Adult Survivors of Childhood Trauma

“As the ACE study has shown, child abuse and neglect is the single most preventable cause of mental illness, the single most common cause of drug and alcohol abuse, and a significant contributor to leading causes of death such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and suicide.”

― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

If the research about trauma is true, it’s impossible to not know a trauma survivor. Trauma is war, child neglect, poverty, spiritual abuse, a harrowing child birth, sexual abuse, vehicle accident, racism, and so much more.

I specialize in working with adult survivors of childhood trauma, particularly emotional abuse and/or neglect.

Trauma presents itself in may different ways. If you are an adult survivor of childhood trauma, you may have learned to depend upon yourself and remained distrustful of others. Your relationships might be distant or superficial, and people feel like they don’t know you. Or, maybe you were a parentified child, often described by your caregivers as “mature” or “easy.” When you became an adult, you realized that you had poor boundaries, low self-esteem, and unhealthy coping skills. Your people pleasing skills, a trauma response that was necessary to cope with unreliable and/or unsafe caregivers, is now your default. And you feel stuck.

So how do you get unstuck?

Keep in mind that these behaviors weren’t learned overnight. It helps to be patient with yourself because you’ve done what you’ve needed to keep yourself safe. Before we get to the heavy stuff, I take time to teach grounding skills and we discuss how you will implement healthy coping skills outside of our sessions. I won’t ask you to discuss the trauma in detail. I’m interested in how the trauma impacted the way you see yourself, others, and the world. How have these stuck points (unhelpful, unproductive thoughts that are difficult to change) kept you in bad relationships, situations, jobs, etc.?

Once we identify the stuck points, we can challenge them through various cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) skills such as validity testing, behavioral skills, and Socratic questioning. Your unique treatment plan will reflect your unique experiences. Let’s work together.

Visit here for more information about the impact of adverse childhood experiences.