Trauma in adulthood and childhood, what is it and how can you begin healing?
Therapy and counseling can help you find healing from adult and childhood trauma and abuse. A single incident or repeated incidents of trauma may have had lasting psychological impact on you as a child and as an adult.
Trauma can take many forms, some of it could be loudly overt; such as a terrible car accident or a sexual assault. But sometimes trauma can also be quietly covert; for instance, perhaps you had a parent that was just too close to you, and you felt uncomfortable, or someone confided in you like an adult, but you were a little child, like in Emotional Incest.
This childhood trauma can be the result of both physical and mental abuse or neglect. The physical abuse can be in the form of sexual molestation or violence that results in an injury to the child.
Childhood trauma can also be the result of neglect, verbal abuse, parental drug abuse, or unavailability of the parents or caretakers during the childhood years.
The trauma could also result from divorce or the death of a sibling or any number of issues that could be painful and or stressful to a little person simply trying to grow up.
If you feel that you have suffered from some difficulties, abuse or traumas in your childhood that are impacting your life today, it could be very helpful to come in to my office and have a consultation to discuss possible treatment plans and to explore how therapy can be helpful to you.
Trauma, what it looks like, how it and how it can effect us
The implications of abuse and trauma are so varied and how it impacts each of us can be so different. You may struggle in relationships, you may not trust people, you might have depression or anxiety or feel large amounts of shame. You might jump at loud noises. You might cry for no reason. You might feel scared or stressed at unusual times or to a degree that doesn’t make sense to you.
Perhaps you have started drinking too much or eating too much or have developed other compulsive behaviors or obsessive thoughts. Maybe you are just so angry all the time. Maybe you isolate after a terrible trauma and don’t let people in.
All of these are different ways that early trauma or adult trauma can live inside of us.
Healing is possible
Healing from your childhood issues is a very important, self-empowering and powerful thing to do. In trauma therapy, you work on your family of origin issues and explore what happened during your growing up. If your trauma happened in your adult life, we will explore that thoroughly as well.
Shame often is a big part of what happens when you have been abused or mistreated. When you reflect back on a situation without the help of others, it is often easy to think that you had some culpability in the act against you, especially if your abuser told you that you did. Shame reduction work is a big part of trauma treatment.
No matter what happened to you or when it happened to you, we will work together to find you find a less painful way to hold the experiences that you have lived through.
Working through your issues, processing what has happened to you, stepping into the physical and emotional healing, can help you to live more freely from the trauma and feel freer to be in your adult relationships. Trauma therapy can help you find better inner peace and learn new ways to self soothe and care for ourselves.
Self-care and Self-soothing
Part of the therapy includes learning about selfcare and self-soothing. When we have suffered a lot of distress, this may have impaired our ability to calm ourselves and to feel safe. The feeling of safety for many may begin by coming into the therapy office. That often takes a lot of courage and is likely to result in your feeling the beginning of some relief.
Getting help to heal the wounds of any form of childhood pain or trauma is an important step to take. Whether you have a child who is withdrawn and antisocial or if you are an adult who has experienced any trauma or abuse as a child, you can be helped tremendously by seeing a therapist. Please take a chance on yourself to feel better and give me a call or write me an email to schedule a consultation to talk about how you can get some help.