Childhood Trauma, PTSD, Trauma Therapy
Trauma is the outcome of experiences which were unbearable. But what is traumatic is not only what happened, but also what didn’t happen.
What is childhood trauma?
Any experience that is too much for the mind to bear can be traumatic. What is traumatic is for the individual to decide.
Chronic trauma involves repeated experiences such as torture or childhood abuse.
Chronic trauma can be the outcome of being marginalised/oppressed because of race, sexual identity, gender identity, class, neurodiversity or disability.
Symptoms of childhood trauma in adults
Punitive guilt and shame can dominate mental life.
Extreme anxiety that manifests not in “fight or flight”, but “freeze and flop”.
Digestive disturbances, breathing disturbances, sensory disturbances (tinnitus and blurry or tunnel vision).
Thinking problems (mind going blank, racing thoughts and difficulty thinking).
Hearing voices and dissociation.
Self-harm and suicidal ideation.
Effects of trauma on relationships
Survivors can find it very hard to form and maintain relationships. Trauma often destroys the possibility of trust in others.
Survivors become very adept at sensing other people’s emotions, but often struggle to contextualise these.
It becomes challenging to see the self and others in shades of grey.
There can be enormous buried grief about childhood experiences which can manifest as chronic grievance towards others.
Childhood emotional neglect is invisible trauma
If caregivers could not recognise and respond to a child’s needs, that child may learn to suppress, dismiss or minimise their own feelings. In adult life, this can make it difficult to notice needs or seek support.
Neglect can leave one comparing and despairing. After all, if you are being neglected it means that someone else, presumably more worthy, is getting all the attention.
Neglected survivors can become compulsive caregivers as they make others more important.
Therapy for Childhood Trauma and PTSD
Childhood trauma may involve repeated harm within the family or other relationships. Discrimination and marginalisation can also shape a person’s sense of safety, identity and belonging.
In my work, the therapeutic relationship is an important place to explore trust, emotional safety and the effects of earlier experiences.
A reliable therapeutic relationship can help us explore the effects of relational trauma
Trust takes time. I aim to offer a space where you feel listened to and taken seriously, and where you can tell me if something feels uncomfortable or misunderstood. We can explore those moments together and adjust the pace of the work.
I offer individual, relational therapy in Kensington and online, informed by Attachment Based Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (AB-ISTDP). We consider your needs and treatment options during assessment, including whether another approach or specialist service would be more appropriate.
Effective trauma counselling in Kensington
The first aim of trauma therapy is to help the survivor feel that they have control of the therapy while the therapist remains responsible for emotional safety.
The therapist will often listen at length and reflect back what they have understood. ‘This is how I see you. What do you think?’ The survivors are slowly helped to take a careful and caring look at themselves.
The therapist will be working hard behind the scenes to ensure that the client remains within their “window of tolerance” during the session, making sure that anxiety is tolerable and learning can take place.
The window of tolerance expands by experiencing more and more of our emotions in the presence of another person.
Becoming more in touch with emotions allows us to be more of ourselves, a process often interrupted when there has been childhood trauma or neglect.
We pay attention to your feelings, bodily responses and level of anxiety, and adapt the pace together.
It may be a little while before the memories of actual trauma are revisited together. Nonetheless, the symptoms of trauma do enter the therapy even before the first consultation (e.g. will I be understood by this therapist? Will they blame me? Will they hurt me in some way? Can I really trust people who claim they will look after me?)
Trauma processing happens all the time in ISTDP
Alongside discussing past events, we can notice small moments in the session when familiar patterns appear. This might mean seeing how you dismiss a feeling, become self-critical or move away from emotional closeness.
The moment when we notice that we smile when we talk about something painful; this may be reliving (rather than remembering) how we learned to dismiss our feelings, perhaps because we thought they were dangerous to our caregivers.
The moment when sadness rises and we attack ourselves; this may be a reliving of how we learned that our sadness is not going to draw a parent close, but might actually drive them away.
The moment when anger rises and we become angry at ourselves; this may be reliving how we learned that our anger made a parent angry and dangerous.
The ISTDP therapist notices these and helps you process these moments as they occur. Together rather than alone.
When we talk about distressing memories, we work at a pace you can manage. You do not have to describe everything at once, and you can tell me when you need to slow down.
Microprocessing means paying careful and caring attention together, at each one of these moments.
Benefits of therapy
Increased self awareness
- Discover your unique relationship models
- Identify otherwise invisible patterns of thinking and feeling that lead to unhelpful behaviours
- Explore your values and make decisions
Use your emotions
- Turn your emotions into information
- Identify your needs
- Become the truest version of yourself
Improve your relationships
- Connect
- Communicate
- Share
- Become more assertive
- Become more collaborative
Reduce suffering
- Reduce self-criticism
- Reduce doubt
- Reduce worry and rumination
- Reduce a sense of meaninglessness
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