Healing Childhood Trauma in Perth
Are you looking to heal from childhood trauma? Dealing with past childhood trauma can feel overwhelming. Here is what you need to know if you’re looking for a childhood trauma therapist in Perth. If it took years for the trauma to accumulate and impact you, then you cannot rush the process of healing and expect to be healed overnight.
If you’re trying to find a trauma recovery expert to heal attachment trauma and inner child wounds, then we are here to provide professional help. But let’s understand a little about dealing with past trauma.
When we face danger, like an intruder breaking into our home, our nervous system goes into fight or flight to run or fight off the intruder, so our body gets pumped with oxygen, adrenaline or cortisol to do so. Now imagine growing up feeling unsafe, but nowhere to run or hide; the fear and panic become a constant threat that stays inside of you. Our inner world can feel unsafe, scanning for safety.
Healing attachment wounds in trauma recovery
In dealing with childhood trauma, we don’t always focus on what happened to you; it is about how the trauma affects you and therefore we help you put yourself back together to live life more freely.
Some people seek help to recover from past trauma when they feel disconnected from themselves, because of feeling numb or emotionally vacant, when they’ve learned to shut themselves off as a survival mechanism.
Many people who suffered trauma in childhood do not remember because the nervous system has blocked it out for survival, but the feelings become activated in the present once they get triggered in our relationships, causing overwhelming emotions that might feel disproportionate to the situation
When a threat continues for too long, it activates a fight-or-flight response where the amygdala, the nervous system’s threat detector, warns the person to escape or fight in order to survive. The amygdala acts like an alarm that gets set off when it detects threat.
Trauma occurs when the threatening situation is no longer present but the alarm system is constantly set off, as if the threat is real, when the threat no longer exists. A person can get stuck in fight, flight or freeze. A person can get stuck in a survival response, looking for threats to feel safe.
If you’ve had a threatening parent, you might perceive your partner as attacking you when they are simply trying to communicate. This is called hyperarousal where the nervous system responds as if the threat is still occurring, flooding the nervous system with panic and fear. The amygdala acts as a faulty alarm system, whereby anything that feels familiar can set off the alarm. A history of traumatic childhood experiences can sound the alarm, so much so that adult relationships can feel unsafe, and it’s hard to discern what feels safe or not.
Hypo-arousal occurs when the danger has been too much, that the person shuts off the nervous system because it cannot cope with the threat, and stays in the freeze response, disconnecting from the traumatic experience in order to survive. It is like a deer in headlights, shutting off from the sense of danger to escape. You can feel shut down, flat or depressed. When you shut down, it’s hard to assert your needs or protect yourself if you have emotionally checked out. Those who have been subject to abusive relationships can be in a state of hypo-arousal whereby they do not detect the real threat of danger, because they have shut off to escape the threat.
Attachment trauma can result from not having your emotional needs met, feelings of abandonment, or abuse. When the feelings are so painful, they become split off from the Self, causing these feelings to be frozen in time. These feelings can be triggered in adult relationships which can cause a person to react to a threat that no longer exists, or check out of the relationship to cope with the stress. Whichever case, you can easily get locked into these stress responses and not respond in the present moment.
Being locked in trauma can cause you to live in perpetual fear, being hypervigilant that something bad is going to happen, being locked in one’s past, and reliving the traumatic feelings that get triggered. The scary thing is the feelings comes back as if you are reliving the trauma as if it is still occurring, when it belongs in the past but feels real as if it is happening in the present.
Those who block out traumatic abuse, to protect themselves from the pain caused by significant others, can internalise they are worthless or feel somehow the abuse was their fault. The anger gets pushed down, often turned towards themselves.
Many who have been traumatised:
- Feel hypervigilant about something bad happening and looking for threats in order to protect themselves so they feel safe.
- Feel numb or depressed, by defending against the painful feelings.
- Feel unsafe in relationships, fear closeness and intimacy, as a trigger to past sexual abuse. Difficulty trusting intimate partners to not hurt them or abuse them, feeling appropriated.
- Difficulty setting boundaries, protecting oneself, expressing oneself, avoiding conflict.
- Some resort to self-defeating behaviours, such as self-harm or suicide, to escape or rid themselves of the feeling of self-loathing.
- Some remain shutoff, disconnected and feel not affected by it, or cannot remember what happened, blanked out.
- Some minimise their experience so they don’t feel it, but the pain stays locked away until triggered. All of a sudden one recalls the torture or suffering from memories, flash backs or nightmares.
Triggering events or traumatic associations can bring them right back to what they were experiencing during the abuse, since their body responds as if they were back in the traumatic event, by responding to fight or flight.
Healing relational trauma and complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
With trauma, when these painful experiences are blocked out, individuals may show signs of post-traumatic stress symptoms, with nightmares, flash backs, numbing, dissociation, hyper-vigilance hyper-arousal, symptoms of depression or anxiety issues.
When there is childhood trauma, a person may not have access to aspects of themselves that were present before the trauma. Some people often report feeling on autopilot, not fully present, switched off from who they are in order to cope, or not feeling present within themselves or relationships. By integrating the lost parts of the self, the person can feel whole and more integrated as they connect with themselves and life.
As a trauma psychotherapist, Nancy Carbone understands her clients need to be within their window of tolerance to explore emotions. This is when the nervous system has calmed down and feels safe, in order to process and manage things. We cannot be in a hyperarousal state, but feel regulated by the therapist. Nancy understands feelings can only be processed once a person feels safe within themselves, and ready to do so.
Essentially, we want our clients to be in a calm, rest and digest state in order to sort through feelings, so they do not remain stuck in trauma, so they can gradually become free to live in the moment.
Usually, clients feel relief when they can process emotions when they feel safe to do so, otherwise, the feelings remain dormant and can be triggered until they are delicately processed.
Healing trauma is a slow process and should not be rushed; otherwise, it can flood the person with intense feelings before they feel strong enough to cope with them. The client must feel safe and ready to do the inner work, Sometimes it can take a while to create safety within the nervous system, so trauma work does not begin until the nervous system feels safe.
Often a person needs to be resourced with enough ego strength before going into traumatic memories, so the client does not become re-traumatised. Going straight into talking about trauma can re-traumatize a person at the beginning of therapy, without them already having enough therapy to manage the feelings in a contained way. As a counsellor in Perth for trauma, Nancy is able to carefully track the client’s feelings, at their own pace, which safely allows them to process their experiences, in a way that is containing for them.
As a trauma therapist , Nancy reconizes that the ‘self ‘ needs to feel strong enough to manage the feelings, so therapy is a slow and gradual process so the feelings can be gradually processed at the clients pace.
It is important to find a trauma psychotherapist who is specialised in childhood abuse, neglect, abandonment.
Individuals may encounter past childhood trauma or hurts. Many develop coping strategies to put these experiences out of their conscious awareness. Trauma counselling or psychotherapy stays with where the client is at, acknowledging how painful these feelings are.
Some relationships trigger the original trauma. Some clients may come to see that current relationship difficulties allow them to re-experience earlier pain, which becomes felt with their partner. Some get re-traumatised by sexual relationships, feeling unsafe with closeness or intimacy, affecting their relationships. Sometimes the individual associates their fears to the current situation or person, forgetting where it may have originated from.
Other times they end up with partners where they re-create the abuse, putting up with abusive situations because they feel too afraid to protect themselves, assert their rights or set appropriate boundaries.
In these situations the individual may not trust relationships, counselling for relationships can also be useful.
Our Trauma Informed Practice are experts in the treatment for recovering from childhood trauma
In counselling those who have experienced trauma, once individuals locate where their feelings derive from, they are better able to respond in certain situations. They are able to see if they are triggered to a traumatic event, when the current situation is not dangerous, but reminds them of an associated flashback or memory.
For those who experienced trauma or abuse, it is natural to feel apprehensive about counselling, since trusting others may not be easy. Nancy will let you take control of the pace and guide you through the process within your comfortable limits.
For professional specialists dealing with past trauma, contact us : 0449 861 147 or email nancy.counsellinginperth@gmail.com