Adult clients come to see me via this website and professional directories or have been personally recommended or referred to me because of my clinical experience of working at a specialist trauma agency.
As well as childhood trauma, I also work with individuals who have been raped or sexually assaulted and perhaps, experienced domestic violence in a relationship.
Specifically, I have the clinical experience of working with male clients who are the survivors of childhood sexual abuse, sexual violence and rape, sexual assault and domestic violence in adulthood.
For the past few years, I have worked one afternoon a week in 2-year long-term therapy at a specialist trauma agency with the presenting issue of childhood trauma of abuse relating to sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, torture, rape, kidnapping and violence.
Childhood Trauma
Intergenerational trauma sometimes also called transgenerational trauma is the impact on a generation or generations of an entire family, who are impacted by past trauma. This can manifest in families, regarding no or little awareness or avoidance of the severity of the impact of said trauma on the family nucleus i.e., 'brushed under the carpet'. Perhaps, it could also be borne out of feelings of shame and societal or cultural stigma of seeking professional help.
You might be reliving these traumatic events in your head or physiologically feeling not right in your own body. Manifesting unexplained pain daily, weekly, monthly which tests and doctors have not been able to find the cause of. Currently however, it is impacting your daily existence and the trauma still feels like it happened a few days ago not in your childhood.
Yes, I see you and yes, I will hear you when you unpack childhood trauma. I will never direct a session to specifically look at your childhood trauma, as you are in full control of what you bring to each session weekly.
Whether you do so in the first session, or it takes many sessions, I will still be sitting in a room alongside you in each session until you are ready.
Some things I can help you with
- Are you feeling down, experiencing low-mood, suspecting you have symptoms of depression and feel you would benefit from speaking to a mental health practitioner?
- Uncontrollable rage and anger issues but you are not sure how to stop this behaviour.
- Maybe intrusive thoughts and memories are plaguing your mind. Are you having flashbacks, and perhaps suicide ideation thoughts also?
- Relationship or commitment issues, feelings of hopelessness, anger, avoidance, denial, sadness, shame, loneliness, and low self-worth. Perhaps you are experiencing excruciating perfectionism, anxiety, stress, and depression and are seeking help because it is now impacting your daily life.
- Or maybe you have become hypervigilant because of said abuse in childhood, living in a constant state of fear, that pretty much exhausted you mentally. So much so, that you could not concentrate on your schoolwork and fell behind.
- You may have switched off, dissociated or become numb to your very existence just to survive, so you never had to feel said above pain and you are still using this as a coping mechanism.
- Are you experiencing fear, which can lead to avoidance and ultimately acute procrastination? Which on a bad day, makes you want to hide away from others, but you cannot hide away from yourself can you?
- Maybe you have become exhausted because you have developed a pattern of overthinking, suicide ideation or have intrusive thoughts and you want to work on this cycle of behaviour.
- Have you been using addiction to substances or dangerous behaviours as a coping mechanism to just get through each day? Or do you have a historic pattern of broken, toxic, or unhealthy relationships you would like to address in sessions because you believe the root cause stems from your childhood?
- As an adult, you might be experiencing difficulties finding your secure base that you can call home because you've forgotten or do not even know what this may feel like. You may also want to come to sessions to look at interpersonal relationships, specifically trust, boundaries, attachment, co-dependency, and communication.
- You might have also noticed unhealthy patterns of relating in romantic relationships and friendships, yet you cannot quite understand why and would like to explore in therapy with a view to changing this.
- Have you just left a toxic abusive relationship and are struggling to come to terms with the gaslighting you experienced as it has profoundly impacted your mental health? Do you find yourself questioning what you think daily because you were put down and devalued so much, you lost a piece of yourself in that toxic relationship or don't recognise yourself anymore?
- Your self-worth, confidence and self-esteem are at rock bottom, and you are trying to rebuild your life with friends and family, as your ex-partner or current partner isolated you from them to gain more control over you but are struggling to adjust.
- There was no secure base, let alone safe-haven as a child. Nor was it happy families as depicted in the Disney movies and happy ever after's.
- You might have experienced the loss of a parent or significant caregiver as a child and the profound loss is still impacting your daily life as an adult.
- You may have a pattern of self-sabotage you recognise, this could be, leaving relationships abruptly, ghosting others, not taking responsibility or accountability for your actions, and blaming others. Or building walls up around you so high, that no person stands a chance of getting close to you, including yourself.
