Childhood Trauma
Do I even have *trauma*?
I remember the first time a therapist recommended that I work on healing my childhood trauma. My automatic thought was "That's a little dramatic."
If you are finding yourself on this page, maybe you received a similar recommendation. Or perhaps you've come to your own conclusion about your childhood wounds.
Whichever it is, working with a trauma therapist can help.
Nobody ever said that life would be easy, but it definitely isn't suppose to be this hard.
Sometimes it is hard to see things from your childhood as traumatic because it's all that you knew. When you were a kid, you didn't necessarily have the perspective to recognize that what was happening to you wasn't okay.
The truth is that we all experience trauma. The difference between someone who has lived through trauma and a traumatized person lies in the question: How does it impact you today?
Some signs that you could work on healing childhood trauma include:
It feels really freaking hard to have healthy relationships. This could look like anything from fear of abandonment to avoidance of getting close to people altogether.
Emotions feel really big, all of the time. Happy, angry, sad, excited - you feel everything through a magnifying glass. And, once you do, it's hard to get back to baseline.
Shame and guilt are no strangers. You tend to be really hard on yourself. You might even feel "bad" or like you are constantly about to get in trouble.
Your coping skills aren't the healthiest. You might rely on something like an eating disorder, self-harm, or substance abuse to help you feel better.
How Therapy Can Help
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It can help your emotions feel more manageable. You can learn to identify triggers, utilize healthy coping skills, and stop feeling powerless to your emotional experience.
It can help you to heal parts of yourself that are still holding onto hurt from childhood. You can finally discover the love that your younger self always needed.
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It can help you improve your relationships. You can work through problematic attachment behaviors and change how you communicate, respond to conflict, and more.