Therapy for developmental and complex TRAUMA
Can you relate?
“My caregivers/parents did not express empathy or emotional awareness.” • “I learned to stay small, helpful, or easy so things would feel safer.” • “I had a caregiver who struggled with untreated mental health challenges or substances.” • “I know the past is over, but some part of me still feels like I am there.” • “I grew up walking on eggshells.” • “I was hurt or unprotected by those I was supposed to be able to trust most.” • “I have experienced abuse and/or neglect in childhood.” • “I struggle to trust people, even when I want closeness.” • “I have experienced abuse and/or neglect in childhood.”
You are not alone.
What is DEVELOPMENTAL and complex trauma?
Developmental and complex trauma can grow from what happened to us, and also from what we needed but did not consistently receive.
When childhood unfolds alongside chronic fear, unpredictability, emotional neglect, criticism, role reversal, abuse, loss, or caregivers who are unable to offer consistent safety and connection, a child learns how to adapt. You may become exceptionally attuned to other people, fiercely independent, perfectionistic, responsible, invisible, or skilled at disconnecting from feelings that once felt too overwhelming to hold. These adaptations are often evidence of how creatively a person learned to survive within the relationships and circumstances available to them.
But patterns that once protected us can become painful when they follow us into adulthood. You may long for closeness while also feeling terrified by it, feel stuck in painful relational patterns, move quickly into shame, feel chronically unsafe, or find that your body reacts to situations in intense and uncomfortable ways. Complex trauma can become woven into how we experience ourselves, our bodies, and our relationships with others.
While it can feel meaningful to gain new insights about the trauma, treating complex trauma can also mean helping mind and body resolve patterns that are stuck in trauma time and having new, safe emotional and attachment experiences at a pace that feels tolerable, moving toward greater safety, choice, connection, and room to become more fully yourself.
“Attachment is our connection with the world. In the earliest attachment relationships, we gain or lose the ability to stay open, self-nurturing and healthy. In those early attachment bonds, we learned to experience anger or to fear it and repress it. There we developed our sense of autonomy or suffered its atrophy.”
How I can Help
Because developmental trauma is often held in our emotions, bodies, and relationships, I tend to work from the “bottom up” with experiential and attachment-focused approaches. Using AEDP, we can attempt to slow down and notice what is happening underneath familiar protection and coping strategies, making room for emotions and experiences that may once have been too difficult to feel. The therapeutic relationship itself can become a place of new emotional experiences that contribute to healing, such as building tolerance for the vulnerability of feeling seen, having emotions welcomed rather than neglected or told they are “too much,” practicing stating needs, and trying out new skills to process triggers in real time.
I also integrate parts work and EMDR to help us work compassionately with the different survival strategies you carry and with experiences from the past that may still feel present in your nervous system. Rather than trying to force protective parts away, we can understand what they learned to do for you and help them recognize that you may have more choices now. EMDR can support deeper processing of painful memories and relational experiences so that healing becomes something you begin to feel in your body, your relationships, and your sense of self.
LET’S FACE THIS TOGETHER.
Get support
If you are initially reaching out, you can expect to hear from me within two business days.