Therapy for Childhood Trauma:
Healing Childhood Wounds
The powerful process of healing from physical, emotional or sexual abuse that happened to us in childhood allows us to understand why we have been holding ourselves back in life. The work gives us access to our deepest sense of self and loving ways to step into our lives in new and important ways.
Many of the people I work with come to therapy because they feel stuck in their lives and do not know why. They express feeling anxious and unsafe, and are overwhelmed by change. They find it hard to relate to other people and overreact in social situations as if they were in danger. The powerful process of healing from childhood trauma, including physical, emotional or sexual abuse allows us to understand why we have been holding ourselves back in life. The work of childhood trauma therapy gives us access to our deepest sense of self and loving ways to step into our lives in new and important ways. When we heal childhood wounds we remove internal blocks and experience long lasting life changes.
The effects of childhood trauma on our adult lives
As children, if there is no one to help us make sense of our physical, emotional or sexual abuse, the traumatized part of us becomes paralyzed. We are overwhelmed with feelings of fear, worry, anxiety, depression, and unsafety. This deeply hurt part of ourselves is unable to form a realistic view of ourselves, and affects the way we connect with others as adults. This part of us cannot find its way, and remains stuck in beliefs about ourselves and the world that come from a child’s perspective, and are not updated when we mature into our adult lives.
As adults we carry this hurt inside, which can make it difficult for us to connect with our life spark, our passions, our vocation, and our relationships. This is because our wounds make it hard for us to trust others and get close. It also makes it difficult to trust our instincts and make decisions that feel right.
Childhood trauma does not only result from dramatic or obviously harmful events. Emotional neglect — growing up in a family where your feelings were dismissed, ignored, or treated as a burden — can leave equally deep marks. You may have grown up in a home that looked fine from the outside but felt empty or unsafe on the inside. You may have learned to be the "good child," the quiet one, the responsible one, and in doing so lost contact with your own needs and desires. These experiences often give rise to patterns of codependency, people-pleasing, and difficulty with intimacy in adult life — not because something is wrong with you, but because you adapted to survive an environment that did not make space for your full self.
How Trauma Lives in the Body
Childhood trauma affects us not only psychologically but also physiologically. When a child experiences ongoing threat or stress without adequate support, the nervous system learns to stay on alert. As adults, this can show up as chronic tension in the body, difficulty relaxing or sleeping, a startle response that feels disproportionate to the situation, or a sense of numbness and disconnection from physical sensation. You may feel as though you are constantly bracing for something bad to happen, even when you are objectively safe.
This is why talk therapy alone is sometimes not enough for healing trauma. When distress is held in the body, it needs to be addressed through the body as well. Somatic awareness — learning to notice, tolerate, and gently release the physical patterns that trauma creates — is a central part of my approach to childhood trauma therapy.
Therapy supports you to heal from childhood trauma
In childhood trauma therapy we work together to create a safe and trusting space where the hurt and undeveloped part of yourself can grow. We work together to bring comfort to the hurting child within so that you feel safe, strong, curious, creative and passionate in the world. From a secure and solid foundation we meet your internal blocks with warm care, sustained curiosity and fierce compassion.
Because trauma affects us physically, as well as emotionally, as a therapist I use a mind-body approach for the treatment of trauma. I also invite you to use painting, drawing, clay, mediation, dream work and writing with me in our therapy sessions. All of these techniques help reassess the old ways of being in the world and reinvigorate you to reconnect with joy, creativity, pleasure and a secure and loving sense of self.
There are a number of areas we might work on together in therapy depending on your needs. These may include:
Developing a trusted internal sense of safety.
Learning what triggers your internal fear and anxiety responses.
Learning to calm yourself when you feel overwhelmed by emotions.
Learning to slow down and assess a situation before reacting.
Learning to feel your feelings and share them with others.
Being clear with others about your needs and asking for help.
Learning to tolerate distress and not get overwhelmed.
Learning to live from a place of abundance instead of scarcity.
Creating appropriate emotional boundaries between yourself and others.
Learning what nurtures your creativity and experience of pleasure.
Deepening spirituality.
Frequently Asked Questions About Healing Trauma
I am not sure if what I experienced counts as trauma. Can therapy still help? Yes. Many people minimize their childhood experiences because they did not involve physical violence or because they know others "had it worse." But emotional neglect, inconsistent caregiving, a parent's mental illness or addiction, growing up in a highly critical or controlling household — all of these can leave lasting imprints on your nervous system and your sense of self. If you feel stuck, anxious, or unable to form the relationships you want, exploring your early experiences in therapy can be profoundly clarifying, regardless of whether you use the word trauma.
How long does trauma therapy take? Healing from childhood trauma is not a quick fix, but it does not have to take decades either. Many clients notice meaningful shifts within the first few months — a greater capacity to pause before reacting, less intensity in their anxiety, a growing sense of being able to trust themselves. Deeper work on attachment patterns, family-of-origin dynamics, and rebuilding a secure sense of self unfolds over a longer period. We work at the pace that feels right for you.
What is the difference between childhood trauma therapy and regular therapy? All good therapy is attentive to your history. But childhood trauma therapy specifically focuses on how early experiences have shaped your nervous system, your attachment patterns, and your relationship with yourself and others. In my practice, this means integrating parts work, somatic awareness, mindfulness, and expressive arts alongside talk therapy — because trauma that was experienced before we had words for it often needs to be processed through the body and creative expression, not only through conversation.
Can childhood trauma affect my relationships as an adult? This is one of the most important connections we explore in therapy. Childhood wounds directly shape how we relate to intimacy, trust, conflict, and vulnerability. You may find yourself repeating patterns — choosing unavailable partners, avoiding closeness, overgiving to the point of codependency, or shutting down during arguments. These are not failures of character. They are your younger self's strategies for surviving, still running in the background. Therapy helps you develop new, adult-led ways of being in relationships.
I can be reached at 415.721.3355 or by email to discuss how therapy can help you recover from your childhood wounds. I see clients via telehealth throughout California and in my San Francisco office in Noe Valley at 4155 24th Street, San Francisco, CA 94114.
To learn more about my thoughts and approach to psychotherapy, you can read the articles on my psychotherapy blog.