Childhood Abuse

Childhood abuse can take many forms including physical, sexual, and emotional abuse as well as neglect. If you have a history of childhood abuse, you may experience:

• Low self-worth
• Difficulty managing and trusting your own emotions
• Remaining emotionally distant and guarded in relationships
• Feeling generally unsafe
• Difficulty keeping healthy boundaries with others
• Feeling easily overwhelmed by emotions
• Feeling unloveable

Therapy is a safe place to work through the feelings and experiences noted above. In treatment with me, we will explore how your current functioning is related to early experiences. You will develop emotional awareness and build skills for handling negative feelings and managing distress that may come up in therapy or in life in general. Treatment will also focus on skills to improve your interpersonal relationships. Once you are comfortable with those areas of the treatment, and if warranted, we will spend some time processing abuse experiences.

You are right. Processing the experiences in your past won’t take them away. But it will impact your life in the present. Often times, childhood memories of abuse are fragmented in your memory. It is as if you threw puzzle pieces onto the floor. Some of them are upside down and not visible. Some are right side up, but are not clearly part of a bigger picture. When you live with the puzzle in this state, it is difficult to understand how it effects you in your life now. Putting the pieces together may be hard, but can shed light on some of the difficulties you are experiencing. This knowledge is powerful to resolve obstacles and move you toward a place of restoration. We can do this work together at a pace that is safe and manageable for you.