The 3 Kinds of Trauma Clients [& How to Market to Each] (Episode 96)
You love working with trauma clients, but the people reaching out aren't always the ones you most enjoy working with. The problem might not be your niche or your clinical expertise. It might be that your marketing is speaking to clients who understand their trauma differently than your ideal clients do.
In this episode, Anna breaks down three types of trauma clients—trauma unaware, trauma curious, and trauma aware—and explains why each needs a different approach to marketing. You'll learn how to identify where your ideal clients fall on this spectrum, what to emphasize in your website copy, and how to meet potential clients where they are today rather than where they'll be after months of therapy.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
1️⃣ How to recognize the three types of trauma clients—and why their level of awareness changes what they're searching for in a therapist.
2️⃣ Why trauma-unaware clients respond best to marketing that leads with connection and describes the struggles they're already experiencing.
3️⃣ How to use psychoeducation to reach trauma-curious clients and demonstrate specialized expertise to attract trauma-aware clients.
4️⃣ How to use past client intake forms, specialty pages, and modality pages to build a website that speaks to your ideal clients at their current point of need.
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Hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of Marketing Therapy. I am glad you're tuning in today. We're talking today about the three types of trauma clients because, holy mackerel, not every trauma client is created equal. Now, I've had the chance to sit down with thousands of therapists at this point and talk about their niche and talk about their ideal client, and a couple themes often arise.
One, typically, they want that client to be incredibly motivated and insightful and self-aware. No doubt that makes your work a lot more fun, right? Similarly, one of the really common themes we see is that there is some sort of trauma history, right? We've all had some sort of trauma. And a lot of times therapists will tell me, "Anna, I love working with that C-PTSD, that relational trauma client, helping her untangle the patterns behind her people-pleasing and addressing the way that her early relationships shaped the way she's relating now," all those amazing things that come as a result of this type of work.
So clients often come to me, "Anna, I love relational trauma. I love attachment work. I love fill in the blank." And a lot of times, because the clinician doesn't have any other language, they're talking a lot about trauma, 'cause hello, that's the issue. But often these therapists still aren't getting the clients that they want, and they're frustrated, right? The ones that they are getting tend to be a bit of a mismatch, or they just aren't getting many at all. And while she might still have some favorite clients, they're typically coming through referrals or other means, and it doesn't feel consistent.
This therapist knows who they want to work with, but they're not getting that client on the regular.
Now, when we dig into who that client actually is, typically she's coming in for anxiety, for relationship issues. She might struggle with people pleasing or perfectionism. She might be inclined to put everyone else's needs before her own, to say yes when she means no. Maybe her last three relationships all ended the same way.
And three months, six months in, she starts to put the pieces together. She starts to have those incredibly fulfilling breakthrough moments you get to be part of where she's like, "Oh, that's why I, I do these things. That's why I find myself in this position," whatever that might be. But she never would've typed trauma therapist into Google.
That's what these three types of trauma clients are about helping you understand, because not every single client who is suitable for trauma work, who is ultimately going to do trauma work, knows it when they reach out to you. So that's what these three types are all about, and I've defined these three types over the seven years that I've been working with therapists.
About four or five years ago is when I saw this pattern really emerge, and it's interesting how I've seen it shift as we're in a more psycho-savvy environment, right? We've got the Instagram psychologist telling us about childhood trauma, and people tend to have more of this language. But still, these three types remain true, and if your marketing is going to be effective, if you're actually going to bring in those folks you enjoy most, you have to know which of the three you're actually marketing to.
Because often people find themselves marketing to the wrong one, and that's why they run into this frustration. I didn't say at the top of the episode. Sorry I'm so sniffly. Hopefully you can understand me okay. I've waited all week to record this episode because this cold is just plaguing me.
So if you're in the middle of you know, the back to school gunk I feel you on that. So, all right. If you love relational trauma work, this episode is for you. If you love any trauma work, this episode is for you, okay? Now, the fact is trauma looks different for everyone, right? The way that it manifests in our lives is completely individual.
So after supporting thousands of trauma clinicians, we see that the three types of trauma clients are trauma unaware, trauma curious, and trauma aware, and I view these on a spectrum.
So imagine trauma unaware to the left, imagine trauma aware to the right, and then we have trauma curious in the middle. Now, I know that this applies to a lot of you because our state of the industry survey showed that 46% of therapists say trauma is the primary thing their clients come in with. Almost half of all clients entering therapy are struggling with trauma.
Now, whether or not they use that language is a whole nother issue, but the fact is this is, this is incredibly prevalent, right? We know that.
When we look at this spectrum, the thing that's changing across these three stages is how much clients know about what's going on. So trauma unaware, those are the people who are like me? Trauma? No way. Never. I didn't have it bad enough. I don't know what you're talking about. They are averse sometimes to that term.
There's no way what I went through was trauma. They have no idea, and it's only gonna be as a result of working with you that their eyes are opened to that fact. Then we have trauma curious. So in the middle of that spectrum. Trauma curious are the people who are like, "Huh, I'm aware of the term. I'm not sure that I qualify, but I'm open to it."
And then there's trauma aware. I know I have it. I'm ready to treat it. Can you see how marketing to someone who's trauma unaware is gonna be a lot different than trauma aware? Because what they think is wrong is completely different.
That's why these three categories matter so much. I mean, take one woman, mid-thirties, high functioning, okay? She can't say no to anyone. She's doing a lot of that people pleasing. If she's trauma unaware, she thinks she needs help with her anxiety and just managing this. If she's trauma curious, she might wonder if this is tied to how she grew up.
She might have an inkling that this is connected to some past stuff. If she's trauma aware, maybe she's done the research. She's looking for a EMDR therapist who works with attachment trauma. Awesome. Could be the same exact client, but those are three different stages of awareness, and therefore three completely different searches and three c- completely different ways your marketing needs to show up for her.
So when we're thinking about trauma, effective marketing in this niche in particular has three jobs. One is connection. That's answering questions like, "Do you actually understand what I'm facing right now? Are you meeting me where I am?" That's what that client is looking for when it comes to connection.
Then there's psycho ed. "How do the pieces of my experience connect? What is trauma?" And then there's expertise. "Do you know how to help me? Are you an expert in this area?" And every trauma website ultimately needs all three. We're gonna do a little bit of connection, psycho ed, and expertise, regardless of which type of trauma client you're marketing to.
But which one to emphasize matters and dictates how we market you depending on what we know that that trauma client is needing. So being the obvious choice to one client is gonna be different than to the other, but it comes down to you describing what she's going through the way she would have described it.
So you have to have that awareness in order to market well.
Let's get more into each of these categories so that you can define, A, is this your type of client, right? Which category do they fall into? And then B, what's that mean about your marketing? Okay, so let's look at trauma unaware first. So this is to the far left of that spectrum.
Trauma isn't even on this client's radar. She hears trauma and thinks of something that happened to other people. "My childhood was fine. I had a great childhood. Other people had it way worse than me." She's not even open to this idea yet, and that's okay, right? That's part of the work.
Often, this is a very high-functioning client. She tends to be the one that everyone calls in a crisis, right? She's successful. She's insightful. She's also probably exhausted. She's been putting everyone else's needs before her own. She has these tendencies, these patterns she falls into, whether she even knows it or not, that are starting to get in the way of her day-to-day life.
This trauma client is gonna value authenticity, non-judgment, someone who really understands her.
And ultimately, as with all of us, something brought this client to therapy, but she doesn't think it's trauma. So what is it? Is it anxiety? Depression? Self-esteem? Maybe she has the language for people pleasing or codependency. It could be relationship issues. It could be burnout. Those are the things she's searching for.
Those are the things she thinks she needs help with. Those are the types of therapists she's seeking out. So your marketing has to start there. Notice trauma didn't make the cut, right? Trauma's not in that list. That's a really important thing to think about if your client tends to be trauma unaware. So I want you to consider pulling some intake forms from a handful of your ideal fit clients in the last year or so.
How did they describe what was bringing them in? Is the word trauma showing up there?
The cool thing is then you get to use that anxiety page, that depression page, that burnout page to talk about how the trauma is manifesting. So it's describing all the trauma responses without using the word trauma. You're the one everyone leans on. Nobody checks on you. You've read every book on boundaries, still can't say no to your mom.
You know? You replay one conversation for three days and worry that someone's mad at you, right? We're talking about those trauma responses. We're painting the picture of what she's experiencing, but we're not using that word 'cause we're meeting her at her level of awareness, which isn't yet trauma. Now, trauma can still be in your marketing, but it's gonna live more in the why and the how as opposed to that top-line headline or topic, right?
Sometimes anxiety is tied to something that started a long time ago, right? We can start to give some of those nods to the fact that this is tied to earlier things without being overt, without leading with that because she hasn't yet made that connection herself.
So this client, this trauma unaware client, you're leading primarily with connection, connection to what she actually thinks is the issue. Now, the psycho ed and the expertise are still gonna come in, and as we teach you in Confident Copy, our specialty page framework and our method page frameworks, you're going to see the ways where we highlight your expertise, and we bring in a little bit of that psycho ed around trauma, but the way that we do that is going to be a bit different for this type of client than for someone who knows and is ready to jump straight into trauma work.
So this one is primarily about leading with connection. Now, one question I often get from our Confident Copy live students, from clients I'm helping in our done-for-you setting to decide on specialty page topics, "Do I still need a trauma page?" If 100% of your clients are trauma unaware, probably not.
Technically, no. However, I mentioned that this is a framework and a way of thinking that I've had for a number of years and have seen shift in recent years. Because people are becoming more and more psycho savvy, you might still have a trauma page.
Is that going to be the place that this ideal client goes first? Probably not, so you're definitely gonna wanna be leading more so with that anxiety, depression, burnout, whatever that may be. But as we see people become more and more psycho savvy, I think we're gonna see more and more people move along this trauma spectrum into trauma curious and into trauma aware, and so having a trauma page, even if most of your clients fall into this category, will probably be advantageous over the coming years, but probably doesn't need to be your first priority. So if you were to meet this client in your marketing with something like, "I specialize in relational trauma," or, "I specialize in attachment wounds," that requires her to already know that.
Instead, we wanna use language, we wanna use connection to let her see herself in what it is that you're saying. We want her to read your anxiety page and think, "How does she know that?" Well, sis, we know that because we know how trauma shows up in an anxious way. But she's gonna find trauma in the room with you.
She's gonna get into that. What she needs to find on your page and on your website is just herself. She needs to see her experience reflected back to her in a way that connects her to you. So with that trauma-unaware client, we're leading with connection.
Now let's get into our trauma-curious client.
This is the client we're going to lead with psycho-education. Again, that's not to say that we're not connecting or we're not providing expertise, but psycho ed is gonna be most important to this client. So a trauma-curious client, someone who's open to the idea. Maybe she heard it from a friend you know, she read some of those Instagram posts about childhood trauma.
She may have heard it on a podcast or had even had a past therapist that mentioned it. So she's wondering, "Is this trauma? Is that too big a word for what happened to me? Am I being dramatic?" And this is really the group that's continuing to grow because trauma is becoming more mainstream. A lot of that 46% I mentioned from our State of the Industry survey is sitting right in this category.
When I ask our done-for-you clients in our kickoff calls, like, "Hey, does your client know that they have trauma?" Often it's 50/50, but usually they have some language for it, so they tend to fall into this category. What she needs help here is self-qualifying. Do I belong here? Does this fit? And so psycho ed is gonna help her connect those dots.
So in your copy, in Confident Copy, we call this the solution block, and it's something that we of course write for our done-for-you clients as well. We're gonna say things like, "Trauma doesn't have to be one big event. Trauma can add up over time. It can be years of feeling like you had to earn love or acceptance."
We might provide signs that your anxiety was rooted in something from your past, right? We're giving a little bit of that gentle psychoeducation that helps her qualify herself for this. When you do this well, it shows two things at one time. One, that you deeply understand her experience because she still needs that connection and that feeling of feeling seen, but also that you deeply understand this specialty, that you are qualified enough to guide her through figuring out if she belongs here, and that is what cultivates trust.
So I recommend in this category, if you find that a lot of your clients tend to be trauma curious, is to give her options in your marketing. What do I mean by that? I mean, having a trauma page, and have a trauma page where you're providing this level of psychoeducation. You're talking about maybe that more complex trauma response that she might be noticing in the patterns in her relationships and her ways of being.
But then also include a non-trauma topical page, at the very least, something about anxiety, something about relationships, something about her demographic as a mother, something that sort of complements trauma. So links between these two is of course gonna be advantageous for AI and SEO, no doubt about it, but also is gonna help her move toward the word kind of at her own pace, right?
Whatever level of awareness she has, we're gonna show her how these two things are related, and again, help her understand that she fits here, help her qualify herself, and also help her view you as a trustworthy resource on that journey. So name trauma in your marketing, absolutely, but also name it next to the things she already recognizes for sure.
So you're not just a trauma therapist, you're not just a attachment-focused therapist. You are that and the anxiety, the people-pleasing, the burnout, the whatever that she knows she definitely is experiencing. Now, method pages are gonna start to matter for her too. Method pages more and more are borderline critical for your marketing, and with the rise of AI, we're gonna only see that grow.
So she might be looking for EMDR, right? She might have heard about that and still wonder like, "Can EMDR work for me? Am I bad enough for that?" And so those method pages are also gonna be that place you're gonna wanna provide the psycho ed on how that method applies to someone who may or may not have trauma, right?
Provide that psychoeducation that helps her bridge that gap between what she's chewing on and considering right now and what is actually true of her experience.
So the goal with this trauma-curious client is to use your marketing to help her understand herself and her experience just a bit more before she reaches out. Now, most of that, of course, is gonna happen in the room with you and over the course of your relationship, but what can we do in your marketing to help her have a tiny little light bulb moment that helps her move a little bit further in that direction and also starts to view you as the expert that can help her in the next steps from here. So give her the words here. Help her recognize herself in them. All right. Finally, we have our trauma-aware client. This is where we're gonna lead with expertise.
So the trauma-aware client identifies with the word. That's not the issue. Often, she's been in therapy before. She may have a formal diagnosis. She may have read the books. She knows the modalities. She's listened to the podcast, whatever. She has the language.
She's looking for a specialist who can help with her specific needs, right? She's looking for IFS therapist. She's looking for religious trauma therapy. She's looking for things very, very specific to her experience. She does not want and is not going to settle for a generalist. She knows she has a specific issue.
She needs to see that you're the person that can help her with that. So not even just a trauma therapist, but a trauma therapist specific to her and her experience. She wants someone who knows that they can help her, and your marketing's job is to show her that you can be that person. Expertise on your site is going to look like talking specifically, specifically about the presentations that you treat, right?
That's where we're getting sticky, as we say. And it's not to say that your client has to 100% identify with every single thing that you talk about. But by showing specificity, you display a deeper level of understanding than if you talk about symptoms at a more general level. So while my trauma experience may not have been having an emotionally unavailable mother who wasn't there for me and a father who was hypercritical and demanded super high grades from me, whatever, using that type of specificity in your marketing is going to show her, oh wow, she does get this on a deeper level.
This therapist does actually understand the ins and outs of a trauma experience. So don't shy away from being specific because your client doesn't have to identify immediately and completely with the story you're telling. But the level of detail of that story itself is valuable to her. You're gonna talk about your methods and your training.
Please make sure you have method pages that support your trauma work. Please highlight your authority in the form of your FAQ section and your psycho ed section of your specialty page. Make sure you're talking about the fact that you are, in fact, an expert here. Be clear about what the process is gonna look like.
If there are ways that you approach trauma work that are going to differ from other therapists she's encountered, make sure that that is front and center. Talk about how you pace the work and what she can expect of it. Set a lot of these expectations. Show her what it means to be an expert. Display that through your marketing.
Now, safety still matters here. This isn't just a CV about all of your trauma background. Like, this is still about first and foremost connection. So we know that plenty of trauma-aware clients have still been flooded or hurt in therapy before. And so making sure that we honor that and we acknowledge, hey, you might know that you have trauma and still be nervous about treating it, whatever.
Using your marketing to communicate that is of course gonna be critical as well. Now, as I mentioned, method pages are gonna be a big deal here. So whatever modalities you're using to treat trauma, choose the biggest ones. Choose the most significant ones that you use and also the ones that you tend to hear from your clients matter to them and make sure there's a dedicated page.
We're talking EMDR, IFS, brain spotting, somatic therapy. Whatever that might be, make sure that you have modality pages to back up the trauma page or the trauma pages. You might have a religious trauma, for instance. Back those up with those modality pages that are a little more psycho ed heavy. That really rounds out the experience and supports the fact that you are in fact an expert here. So a website I land on that says, "I work with a variety of issues including trauma," reads generalist.
That is not going to attract that trauma aware client who's ready to do the work. Okay? So the way you're gonna become the obvious choice to a trauma-aware client is to be clear that you know this work, to say it plainly, and to offer signals to her that show her that you're going to be able to understand her specific experience and support her in it in a way that other therapists may not.
That's your goal here 'cause she's already connected the dots, right? She knows. Now she's checking whether you're the one who can take it from here, and that's what your marketing's job is.
All right, so back to the therapist I talked about from the beginning, kind of that more general therapist I run into who's frustrated, right?
That she knows the work she loves to do, but she's not getting those inquiries. You love relational trauma work, but what if your favorite clients are trauma unaware or trauma curious? You can't build your website for the aware client. That's what I want you to take away from this episode today.
So where do you go? What do you pick? Let your client lead this. Look back at those intakes. Consider the best fit clients on your caseload or that you've had in the past. How have they described themselves when they first reach out? Your marketing's job is to meet your clients at their point of need now, not three months from now, not a year from now when they've connected all the dots and are in a new place.
It's about point A. What is point A for your client, and how do we make sure that your marketing is meeting them there? So again, pull those ideal fit intakes, sort them into trauma unaware, trauma curious, trauma aware. Did they use the word trauma at all when they reached out? How did they find you? Which of those categories is populated the most by your ideal client intakes?
That's gonna lead your marketing and the decision-making here. Now, most practices are gonna serve more than one type. Absolutely. It's never all or nothing and ultimately, your website needs a way in for every single one that you find you serve. So that homepage, we're gonna be talking about trauma if your clients are curious or aware.
But if they're mostly unaware, then we're gonna be leading more with what they think they need, with that anxiety, relationships, burnout, whatever that might be. The specialty pages, this is your way in. Okay? This is the entry point, regardless of which type you serve. So the unaware and curious clients, that's gonna be those more topical specialty pages on anxiety or relationships.
It might be demographic pages about moms about the LGBTQIA+ population, whatever that might be. Trauma, trauma specialty pages, those are for our curious and our aware clients. And those method pages, like I said, they're only going to grow in necessity on your website.
Whatever trauma modalities you're using, go ahead and stand up pages for those as well, especially if your clients tend to be curious or aware, as that's gonna be really, really supportive of them viewing you as the person that they're needing and the expert that they're seeking
You don't need more trauma training necessarily, although I bet you're gonna go get it eventually. You don't need a different type of ideal client. We just need to find a better way of meeting your client at her point of need So remember, if your client tends to be trauma unaware, lead with connection.
If your client tends to be trauma curious, then lead with psycho ed. If your client tends to be trauma aware, then lead with your expertise and the fact that you are the person that can help her. In every case, you're becoming the obvious choice to her in the same way, because she's reading your words, she's experiencing your website, and she feels like you already understand her.
Prove that to her through your marketing.
If you haven't yet jumped into our private podcast, Today's Full Caseload, it is a fantastic set of episodes where I really talk about both mindset and strategy-wise, what's it take to meet your clients at their point of need and to ultimately build a full caseload in this market.
It's totally free. Walkerstrategyco.com/tfc. We'll include that in the show notes. Jump into that as you are chewing on today's guidance. Apply what you learn here as well as what you're gonna get inside of that private podcast. What's it take to decide on a niche? What's it take to weather the ebbs and flows of your marketing?
And what's it take to truly connect with clients as they are seeking out therapy right now? Bring all these things together, and you will be implementing exactly what I'm seeing work in this market right now, even when things are crazy out there. Okay? I hope this one was helpful for you.
I'll see you in our next episode
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About Marketing Therapy
Marketing Therapy is the podcast where therapists learn how to market their private practices without burnout, self-doubt, or sleazy tactics. Hosted by Anna Walker—marketing coach, strategist, and founder of Walker Strategy Co—each episode brings you clear, grounded advice to help you attract the right-fit, full-fee clients and grow a practice you feel proud of.
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