand and treat trauma properly. And, rather inconveniently, a decent portion of that involved discovering that things I'd previously been taught, believed and confidently incorporated into my clinical work didn't actually hold up very well.
That experience has made me extremely interested in the gap between knowing psychological concepts and actually understanding them.
Now I bring the clinical depth, evidence and reasoning that often get left out of familiar psychological explanations to people who have already done plenty of reading and want to understand things properly.
Welcome to the brain of a booked-out trauma therapist.
I didn’t start out as a trauma therapist.
My first psychology job in 2018 was in alcohol and other drug services. I was doing the counselling and CBT I'd been trained to do, but almost everyone I worked with had a significant trauma history, and many met criteria for PTSD.
I increasingly had the feeling that I was helping people manage the consequences of their trauma without being particularly well equipped to treat the trauma itself. That didn’t sit well with me.
I knew from the research that trauma therapy could be incredibly effective, and I wanted to be able to produce those kinds of outcomes consistently. So I trained in EMDR, experienced it myself during the training, thought it was brilliant, and promptly became obsessed.
Naturally, I went all in.
I read constantly. I trained constantly. If someone appeared to know something about trauma that I didn't, I wanted to learn it.
I was determined to become an excellent trauma therapist.
As a novice, I trusted the sources I should have been able to trust.
I read widely, trained constantly, and accumulated a huge amount of information about trauma. Instead of making things clearer, it gave me a million possible explanations and very little confidence about which one was actually right. And over time, I realised something uncomfortable: a surprising amount of what gets taught about trauma, even inside the professional community, is poorly supported, oversimplified or just plain wrong.
As a novice, I trusted the sources I should have been able to trust.
I read widely, trained constantly, and accumulated a huge amount of information about trauma. Instead of making things clearer, it gave me a million possible explanations and very little confidence about which one was actually right. And over time, I realised something uncomfortable: a surprising amount of what gets taught about trauma, even inside the professional community, is poorly supported, oversimplified or just plain wrong.
Enter: Type-A psychologist obsessed with getting it right.
I stopped treating every convincing trauma explanation as equally credible and became much stricter about what I trusted. I committed to the evidence, advanced assessment, proper case formulation, ongoing supervision, and the kind of training that could actually stand up to scrutiny. Instead of asking, “What theory could explain this?” I started asking better questions: What do we actually know? What are we assuming? What else could explain it? What fits the evidence best? That shift changed everything about the way I worked.
Enter: Type-A psychologist obsessed with getting it right.
I stopped treating every convincing trauma explanation as equally credible and became much stricter about what I trusted. I committed to the evidence, advanced assessment, proper case formulation, ongoing supervision, and the kind of training that could actually stand up to scrutiny. Instead of asking, “What theory could explain this?” I started asking better questions: What do we actually know? What are we assuming? What else could explain it? What fits the evidence best? That shift changed everything about the way I worked.
And it worked.
My clinical judgement improved. My outcomes improved. My work became more focused, and I built Billows Psychology around trauma and EMDR. Since then, I’ve delivered 7,000+ trauma therapy sessions, earned consultant-level EMDR accreditation, and been selected to assist with training other clinicians across Australia. My practice has grown through sustained demand for this work, and trauma has remained the central focus of my clinical career. The biggest lesson I’ve taken from all of it is simple: getting the formulation right matters, because what you believe is happening shapes what you do next.
And it worked.
My clinical judgement improved. My outcomes improved. My work became more focused, and I built Billows Psychology around trauma and EMDR. Since then, I’ve delivered 7,000+ trauma therapy sessions, earned consultant-level EMDR accreditation, and been selected to assist with training other clinicians across Australia. My practice has grown through sustained demand for this work, and trauma has remained the central focus of my clinical career. The biggest lesson I’ve taken from all of it is simple: getting the formulation right matters, because what you believe is happening shapes what you do next.
I soon realised the same problem was happening outside of the therapy room:
you know enough about trauma to come up with several plausible explanations for what you’re experiencing, without knowing how to tell what actually fits
trauma content often presents possibilities as if they are facts/conclusions: “You experienced x, therefore y must be a trauma response”
a normal emotion can get pathologised as dysregulation. a trauma response can get mistaken for intuition. a genuine problem can get dismissed as “just a trigger”
and when every explanation sounds possible, you can end up analysing yourself endlessly while trusting your own judgement less and less.
In January 2026 I launched The Trauma Nerd Podcast as the first step of my master plan…
To help you get better at working out what actually applies.
I’m taking the clinical reasoning, evidence and questions I use every day, and bringing them outside of the therapy room.
So you can distinguish between competing explanations, understand your reactions more accurately, and make better-informed decisions about what deserves your attention next.
Outside the therapy room…
I’m an Adelaide Hills local, a pilates regular, and mum to a now-toddler who has strong opinions about everything.
He fits right in.
My credentials
7,000+ sessions delivered.
Across trauma, PTSD, complex trauma and personality disorders. This is not generalist work. Trauma is the entire focus.
Registered Psychologist.
Registered with the Psychology Board of Australia since 2018.
EMDRAA-Accredited EMDR Therapist and Consultant.
The highest level of EMDR accreditation available in Australia, held by a small number of psychologists nationally.
EMDR Training Facilitator.
Selected to assist in delivering EMDR training programs across Australia by national training providers Psychology Training and EMDR Therapy Training Australia. One of a small number of clinicians chosen to teach other therapists how to do this work.
PSYBA-Approved Psychology Supervisor.
Approved to provide formal supervision to trainee psychologists.
Eight years of university training.
Including a Master of Clinical Psychology, the highest level of clinical postgraduate qualification in the field. Completed with a perfect GPA.
Private Psychology Practice Owner.
I own Billows Psychology, a high-demand 1:1 clinical consulting practice with an exclusive focus on EMDR and trauma therapy.
A near-decade of continuous investment.
In specialised training, ongoing EMDR supervision, and clinical education.
A career built around asking better questions before accepting easy answers.
Which is exactly what I want to help you do, too.
My approach
I create resources for people who want more than another psychological explanation.
I’m less interested in giving you another label for what you’re experiencing than helping you work out whether that label actually fits. Because the goal isn’t to interpret everything through trauma. It’s to understand what’s actually happening.
I don't oversimplify. I don't soften the psychology to make it more palatable. I assume you're capable of understanding complex ideas, and I trust you enough to give you the real version.
That means no filler, no wellness platitudes, and no advice I wouldn't firmly stand behind in the therapy room.
I'm honest, I'm kind, and I'm dedicated to genuinely helping.
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