Childhood Issues

Trauma is very personal and depends on what’s going on in the mind, so different people have different reactions to the same event. Sexual assault, violent crime (including domestic violence), the death of a loved one, seeing or experiencing a serious injury, an abortion or miscarriage, a police or fire rescue, military service, or even growing up in a foster home can be traumatic. Surprisingly, children in foster care are more likely to develop PTSD than military veterans. Adults who were raised in a household with substance abuse, mental illness, or physical, emotional, or sexual abuse may still suffer from trauma.

We’ve helped many clients to overcome major traumatic experiences, as well as lesser traumas that still negatively affected their lives. Any experience that upsets you emotionally, no matter how big or small, can cause trauma. We can help you deal with those memories and clear up their unwanted emotional and behavioral effects – without discussing the details of your experience.

There is always a way out if you are determined to find it. Many psychology experts say that most people with addictions or anxiety experienced trauma during childhood. We have found that to be true with hundreds of our clients. As a result, overcoming addiction or anxiety often requires resolving trauma. We have helped a lot of people who have been through any of the terrible things mentioned above. Many of our clients’ traumatic experiences happened when they were young and were either sexual or violent, so you are not alone. Due to not being able to deal with the trauma, they often had panic attacks, drug or alcohol problems, or relationship challenges. We can help you to clear out the unhealthy thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that you have carried since childhood by focusing our attention on the traumatic memories that cause them.

Many of our successful clients had been in therapy for months or years before they found us. It’s important to know that time doesn’t heal by itself. Healing depends on what happens to memories, perceptions, and habits as time goes by. Many people who have been through traumatic events do not just heal on their own no matter how much time has passed. It’s not enough to tell yourself that the event is over and you’re safe now. If conscious, rational awareness were enough to heal trauma, then talk therapy would be quick and effective, and few people would have anxiety or addictions. Accepting and relearning things on a subconscious level are necessary for lasting emotional healing. At the same time, being unwilling and unable to accept and let go of the past causes emotional pain. When you properly address the wounds within your subconscious, you can heal. It can be a simple matter, no matter what you have been through.

It’s not the “traumatic experience” itself that causes trauma, but the beliefs, perceptions, memories, and conditioning that developed from it. So, you’re right that you can’t change the past. You can, however, change how you remember it, what you learned from it, and how it affects you. When someone suddenly feels afraid or has an uncontrollable urge to do something unhealthy or harmful, it means that an underlying thought pattern is causing it. If the trauma isn’t cleared, that thought pattern stays active in the mind and can cause negative symptoms. That’s how trauma can hide in the background and, seemingly out of nowhere, trigger unwanted feelings and behaviors. It’s sad that so many people think that they must live with the harmful effects of unresolved trauma. They continue to suffer, because they don’t know how to fix it. The good news is that we target the root cause of emotional and behavioral problems to help you eliminate their effects, including some that you might not realize are related.

Unfortunately, many people hold on to the limiting beliefs they learned from traumatic events (“I’m not good enough,” “I’m not safe,” or “other people are bad”). They may claim to be victims of their past, unable to change how it affects them (passive). Since they don’t think they can change that feeling of powerlessness, their fear may show up as anger and the need to control others, which makes them feel powerful (aggressive). In either case, using a traumatic past to justify being passive or aggressive stops those people from getting better. It is possible to get over trauma with the right help, but it’s up to those who have been through it to do so. Clearing the trauma at its source tends to clear up the harmful behaviors it causes, too.