Are there different types of trauma?
I had an email from someone yesterday that asked “Do I work with kids who have trauma from other areas? Other than sexual abuse? That have had – I don’t mean kids – I mean adults who had trauma in their childhood? That maybe came from narcissistic parents or other difficulties?
Maybe the loss of a parent or difficulties with their siblings? You know, there’s so many things.
And I said “Of course! That’s why on the website, I say I work with childhood trauma, not just one kind.
There are different approaches to heal trauma
There are different ways to work with different kinds of trauma for sure. And there are specialists – people who work specifically with different kinds of trauma. And if that’s what you need, then I encourage you to find that person!
Sometimes we don’t know what it is that we need. And sometimes we don’t even know exactly what the trauma was, or how it has affected us.
So I just wanted to talk briefly, very briefly, to name a few ways that childhood trauma might be showing up in your life today.
Trauma symptoms
An obvious one is depression and anxiety. Depression can come from long term anxiety and both of those can come from fears and lack of confidence that are a result of the traumas that happened in your childhood.
There can be as extreme things as PTSD which is post-traumatic stress disorder. From things that happened when you were younger. And you are affected, sometimes very deeply, in the present moment by those things. Maybe even having flashbacks and almost reliving what happened in the past. That can happen.
Your distrust of people can be strong. Do you have difficulty building trusting relationships? or do you continually distrust people? Even though they give you no reason to? Do you get yourself into ‘not the best’ relationships? Maybe as a result of past traumas.
Reliving the patterns of trauma
Some people say you will relive relationships until you can sort out what happened in the past. I don’t know if that’s right, as such, but different patterns that lead us into unhealthy relationships, can happen again and again. And that can happen as a result of our trauma.
Maybe isolation. Maybe you can’t connect very well with people and you always find yourself on your own. Or you push people away. Those things can be a result of childhood trauma.
Maybe you struggle with your own children. Or there’s jealousy of the relationships that your children are having with others. Or you have unhealthy relationships with your kids because
maybe you haven’t learned how to have good relationships.
There’s just so many possibilities of how those past traumas can affect your current life.
Too many types of trauma to document
I don’t know that there could even be an extensive list of them. But you’ll find lots of
examples if you just do a google search. Maybe you can search: Ways that past trauma affects your present life.
So that’s all I wanted to do, cover some of those ways trauma can show up. So that you could think more broadly about it. Sexual abuse to me stands out as one of the really obvious ones that affects people. But I know it isn’t the only one. And I wanted you to know that too.
Find the right person to talk to
If some of these things stand out to you and you’re like “yeah I want to work on that” or “I want to talk about that some more”. Maybe I’m the right person for you to talk to. Go! book an intro session and we can have a little chat. That will be awesome.
If not, no worries.
Or if, yes! They stand out to you, but I don’t feel like the right person, good! Then that means you know what you need! Go find the right person! I’m happy about that.
But maybe we can meet sometime and that will be awesome.
