What is Childhood Trauma?

Childhood is such an important stage of human development, and negative experiences can have a significant impact on how a child grows up to see themselves, others, and the world around them. 

Think of childhood as the time that a person's foundational system is being built. Healthy experiences in childhood lay a strong, secure foundation for a person as they grow older. This strong foundation allows for stability, safety, and security as they build their life, relationships, and identity. Secure foundations in early life lead to more secure and fulfilling relationships, healthy sense of self, and confidence as they build their life on a stable foundation. However, when a person's foundation is shaky or has significant structural issues, it becomes hard to build a strong, secure structure on the foundation. When trauma or significant relational/emotional wounds happen during childhood, it creates a disruption in the child's foundational system, which impacts their ability to build strong and healthy sense of self and relationships with others. 

Negative experiences during childhood can have a deeper impact than the same experiences would have in adulthood. Consistent negative childhood experiences change how the foundation is structured, while negative experiences in adulthood damage the building but the foundation remains intact. In adulthood, the building can more easily be restored and rebuilt compared to if there are foundational issues. Sometimes when trauma occurs as an adult, it often damages the part of the building that doesn't have a strong foundation under it from childhood.

During childhood, experiences that can be traumatic include parental instability or inconsistency, physical or emotional neglect, persistent criticism, abandonment, bullying or social rejection, or forms of abuse. These experiences affect a person's sense of safety and security in the world. They affect the nervous system, emotion regulation, someone's sense of self, attachment patterns, and a person's ability to cope with stress. 

Effects of Childhood Trauma in Adulthood

Trauma that occurs during childhood, as we've discussed, can deeply impact someone in adulthood. The nervous system is in charge of many of these effects. There are several different ways that childhood trauma affects adults, and it would take too much time to discuss all possible ways! However, the effects can generally be boiled down into several general categories. 

Relationships

Whether the relationships are with peers/coworkers, friends, family, or romantic partners, our relationships are impacted by traumatic experiences. How we see and interpret the actions of others is impacted. People may expect to be abandoned, may have a hard time setting boundaries, feeling lonely around others, avoiding conflict, or have difficulty trusting others. The brain learns from repeated experiences and forms expectations or predictions on what is likely to happen. Trauma shapes how we experience connection. When repeated painful experiences have happened, often these expectations or predictions come from a place of stress rather than a healthy and secure place. Even if you know that the past isn't necessarily repeating, it's hard to fully believe that some people are different than the person or people who caused pain. 

Caregiver or parental relationships during childhood can feel inconsistent, emotionally unsafe, emotionally absent, or unpredictable, and these repeated experiences create attachment wounds later in life. When a child's emotional needs are consistently not met, this is childhood emotional neglect. Attachment therapy can help you resolve emotionally "stuck" memories that come from unmet needs or trauma. People begin to feel more secure within themselves and feel more genuinely connected in their relationships.

Some people harbor resentment towards their parents, and other people have really positive relationships with their parents. During therapy, either of these feelings towards parents are okay. If you fear that therapy will be about talking negatively towards parents or speaking of them as if they are horrible people, please let me explain! Our goal isn't to assign blame to anyone, and we can explore the ways you've felt supported by them during childhood. Rather than blaming others, we explore the impact of things that happened. No one is perfect. There are many well-intentioned parents who may have tried their best, but their child is left with some things that feel emotionally unresolved or they still feel impacted by what happened.  

Identity

Childhood trauma can shape an adult's sense of self and identity. This impacts self worth and how someone sees themselves. Sometimes people may form an identity with their unhealed patterns / wounds, such as thinking of themselves as different or believing that others see them negatively. During childhood, identity is still developing, and how others interact with us "teaches" us who we are. People begin seeing themselves negatively, such as "I am worthless", "my needs matter less than others' needs", or "I am flawed or different". Identity and how someone sees themselves can be deeply impacted when trauma, attachment wounds, or childhood emotional neglect occur.

Nervous System

The nervous system is the body's threat response system, and goes online when the brain interprets something as potentially dangerous. The nervous system helps people stay safe and is a wonderful thing. However, when trauma occurs, the brain's predictions or interpretations about what is safe and unsafe may be more sensitive than it needs to be. The brain also interprets relational stressors as physical threats (more about this is on anxiety page). Often when people experience past trauma and their brain determines that something is a threat, their nervous system shifts into survival mode. If the nervous system senses danger, even if the environment is completely safe, the person may find it hard to feel truly relaxed and calm. 

Common experiences when the nervous system goes into survival mode are feeling overwhelmed, anxious, irritable, shut down, exhausted, on edge, irritable/angry, or emotionally numb. Many people with complex trauma have a nervous system that is almost always in survival mode, making day-to-day living really challenging.

Protective Behaviors

When you have past trauma, you're wired to try to protect yourself and prevent it from happening again. In trauma therapy, we view your behaviors from a lens of compassion and understanding. Your behaviors, even if you don't like them, formed to keep you safe. Protective behaviors can include:

• Hypervigilance (being on guard)

• Difficulty setting boundaries

• Avoiding conflict

• Avoiding social situations or withdrawing

• Seeking reassurance

• Difficulty asking for help

• Overworking (staying busy or distracting yourself)

• Intellectualizing (analyzing what you're experiencing rather than feeling or being fully present)

• Being self critical

• Walking on eggshells

• Minimizing your own needs

This is only a small list, and in therapy, we can identify and explore the ways you might be protecting yourself. Many people who do this work are capable and intelligent, and may carry unresolved experiences that still might be impacting them. Therapy provides a nonjudgmental space to process things.

How EMDR Can Heal Childhood Trauma

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is considered the gold standard for trauma therapy. It is a highly specialized type of therapy. While EMDR was originally developed for helping people reprocess single-event traumas, such as natural disasters, combat, or severe accidents, it has since been modified to treat relational or complex trauma. Childhood trauma usually fall into the "complex" and relational category rather than as only a single event.

EMDR uses bilateral stimulation (alternating sensory input) usually in the form of sound, tapping, or eye movement, to reduce distress associated with memories. Even though science doesn't currently fully understand why bilateral stimulation makes EMDR so effective, we know it supports the brain's natural ability to "digest" and integrate distressing memories in a healthy and less emotional way.

When memories are reprocessed through EMDR, people feel more neutral when a trigger happens and any memory of the event feels less intense. It quiets the "alarm bells" that usually go off when a trauma reminder happens and you feel more intentional in how to respond. When less activated, you're more capable of making the healthy changes and choices that you want to be making. Old patterns have less hold on you. It becomes easier to express your needs, feel safe and comfortable within yourself and with others, or experience healthy conflict. 

Reprocessing opens up your natural ability to think of yourself and the trauma in a healthier and clearer way. People describe more self compassion and seeing things from a different perspective. A healthy, realistic way of seeing yourself emerges.

My Approach to Trauma Therapy

Trauma therapy is such powerful work, and it is paced, intentional, and grounded. We don't rush into things before you're prepared or before your nervous system can handle it. I strive to make therapy an emotionally safe place to work through things, and I spend time getting to know you and your strengths. I'm wanting to hear what you're experiencing in therapy, like if you feel vulnerable, if you're not ready to talk about something, or if something you're experiencing is hard to fully understand. You can bring your full self into therapy, and you can absolutely never do a "bad job" in therapy! I meet you where you're at, and we go at a pace that feels right for you.

Focusing on our connection, our therapist-client relationship, is one of the foundational and most important parts of our work. Research shows that the relationship between therapist and client is the most important factor that creates genuine change in the client's life. This means that the therapist could do all the best types of therapy and know all the best interventions, but if you don't trust them, it won't be as effective as working with a therapist you do trust who may not know all the "right" interventions. However, I strive to be a therapist who focuses on our relationship and who knows the best interventions!

I offer EMDR Therapy to my clients. As shared in the above section, it is considered the "gold standard" for treating trauma and is highly specialized and evidence-based. I use a specialized approach within EMDR for treating childhood trauma and relational / attachment issues.

I also offer integrative therapy for childhood trauma, which combines different therapy modalities based on what you're needing. I'm trained in mindfulness, somatic and nervous system based techniques, person centered / humanistic therapy, parts work, and other evidence-based types of therapy.

Trauma Therapy Might Be Right For You If

I work with women who want to feel more confident around others, more secure within themselves, and live a full and authentic life. If you're looking to stop having "stuck" emotions or anxiety patterns calling the shots in your life, to build healthier and more fulfilling relationships with others, or to come out of your shell, you may have found the right therapist!

You might benefit from therapy even if you don't consider your childhood to be traumatic, you weren't physically abused, and had loving and supportive parents growing up. 

If your looking to go beyond learning coping skills that only manage the symptoms, and instead looking to explore and process different experiences in your life that may have affected you, you can experience lasting change. I'm here every step of the way.

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