Men and women 23-49, here is how you can move on from what happened in your childhood and lead the life that you really want.
Here is how you can move on from:
- Being tired of sabotaging your life over and over
- Repeating the same relationship problems and no knowing how to fix it
- Staying in relationships that are bad for you
- The fear of becoming like one of your parents or damaging your own children
- Seeing your career or life plans falter because of low self-esteem
You can move on without having to…
- … spend half your time and money on self-help books and videos
- … repeat positive affirmations until they become just meaningless sounds
- … fake it ‘til you make it or give up on your dreams altogether
- … hit the wine bar every lunchtime just to get through the day
- … spend years in therapy
- … worry that you’ll be on medication or in support groups for the rest of your life.
Does one of these sound like you?
- You feel like a burden to everyone. Or scared that no one will ever want you.
- Shame or guilt is keeping you in a stranglehold.
- You find yourself saying sorry for things that are not your fault.
- Anxiety or dissociation gets in the way of doing what you want.
- You’re not sure that what you want in life is okay – or not even sure what you want.
- You’re retreating from your problems every day, or feel that life is passing you by.
- You’re frustrated that childhood events hold you back even now.
If you had a difficult childhood, you already know how much it can affect your self-esteem, daily functioning and relationships. But it doesn’t need to define who you are now. There is plenty you can do to improve these aspects of your life.
Therapy for childhood trauma: what is it?
I am an experienced psychotherapist based in central London. I have a special interest in working with adults who faced trauma in childhood. This may mean abuse, neglect, particular events, or any circumstances that were very difficult for you. I offer weekly, one-to-one psychotherapy for as long (or short) as you need it. This can be face to face or online.
Unlike many therapists who either have been trained only in cognitive and behavioural therapies (such as CBT) or play down the usefulness of cognitive methods, I believe that working at both the cognitive (thought), behavioural and emotional levels is essential if you want to bring about real change in your life. In particular, you may need to identify patterns that were formed in childhood. These are often buried deep in our unconscious minds, so that we are completely unaware of them. Working with these is central to my therapy training and practice.
Therapy for childhood trauma: what does it look like?
Your therapy will be unique to you. It depends what you bring to it. That said, there are some issues that occur often. CLICK ON THE BOXES BELOW to find out more…
REVISITING YOUR IDENTITY
In practice, this means addressing any shame that you feel, strengthening your sense of self-worth and re-building your identity (who you are, your values, etc.)
DEALING WITH DIFFICULT EMOTIONS
Following childhood trauma, many unresolved emotions can seep into just about everything we think and do – for example, anger, shame, guilt or sadness. We might be conscious of these or they may lie completely outside of our awareness. Either way, they can feed into our self-esteem, our scripts for managing every day life and our behaviours. Bringing these into conscious awareness and working on them in therapy can do much to improve our sense of well-being and help us operate better in daily life and relationships.
CHANGING RELATIONSHIP PATTERNS
We can all improve our relational skills, but facing childhood trauma may have severely reduced your opportunity to develop these in your younger years. Fortunately, these can be gradually learnt in later life.
Trauma may also mean you have learnt relationship patterns which protected you as a child, but which are now unhelpful as an adult. As with emotions, we may be completely unaware of these until we begin to look carefully. Even then, many are hidden even from ourselves.
Modern psychodynamic therapy is designed to address exactly that problem. We use the relationships that you are already in – for example with family, partners, friends or colleagues, and the therapy itself – to discover what works for you and what you want to change.
You can also learn to get more connected to what is really happening with the person or situation you are relating to, without guessing or projecting. That way, you are dealing with the reality in front of you and not re-enacting the patterns you learnt in the past with the people in your life now.
In turn, this is gives you practice at understanding your own needs and desires in any situation – and then also the opportunity to learn to express them more clearly and openly. When you can do this without anxiety or shame, it is easier to attract into your life the people you need to live happy and healthy relationships and to live a more fulfilled life generally
MANAGING ANXIETY, DISTRESS AND DISSOCIATION
If your distress is at a higher level, we can work on this, in particular:
- learning to manage anxiety
- tolerating distress and managing strong emotions
- staying grounded if you dissociate.
Some people feel they cannot be helped, for example if they are considered to have C-PTSD or BPD/EUPD. That is not true. All of the things mentioned above can help.
Am I eligible for a free consultation?
You will need to be 18 years old or over. That is all!
You don’t need a referral or a diagnosis of any sort. The degree of impact of your childhood on you is not important. If you feel you experienced any sort of trauma or difficulty situation in childhood, please feel free to book this consultation. The important thing is that you have taken another (big) step in the direction of living a fulfilling life, despite what you experienced as a child.
I am limited in the numbers of people I can take on each month for working with childhood trauma. If you are looking for support quickly, please don’t delay in booking your consultation.
Book a consultation
The initial consultation lasts for up to 45 minutes. There is no charge. It can be held over the telephone or an encrypted video link. This is an opportunity for you to tell me what you need from therapy and to ask questions about the therapy I can offer. We can then decide the way forward.
Or: go to my Contact Form if you prefer to book a face to face Introductory Session. The fee is £30-£40 depending on the venue.
It is easy to book. Simply select a date and time on the calendar below and fill out the boxes. Then click on the ‘schedule event’ button. You will see a booking confirmation on your screen and receive an email confirmation. Depending on your choice, I will either call you at your chosen time or email you instructions for a video call, normally the day before the call.
Thank you for visiting my consultation page. You can now flick through the calendar above to find the right date and time for you.