Childhood trauma, emotional neglect, and difficult early experiences can continue to influence how we think, feel, and relate to others in adulthood.
If you often feel on edge, struggle with self-doubt, or find relationships challenging, these patterns may be linked to how your nervous system adapted earlier in life.
What Is Childhood Trauma?
Childhood trauma refers to experiences where a child feels unsafe, unsupported, or emotionally overwhelmed. This may include neglect, inconsistent caregiving, or environments that felt unpredictable or distressing.
When these experiences happen during key developmental stages, they can shape:
Your sense of self and self-worth
How safe you feel in relationships
Your ability to regulate emotions
How your body responds to stress
Even years later, your mind and body may still react as though danger is present, despite being in a safe environment.
How Trauma Affects Our Body & Stress Response
Trauma is not only something we remember; it is something the body holds.
When experiences are overwhelming, the nervous system may not fully process them. Instead, they can remain stored as physical sensations and emotional responses.
This is why you might notice:
Anxiety or feeling constantly “on edge”
Muscle tension or fatigue
A racing heart or difficulty relaxing
Emotional reactions that feel sudden or intense
Feeling numb or disconnected
These responses are your body’s way of protecting you. However, over time, they can become exhausting or interfere with daily life.
How Childhood Trauma Can Show Up in Adulthood
The effects of childhood trauma can show up differently from person to person. For some, they may appear in the way they see themselves, respond to emotions, navigate relationships or cope with stress.
Self-Worth
If your emotional needs were not consistently met, you may have developed beliefs such as:
“I am not good enough”
“I am unlovable”
“My needs are too much”
Over time, these beliefs may become so familiar that you barely notice them, yet they continue to influence your confidence, decisions, and relationships.
Emotion Regulation
You may notice that emotions feel:
Overwhelming or difficult to control
Sudden and intense
Hard to identify or express
Distant or shut down
These responses develop when there was limited support growing up to understand and manage difficult emotions.
Relationships
You may notice certain patterns appearing in adult relationships, such as:
Fearing abandonment or rejection
Struggling to trust others
Finding it difficult to set boundaries
Putting others’ needs before your own
Repeating familiar but unhelpful relationship dynamics
There may also be a push-pull dynamic, wanting closeness and reassurance while simultaneously feeling vulnerable or unsafe when someone gets too close.
Coping Patterns and the Inner Critic
Some ways of coping that helped you manage difficult experiences earlier in life may continue into adulthood, even when they are no longer as helpful. These might include:
Perfectionism
People-pleasing
Emotional withdrawal
Hyper-independence
An inner critic may also develop, often driving self-doubt or pressure to perform.
Some therapeutic approaches use a “parts-based” perspective to understand these patterns, viewing them as different ways of coping that may have developed in response to earlier experiences.
How Therapy Can Help
Therapy can provide a safe, structured space to explore how your past experiences may be affecting your present life.
Together, we may work on:
Understanding patterns linked to childhood trauma
Building emotional regulation skills
Developing self-compassion
Improving relationship patterns
Processing unresolved experiences
Strengthening a sense of internal safety
The aim is not only to develop insight into where certain patterns may have come from, but also to support meaningful changes in how you relate to yourself, your emotions and the people around you.
Trauma Therapy Approaches
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a practical, evidence-based approach that helps you understand the connection between thoughts, emotions, and behaviours.
It focuses on:
Identifying unhelpful thinking patterns
Developing healthier coping strategies
Improving emotional regulation
Supporting day-to-day functioning
Attachment-Focused Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (AF-EMDR)
AF-EMDR is a trauma-focused approach that integrates Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) with attachment and parts-based work. It is particularly effective for childhood and relational trauma.
Early attachment experiences shape your nervous system, your expectations of others, and your patterns in relationships. When these experiences are inconsistent or distressing, the effects are often carried forward into adulthood as difficulties with trust, closeness, and emotional safety.
At the same time, because these experiences are also stored in the body as emotional and physiological responses, you may feel triggered or overwhelmed without fully understanding why.
AF-EMDR works with both of these layers.
Through bilateral stimulation (such as eye movements or tapping), the brain and body are supported in reprocessing past experiences so they are no longer held in the same way.
This process helps:
Reduce the emotional intensity of memories
Settle the body’s stress responses
Shift deeply held beliefs about yourself
Increase a sense of internal safety
An attachment-focused approach also means that therapy actively addresses relational patterns and unmet emotional needs.
This may include:
Exploring how early attachment experiences shaped your expectations of relationships
Building a stronger sense of internal safety and stability
Working with different parts of the self (e.g., protective parts like the inner critic, and more vulnerable parts that hold emotional pain)
Supporting the development of self-compassion and emotional connection
Processing experiences of disconnection, inconsistency, or unmet needs in relationships
By combining memory reprocessing, attachment work, and parts-based understanding, AF-EMDR supports change not only in how you think about your past, but in how it is experienced emotionally and physically in the present.
Taking The Next Step
If you recognise some of these patterns in yourself, therapy can help you better understand your experiences and develop new ways of relating to yourself and to others.
You do not need to have everything figured out before starting therapy. Beginning with curiosity about what you are experiencing can be a meaningful first step.
