Did You Experience a Difficult Childhood?
Are you struggling with the lasting impact of abuse or neglect that you experienced during childhood? You may feel unworthy of love, unable to trust others and hopeless about your future. Do you find that your emotional reactions are intense and unpredictable? Have you tried to bury and deny your thoughts and feelings only to find that they erupt explosively when you least expect them to? Do you wish you could have confidence in your ability to keep yourself safe, manage your emotions and form healthy relationships?
Trauma can be isolating, exhausting and confusing. Maybe you have gaps in your memory of your childhood or questions about whether your experiences were really traumatic. Maybe you struggle with chronic anxiety, sleep problems or physical pain that you don’t understand. Some people experience guilt about things that are not their fault or feel unworthy of love. Perhaps you lack the ability to soothe yourself when you get upset and find yourself relying on self-destructive behaviors – such as drinking too much, binge eating or acting out sexually– that leave you feeling ashamed and only make things worse. You might be afraid of being hurt again, resulting in the feeling that you are hiding from the world.
You Are Not Broken, Defective or Crazy
When people think of trauma, they often picture the impact of war combat on a soldier. But, we also know that many types of experiences can be traumatic and that people who faced abuse and neglect during childhood often experience uncomfortable, worrisome symptoms throughout adolescence and adulthood. Complex PTSD can result from exposure to ongoing or intense traumatic experiences in the context of important relationships with your caregivers. Abuse during the period of childhood can be especially debilitating because the brain develops rapidly at this time, and intense stress changes that development. The concept of Complex PTSD addresses how these experiences get in the way of building a sense of safety in which you feel that the world can be predictable, other people can be safe and you can feel worthy and effective.
You may notice that you struggle to feel safe and secure in relationships, that your emotions can be overwhelming and that you feel powerless or unworthy. Many people who have experienced complex trauma deal with these same problems. Forming healthy relationships with friends, romantic partners and authority figures can be difficult when your feelings about past abuse have not been resolved. Complex PTSD can make you ambivalent about connecting with people, or you may find that you get fearful or angry for no apparent reason. Many people who felt unsafe and disconnected from their parents during childhood experience these challenges. When primary caregivers are also a source of fear, hurt and harm, a child experiences anxious ambivalence and chaos rather than support and calm.
Complex trauma also has an effect on the body. Experience of chronic or intense stress has an impact on the immune system and affects the development of the physical stress response systems in your brain. In adulthood, instead of having a normal stress response, you may over-respond to stress (as if every experience feels like life or death) and experience physical symptoms, such as headaches, stomachaches or hyper-sensitivity to triggers, such as smells and noise. Or, alternatively, you may under-respond to stress or danger (for example, you might shut down emotionally), which can led to lack of awareness of your body and your physical sensations, numbness, injury due to inattention to pain or paradoxically, chronic pain with no apparent physical cause.
Early trauma impacts the development of self-esteem and self-efficacy. In abusive or chaotic homes, hurtful verbal and nonverbal messages impact a child’s developing sense of self-worth. You may find that as an adult you feel unlovable or unworthy in moments, and you might blame yourself for your past.
The impact of trauma on emotional experience is profound. Children can only develop language for emotions in the context of relationships. When emotions are ignored or invalidated, you may lack words to express feelings or even identify and understand them. The result can be unpredictable emotional responses, a tendency to bury and ignore emotions and then explode when faced with experiences that trigger memories of your trauma. Since triggers are all around, you might not know that you are having a reaction to a trigger and end up feeling overwhelmed and crazy. You are not crazy. You are doing the best you can do, but you may have never learned healthy approaches to understanding what you need emotionally and how to soothe yourself.
You can resolve the impact of complex trauma experiences and build a solid sense of self. Trauma therapy can help you build a sense of safety and resolve the impact that prior trauma has had on your relationships, your body, your sense of self and your emotions.
With Complex Trauma Therapy, You Can Grow Past Trauma and Move Forward
I am a psychologist who specializes in trauma therapy in Atlanta, GA. I work with clients who have experienced complex traumas such as childhood abuse and neglect. With trauma therapy, you can move forward, so that painful experiences can become part of your story, but not the defining factor in your life now.
I use an individualized and stage-based treatment approach to trauma therapy. First, we do a thorough assessment of your individual needs, experiences and how they impact you. We work to develop treatment goals to help you resolve the Complex PTSD symptoms you have been experiencing. We also pay particular attention to determining what you need in order to feel safe in your therapy relationship with me and to make therapy effective for you.
Next, we focus on skills for healthy self-care. I work with you to determine what important skills you need to be able to sooth yourself, feel greater self-compassion, deal with triggers so that they are not overwhelming, and increase assertiveness and your ability to set healthy boundaries. Together, we will also address any unhealthy patterns that you might struggle with, such as emotional eating, drinking too much or other compulsive patterns that you may have developed when healthier and more effective self-care strategies were not available to you.
When you are ready, we will work on processing the impact that your complex trauma experiences have had on your development. In the context of a safe relationship, we can work to process your painful memories and feelings so that you can accept parts of your experience that you may have pushed away, change your expectations of yourself and others and feel free to move forward without feeling that trauma will hold your back. You embrace life as a resilient individual with increased self-esteem, the ability to connect with others authentically and increased comfort with intimacy. You don’t have to let the past define your future.
You may have some concerns…
I feel so ashamed. I don’t know if I can talk about the things that I experienced.
You may have a great deal of difficulty talking about your experiences. Perpetrators or family members may have told you not to tell “family secrets” or made threats to harm you or blame you if you sought help. Even when the abuse is over, these commands to stay silent linger, making it difficult to get help. But, staying alone with your experience does not help you heal. Please reach out for help. It is my job as your therapist to work with you to create a sense of safety, to talk about your experiences at a pace that is not overwhelming and to make sure you have the skills you need to care for yourself or to reach out for support from others when you experience difficult emotions.
I’m not sure if what I experienced is really trauma. I don’t want to accuse my loved ones of abuse.
Many people who seek trauma therapy are unsure if they should consider their childhood experiences to be “abuse.” If you see your struggles reflected in the discussion on this page, but you have never thought that you may have experienced childhood abuse or another type of complex trauma, therapy can still be effective for you. I am interested in helping people overcome these difficult emotional and relationship patterns so that they can reconnect with their needs and pursue their goals. There is no need to put a label on any experience that does not make sense to you or is not comfortable. It is also important to understand that you will be working to heal yourself, and accusing or confronting someone else for something that happened in the past is rarely a part of trauma therapy. What is important is that you seek help to address the ways in which you have felt stuck. Therapy can help you access the root of these problems and clear the path to move forward.
Would You Like to Explore How Trauma Therapy Can Help You?
I would like to talk with you about how therapy with me might be a fit for your needs. Please call me at 404-668-9893 or click here to contact me. I look forward to meeting you.