With the recent release of the television adaptation of Elle Kennedy’s Off Campus book series, many viewers are discovering what readers have appreciated for years: beneath the romance is a story about trauma, healing, safety, and connection.
At Brickel and Associates, we often talk about how trauma shapes not only how we see ourselves, but also how we experience relationships. Trauma can affect trust, intimacy, boundaries, self-worth, emotional regulation, and our ability to feel safe with others. While Off Campus is fiction, it offers a surprisingly thoughtful opportunity to explore many of these themes through a trauma-informed lens.
One of the most compelling aspects of the story is that Hannah Wells and Garrett Graham are not simply falling in love. They are two people carrying different trauma histories who are learning how to navigate connection while their nervous systems continue responding to experiences from the past.
Their story highlights an important truth that many trauma survivors discover in therapy: healing does not happen because the past disappears. Healing happens when new experiences begin to challenge old beliefs about safety, trust, relationships, and self-worth.
Trauma Doesn’t Always Look the Same
One of the biggest misconceptions about trauma is that everyone who experiences it will have similar symptoms or backgrounds. Hannah and Garrett illustrate how that isn’t true.
Hannah’s trauma stems from a sexual assault that occurred during her adolescence. Throughout the story, we see how this experience continues to affect her sense of safety, trust, vulnerability, and intimacy. Her reactions are not signs of weakness or overreaction. They are understandable responses from a nervous system that learned that danger can occur unexpectedly and without consent.
Even though it appears Hannah has come from a loving and supportive family, the impact of the trauma still impacts her current life.
Many survivors carry shame because they believe they “should be over it” or that their trauma should not affect them because they had supportive people in their lives. Hannah’s story reminds us that trauma is not a reflection of character, resilience, or gratitude. Trauma occurs when an experience overwhelms the ability to cope and becomes stored within the nervous system.
At the same time, Hannah’s supportive family highlights another important truth: connection matters.
Safe relationships do not prevent trauma from occurring, but they can serve as protective factors or healing support. Research consistently shows that healthy attachment and supportive relationships can help people recover from difficult experiences. Having people who believe us, support us, and remain present with us often creates greater opportunities for healing.
Consent Is About More Than Sex
One of the strongest trauma-informed themes throughout Off Campus is consent.
For many, consent is understood simply as permission for physical intimacy. From a trauma-informed perspective, consent is much broader. Consent is about choice. It is about agency. It is about knowing that your thoughts, feelings, boundaries, and comfort matter.
Trauma often involves an experience in which choice is removed. Whether through sexual violence, abuse, coercion, manipulation, or chronic childhood environments where a person’s needs were ignored, trauma frequently teaches individuals that their boundaries are not important or will not be respected.
Healing frequently involves reclaiming choice.
This is one reason Hannah’s story resonates with so many survivors. Following sexual assault, survivors often struggle with questions about safety, vulnerability, trust, and control over their own bodies. Their nervous systems may become highly attuned to potential danger, even when they consciously know they are safe.
Throughout the story, Garrett demonstrates behaviors that help create safety rather than demand trust. He slows down. He listens. He checks in. He pays attention to Hannah’s comfort level and respects her boundaries. Importantly, he does not treat consent as an obstacle to intimacy. He treats consent as an essential part of intimacy.
In healthy relationships, consent is not a one-time conversation. It is an ongoing process of communication, respect, curiosity, and responsiveness. It includes recognizing that someone can change their mind, need reassurance, ask for space, or move at a different pace.
For trauma survivors, these experiences can be profoundly healing.
Each time a boundary is respected, the nervous system receives new information: My voice matters. I have choices. My needs can be heard. I can be safe with another person.
These moments may appear small from the outside, but they often become the building blocks of trust and healing. When someone experiences consistent respect for their autonomy and boundaries, trust becomes possible—not because it is demanded, but because it is earned.
Garrett’s Story Reflects Complex Trauma
Garrett’s trauma history is very different from Hannah’s, and equally significant.
Throughout the story, we learn that Garrett experienced the loss of his mother at a young age and was raised in a home marked by emotional abuse, intimidation, fear, and physical violence. Rather than growing up in an environment where caregivers consistently provided safety and protection, he learned to survive in a household where danger and unpredictability were part of daily life.
From a trauma-informed perspective, Garrett’s experiences reflect many characteristics associated with Complex PTSD (CPTSD).
Unlike PTSD, which is often linked to a single traumatic event, CPTSD develops through repeated exposure to trauma over time, particularly within relationships where a child should have experienced safety, protection, and nurturing.
Children who grow up with significant loss or in abusive environments often internalize powerful survival beliefs:
- I have to stay on guard.
- I cannot depend on others.
- Love comes with pain.
- Vulnerability is dangerous.
- I am responsible for keeping myself safe.
These beliefs help children survive difficult environments. The challenge is that they often continue operating long after the danger has passed, making healthy adult relationships more difficult.
As adults, survivors of developmental trauma may struggle with trust, self-worth, emotional regulation, perfectionism, people-pleasing, or intense sensitivity to criticism and rejection.
Garrett’s drive for achievement, his need to prove himself, and his sensitivity to rejection and self-reliance can all be viewed through this lens. Like many survivors of developmental trauma, he carries wounds that continue to influence how he sees himself and others.
When Two Trauma Survivors Fall in Love
Perhaps the most clinically interesting aspect of Off Campus is that Hannah and Garrett are both trauma survivors.
Many people assume that healing relationships involve one healthy person helping one wounded person. Real life is rarely that simple.
More often, two people bring their own attachment histories, triggers, coping strategies, and survival mechanisms into a relationship.
The challenge becomes learning how to stay safe and connected when those old wounds become activated.
Throughout the story, we see examples of both Hannah and Garrett becoming triggered by experiences that connect to their trauma histories. We see nervous systems working hard to evaluate for true safety.
One particularly powerful example occurs when Garrett believes Hannah is saying that he scares her. Although Hannah is communicating something more nuanced, Garrett’s nervous system interprets the message through the lens of his own trauma history.
This is an example of what trauma therapists often describe as a trauma response. His reaction is not simply about Hannah’s words. His nervous system is filtering those words through years of experiences in which he was alone, criticized, shamed, blamed, controlled, and made to feel fundamentally flawed.
Many trauma survivors recognize this experience.
Trauma can cause us to hear the present through the filter of the past.
A disagreement can feel like abandonment.
A partner’s disappointment can feel like a parent’s criticism.
A misunderstanding can feel like evidence that we are unsafe, unwanted, or unlovable.
When this happens, we are often reacting not only to what is occurring in the present moment, but also to memories, emotions, beliefs, and survival strategies stored within our nervous systems.
The Healing Power of Repair
One of the healthiest aspects of Hannah and Garrett’s relationship is not that they avoid triggers. It is that they learn to attune and repair.
Many trauma survivors grew up in environments where rupture was never repaired. Hurt happened, and there was no accountability, apology, clarification, or reconnection. As a result, conflict itself can become frightening.
Healthy relationships are not relationships without mistakes. They are relationships where people can acknowledge hurt, communicate openly, and reconnect after moments of disconnection.
Repair helps create new experiences for the nervous system.
Each time a misunderstanding is resolved, survivors learn that conflict does not automatically lead to abandonment.
Each time boundaries are respected, survivors learn that closeness does not automatically lead to harm.
Each time vulnerability is met with care, survivors learn that connection can coexist with safety.
These moments of repair are often some of the most powerful catalysts for healing because they challenge the expectations trauma taught us to hold.
Why Stories Like Off Campus Matter
One reason the popularity of Off Campus matters is that it creates opportunities for conversation in everyday life. The books and television adaptation provide a language for discussing trauma, consent, boundaries, attachment, and healing.
Parents, young adults, therapists, educators, partners, and survivors can use these stories to explore questions such as:
- What does consent actually look like?
- How do trauma survivors learn to trust again?
- What happens when trauma affects intimacy?
- How do childhood experiences shape adult relationships?
- How can partners support one another without trying to “fix” each other?
- What does emotional safety feel like?
The television adaptation adds another dimension because viewers can witness these dynamics unfold in real time. We can observe body language, emotional reactions, hesitation, vulnerability, and moments of repair.
For many survivors, seeing healthy relational behaviors modeled can be powerful. It provides examples of interactions they may never have witnessed in their own families or past relationships.
Healing Happens in Connection
At Brickel and Associates, we know that trauma often occurs within relationships and healing frequently happens within relationships as well. This does not mean another person heals us. Rather, safe relationships create opportunities for new experiences that challenge old beliefs.
Hannah and Garrett’s story illustrates this beautifully. Neither character saves the other. Instead, they gradually create conditions that support healing: respect, consent, patience, accountability, trust, and emotional safety.
Whether through the books or the new television adaptation, Off Campus offers something more meaningful than a romance. It provides a glimpse into what can happen when two trauma survivors begin to recognize their wounds, understand their triggers, respect each other’s boundaries, and choose connection over avoidance.
For many survivors, that journey may feel familiar. And perhaps most importantly, it offers hope that past experiences do not have to define the future of relationships. Healing is possible when relationships are built not on fear, control, or perfection, but on safety, consent, respect, and genuine human connection.
