COMPLEX TRAUMA

Complex Trauma

Understanding how past experiences can continue to shape how you feel today.

Complex trauma does not always begin with one clearly identifiable traumatic event. It can develop through repeated or prolonged experiences of fear, abuse, neglect, instability or emotional disconnection, particularly during childhood and within the relationships where we should have felt safest.

For some people, what happened was clearly traumatic. For others, there may be no single event they can point to. You may even look back and think, “Nothing really happened to me. ” Yet you might live with anxiety, shame, a deep sense of not being good enough, people-pleasing, difficulty trusting others, problems with intimacy, emotional disconnection, anger, or a persistent feeling that something is wrong with you.

Trauma can also be about what didn’t happen. The absence of emotional safety, affection, protection, reassurance, consistency or having your feelings understood can shape the developing nervous system and the beliefs we form about ourselves and other people.

The ways you learned to cope were often ways of adapting to what was happening around you. Those adaptations may have helped you survive or maintain connection when you were younger, but later in life they can become patterns that leave you feeling stuck or continue to play out in your relationships.

Complex trauma therapy is not about blaming your past. It is about understanding what shaped you, working with what your mind and body learned to carry, and helping you develop a different relationship with yourself, your emotions and the people around you.”

“When the alarm bell of the emotional brain keeps signaling that you are in danger, no amount of insight will silence it. .”

– Bessel van der Kolk, MD

COMPLEX PTSD (C-PTSD)

Complex PTSD can develop following repeated or prolonged traumatic experiences, particularly during childhood, within close relationships, or when escape, protection or emotional support were not available.

Like PTSD, it can involve intrusive memories, avoidance, hypervigilance and a nervous system that continues to respond as though danger may still be present. But complex trauma can also affect something deeper: how you experience yourself and how you relate to others.

You may experience shame, difficulty regulating emotions, people-pleasing, fear of rejection or abandonment, problems with intimacy, or a deep sense of not being good enough.

Shame itself can become part of how we survive. When we are young and cannot escape or make sense of what is happening, becoming small, hiding our feelings or believing “there must be something wrong with me” can help us adapt and maintain connection.

These responses can remain long after the original circumstances have changed. Therapy can help you separate who you are from what you learned to do to survive, stay safe or maintain connection.

CHILDHOOD ABUSE & NEGLECT

I work extensively with adult survivors of childhood abuse and neglect, including sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse and emotional neglect.

Some people come to therapy knowing clearly that what happened to them was abuse. For others, particularly those who experienced emotional neglect, recognising its impact can be much more difficult.

When something has been part of your experience since childhood, it can simply feel normal. You may not recognise what was missing because you had nothing else with which to compare it.

Childhood trauma can affect far more than our memories of the past. It can influence our sense of safety, self-worth, boundaries, sexuality, intimacy, ability to trust, relationship choices and how comfortable we feel expressing our own needs. Shame can become particularly powerful, leaving an adult carrying a deeply held belief that “there is something wrong with me” when the shame was never theirs to carry.

Therapy is not about changing what happened or asking you to endlessly revisit painful experiences. It is about helping you safely process and integrate what you experienced, understand the ways you learned to survive, and reduce the power those experiences continue to have over your present life.

The aim is not simply to cope better with the past, but to create greater freedom in the present, including the ability to experience connection, intimacy and relationships without continually repeating the patterns created by earlier trauma.

COMPLEX TRAUMA CAN AFFECT: