Childhood Emotional Trauma Doesn't Have To Affect Your Adult Life: How Therapy And Counseling Can Help
Trauma in your childhood leads to emotional problems later in life, such as abnormal amounts of anxiety and depression, and is a common driver of complex post-traumatic stress disorder. It can affect your ability to form healthy relationships and lead to self-medication by abusing substances. If you suffered a traumatic experience as a child, it's important for your well-being that you find a professional specializing in childhood emotional trauma therapy who will help you develop healthy coping skills. Learning cognitive behavioral therapy techniques and coping mechanisms will significantly reduce the effect that your traumatic past has on your adult life, and can allow you to live free of the pain and consequences of your childhood emotional trauma.
Understanding It's Not Your Fault
Traumatic emotional experiences that occur in childhood can permanently change the way you think about events and situations in your adult life, even if you do not clearly recall your trauma. Victims of childhood trauma are much more predisposed to anxiety and depression compared to their peers, can carry feelings of guilt with them throughout their entire adult life and tend to be more prone to entering into codependent relationships. Your therapist will help you understand that what happened in your childhood cannot possibly be your fault, and that feelings or guilt or remorse are unhealthy and misplaced.
Learning Coping Skills
One of the most common misconceptions about the process of seeing a therapist to heal childhood trauma is the idea that the purpose of your therapy is to uncover the reasons behind your childhood trauma and work through them. This is not the case; there is no reason to bring up painful experiences in the past repeatedly in an attempt to come to terms with what happened. The situation that led to your traumatic events is in the past, and even though its effects are felt in the present, you will never run into the exact situation again as an adult.
Instead, your therapist will teach you coping skills that you can use when presented with triggers related to your childhood trauma that will reduce anxiety and help you stay grounded in the present moment. These tools come from the school of cognitive behavioral therapy, and are focused on allowing you to distance yourself from situations that cause you anxiety so that you can think about them rationally rather than immediately becoming anxious or despondent about situations in your adult life.
Tackling Other Arising From Childhood Trauma
It's common for childhood emotional trauma to lead to other problems in your adult life, such as substance abuse disorders. This is often an attempt to self-medicate in order to reduce anxiety arising from your past trauma, but it's counterproductive since it allows you to ignore your issues rather than allowing you to work through them. One of the reasons that your therapist will teach you coping skills is to allow you to replace unhealthy coping skills, such as excessive alcohol consumption, with healthy ones. When you see a therapist to heal childhood trauma, you will also receive guidance in how to curb problems currently affecting you in your adult life, such as generalized anxiety, depression or substance abuse disorders.
For more help, talk to a specialist, like Andrea Brandt Therapy.
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