Attachment Trauma & Abandonment Issues
Info & Counselling Approach
Don’t let go…I’ve never believed I can do it on my own. I’ve never felt safe enough on my own to trust that it’s going to be alright.
Living with unhealed trauma can make relationships and daily tasks feel like a minefield. Pain and threat can feel like it’s waiting for you around every corner. And our traumas often convince us that we can’t trust ourselves or handle anymore hurt. So we must avoid it at all costs.
I promise it doesn’t have to be this way. Let’s talk.
<3 Carly
Do you struggle to connect to or trust others? Do you often run through scenarios of past hurts when making decisions or plans with other people? Do you fear being abandoned, rejected or hurt by those close to you? Do you struggle with nightmares, flashbacks or generalized fears? Do you have a hard time imaging a meaningful future for yourself?
These are all common responses to PASt Abuse
and
developmental or AtTachmenT BASED traumas.
Trauma is an experience (isolated or prolonged - typically involving violence, humiliation, loss or inescapable shock) that overwhelms our ability to understand what is happening, protect ourselves and/or cope. Trauma can result in enduring changes to our nervous system, self-beliefs and the way we relate to others and the world. Trauma can be especially confusing and profound if it occurs in parent/caregiver or romantic relationships. Since we instinctually gravitate towards parents and partners for trust and care, injury in these relationships can devastate our sense of self and safety in relationship with ourselves and others moving forwards.
Relational Trauma, which is my core area of expertise, can create a fear of abandonment, difficulty getting close to others, boundary confusion, a desire to control everything around us, fear of conflict and ultimately make it hard for us to express our true needs or selves around others.
Trauma makes it hard to live in the present. It makes it hard to experience + imagine a life for ourselves outside of the pain of the violence or damage that the trauma caused us. But our trauma is not who we are.
I specialize in working with clients who have experienced trauma or abandonment in family or romantic relationships. I use an integration of gentle, evidence based therapies when approaching trauma, including Somatic Therapy, Internal Family Systems, DBT, Self-Compassion and Narrative Therapy. I start by helping you build a supportive foundation of practices for regulating the nervous system, mapping triggers and developing strategies for creating safety in the present. This allows you to begin to heal the physical symptoms of trauma and gain increased self-trust.
Once this foundation of self-connection + safety is established, we can then process how your trauma or abandonment has and continues to impact you. Then the transformational work of re-narrating defeating beliefs, cultivating healthy boundaries, new realistic expectations for self and relationships, and deepening self-trust is possible. Through this gradual, integrated approach trauma survivors gain increased self-acceptance, understanding of, and the ability to respond to their present needs, and the option to safely reconnect to meaningful relationships with others and themselves again without fear of abandonment or re-injury.
I bring a ton of understanding, care and genuine respect for all who are willing to do this work. Healing the scars of our past and intergenerational wounds is one of the most courageous and challenging undertakings we can pursue in this life. If you’re reading this, I’m already proud of you.
