Developmental Trauma & The Self You Had to Create
Childhood can be tough. As kids we learn to make sense of a complicated world – unknown and with no reference points except what’s around us. And our situations are never perfect. Maybe yours was really bad, with neglect or even abuse. Or perhaps it had a veneer of privilege but was woven through with problems. This can all have implications for adult relationships and behavioural patterns.
Whatever your developmental experience – if it left you with ways of coping that continue to run your adult life, or with patterns that hold you back from being who you want to be, then it deserves your attention.
How it Shows Up
These patterns don’t feel like stuck patterns from childhood – they feel like your personality. Common ones include:
- Perfectionism – never quite feeling good enough, however well you do
- Being “fine” – the automatic answer, even when you’re not
- Finding it hard to let people close, or to give and receive love or affection
- Giving until there’s nothing left to give and you slip into resentment
- Finding your emotions hard to feel, express or show
These are some common ones to give you a flavour, but there are many others – and really it is your unique version that is important in therapy.
Working with Developmental Trauma
Everyone is different, so we can’t know exactly what this will look like until we are working together. So we look at your present life and your values, your future hopes, wants and plans and where your past sits within you.
But generally, this work tends not to be about fighting your old patterns. They were useful once and fighting them tends to embed them further. It’s about seeing them, letting them be, getting to know them and understand them. Seeing them clearly in this way can then give you space to relax with them, to ease and loosen and allow you to move forward. It can be challenging, but it also settles in you. It is no sticking plaster – instead it aims to make space for genuine change.