Childhood Trauma therapy for women
in Austin & San Antonio, Texas
“If it’s out of your hands, it deserves freedom from your mind, too.”
― Ivan Nuru
You realize childhood trauma has affected you in a lot of ways you didn't notice before.
Not very many people know what you've experienced. You feel ashamed and uncomfortable about it. This, despite knowing you'd never judge anyone else for what they've been through. But that's what childhood trauma can do. It can keep you bound to secrets that aren't yours to keep.
What happened to you isn't your fault.
Sometimes you think what happened "wasn't that bad" but deep down you feel and believe it actually was "that bad." If it was a lot of emotional trauma or neglect and you couldn't see the bruises on the outside, it might make you feel bad to even feel bad about it at all. Somehow, it's hard for you to give yourself that permission.
But it wasn't ok for you to have to parent your parents, watch them fight, take care of your siblings like a second parent, feel lonely in a house filled with people, and have no one to confide in when things happened to you. You didn't deserve this.
Childhood trauma made you have to raise yourself which was no easy feat.
You were a curious, sensitive, compassionate child.
The child who was light-hearted and kind. A curious child who always wanted to know "why?" But you were also sensitive. You realize now you lived in an environment where this couldn't possibly be nurtured and it hurt you.
You're still trying to please others around you and make them smile. You feel like you're still having to keep up with the role you had in your family.
You feel like you can't have a voice, and it's best not to be seen or take up space.
It was common for you to constantly feel like you were tiptoeing around, reading a parent's mood, walking around on eggshells, and living in often, unspoken patterns of everyday life.
Feeling the human touch of love, witnessing a soft smile or extended arms reaching out for you was rare because it just didn't happen during your childhood.
How Trauma Affected You as a Teen
You always thought the way you were treated growing up was normal. Everything you went through had to be the same for others. It wasn't until you started getting older that you realized your friends didn't have the same experiences you did.
This made you want to get away from it all. You thought about ways to get away and sometimes you did by rebelling or running away from home. Spending as much time as you could with others-friends and their families, neighbors, teachers, or a trusted relative was something you did as often as you could.
What you didn't realize is you were already a cycle breaker.
Effects of Childhood Trauma on You
By all accounts, you've made it. All on your own. You're a successful professional, a loving parent to your children or fur babies, a thoughtful friend, a supportive spouse or partner. But you didn't come away from your childhood unscathed. The pain from the past keeps you from living the life you've earned and worked hard for, in peace and with contentment.
You've noticed you try to avoid negative emotions at all costs-sadness, anxiety, anger, stress. This is because when you experience any emotion as a sensitive woman, you feel everything more deeply whether positive or negative.
To avoid feeling anything negative, you might stay as busy as possible or distracted, do more mindless eating, exercise to the point of exhaustion, stay super focused on your children or work. Anything to restore a sense of balance. But if you hold up a mirror, you can see and feel the sadness, anxiety, and drain of energy, just from avoiding having to feel certain feelings or thinking about the past.
You still try to keep that smile on your face and make others feel happy. It's sometimes difficult to maintain boundaries and you may struggle with people pleasing or trying to be the perfect parent, friend, partner, spouse, or professional. This only proves to be exhausting.
Anxiety has a way of stealing your light.
You worry about so much. When you finally feel like you're not worrying about something, there's something else you start worrying about.
What you worry about most is how what you're going through affects your relationships, your children, your sense of ease, safety, and sense of security. If you have children, they are the most important humans in your life and you want the best for them. You don't want them to go through what you went through and you don't want your experience to affect them in any way.
How Can Childhood Trauma Therapy Help?
You don't have to stay trapped in the wounds of childhood trauma or continue going through the motions of every day life without any authentic joy.
Earth-shattering events that are out of your control have happened to you but from this, you can experience growth and transformation if you're willing to engage in working through the difficult parts.
We'll work together to break down and understand why it’s been so hard for you, identify old feelings and old wounds, recognize they're there, and release them through specialized trauma therapy. You’ll learn how to deal with this and clear a path towards freedom and peace from the past.
It's ok to let go of this now.
Understanding patterns are here because of what happened beginning in childhood, and how these patterns can change by caring for yourself without judgment; dropping unrealistic expectations of yourself; quieting the harshness of your inner critic; moving to a secure attachment, and creating new, healthier patterns for yourself, will be key in our work together.
The respect for the resilience you had as a child, grieving what you may have lost, transforming the trauma into healing, and importance of doing the work for yourself starts when you're ready.
How I Can Support You
PTSD and complex trauma therapy will help you rise above challenges and start moving toward your ideal life with less stress and more calm. You'll gain the practical tools you need to lower your anxiety and finally resolve issues from the past.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy) allows you to work through a traumatic memory and decrease shame, guilt, sadness, anxiety, fear, negative thoughts, and low self-esteem attached to it.
My Specialties
Anxiety therapy can help you break free from the never-ending loop of constant stress and anxiety.
Birth trauma therapy can help you experience more joy and less anxiety when you recall that day.
Childhood trauma therapy can help you identify old feelings and old wounds and release them.
Heal from the devastating effects narcissistic abuse and trauma have on your mind, body, and brain.
Make and keep boundaries, and release the anxiety of feeling the urge to constantly please.
Remove the mask of perfectionism without giving up your strong work ethic or high, realistic standards.
WE’RE IN THIS TOGETHER.
you never have to do this alone.
Ready to Get Started?
Schedule a 20-minute consultation to see if we might be a good fit for each other, and so I can find out what your unique needs are for therapy.