Healing Trauma & Building Healthy Attachments
Any event or situation may be traumatizing if it has a long-lasting impact on our life. It may interfere with our ability to go to work/school, take care of our responsibilities, and maintain relationships with others. If left untreated, trauma can sometimes lead to clinical diagnoses, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), borderline personality disorder (BPD), anxiety and depression. Sequoia Counselling provides services to clients who have experienced a variety of traumatic experiences and specializes in supporting those with a history of relational trauma.
Relational Trauma Therapy
Relational trauma often occurs when we have inconsistent and/or insecure attachment relationships with others. Trauma may develop from experiences in childhood or adulthood. It may develop from physical, emotional, mental or sexual abuse, neglect, abandonment, infidelity, and family breakdown. Or from relationships with others who are overly critical, inattentive, or abuse drugs and/or alcohol. Sometimes caregivers may rely heavily on children to adopt adult roles before they are developmentally ready to do so. Relational trauma also occurs in loving families where parents work hard to provide for children, but are not as physically or emotionally available as needed.
You may have experienced relational trauma if you:
- have difficulty trusting others and sustaining relationships
- often please others and have difficulty tolerating when others are upset
- avoid confrontation because it gives you anxiety
- struggle to recognize your strengths, value and self-worth
- create barriers between yourself and others to protect yourself, but that also unintentially push others away
- frequently do kind things for others in hopes that they will like you, even if they don’t reciprocate and are mean you in return
- put up with unkind, narcissistic, mean and abusive behaviour from others, because you recognize that they are good people underneath and you want to be able to help them
- tend to have love/hate relationships with others characterized by extreme highs and extreme lows
- feel moody and irritable
- experience a heightened sensitivity to what’s happening around you
- you only feel worthy if you’re succeeding or performing well enough and often feel inadequate
When we experience trauma, especially childhood trauma, we develop an understanding of ourselves and our world based on our experiences. If we grow up in a loving, caring responsive home, we learn that we are valuable, loved, and that the world is a safe place. If we grow up in an environment that is inconsistent, neglectful or abusive, we learn that we’re not important and that no one is looking out for us. We may learn that we need to please others in order to meet our basic needs. We may learn that the world is an unsafe place and we need to protect ourselves.
Healing Through Trauma Therapy
Healing from trauma involves looking at our experiences and what we learn about ourselves, others, and the world. We learn to attune to where these feelings reside in our body and explore what they’re trying to teach us. We develop new, healthier coping strategies to replace old coping strategies that no longer serve us. Trauma healing involves exploring our values and new ways of understanding ourselves and the world. We can learn to develop healthy boundaries with others and repair and develop positive relationships with others.
Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you – all of the expectations, all of the beliefs – and becoming who you are.
Rachel Naomi Remen