Developmental Trauma Counselling
How developmental trauma disrupts the body–mind loop
If you grew up with adversity, you may not be a stranger to feeling feel numb, dissociated, or “not yourself.” You are not alone, odd, less than nor broken. Early, repeated stress can reshape your nervous system and how you sense your body.
Feelings start as signals in the body, the brain reads those signals and informs your cognition and behaviours. However if you’ve at one point or another learned to leave your body to survive, those signals can get muted or scrambled. Complex trauma has more substantial long-term impacts on emotional and physical health, relationships and daily functioning. A big reason for that is because of this disconnection within our ability to connect with our body and therefore our sense of self.
Our sense of self rests on the foundational sense of interoception. An incredible sense humans have to literally sense ourselves, this sense is what allows us to make our lives personal and meaningful. It is the bridge in our consciousness that allows us to be aware, authentic and live life true to ourselves.
Interoception is your brain’s way of sensing and interpreting your body’s internal state (breath, heartbeat, gut, temperature) and integrating that information with emotion and thought. It’s a core bridge between bodily sensation, feeling, and decision-making, which is the core to emotion regulation, self trust and confidence, make true choices and feeling safe and solid within ourselves.
Interoception is the skill of noticing internal signals and interpreting them to our highest good. Many therapeutic interventions for developmental trauma completely miss this crucial component and go ineffective. Rebuilding this inherent skill means we can emotional regulate, trust ourselves, make true choices and feel safe and solid within.
Rebuilding a sense of self.
Growing up with persistent traumatic stress changes our nervous system and people who experience this often become adults with blunted or distorted in inner clues which means we are not in our body. We are disconnected. This makes living the wonderful life that we want to, incredibly difficult.
Our lives are designed from the inside out, from signals to awareness to meaning to choice. Without this inside access, we have trouble knowing what we like, don't like, how we feel and gaining self understanding. It also means our nervous system is likely to stay in a perceptual state of insecurity and vulnerability, because the disconnection from our body means that our nervous system churns without intervention or a change in worldview.
My approach (Perth & Telehealth)
I use Body-Oriented Therapy—a research-based therapy for reconnecting with our body, building a strong sense of self, and putting the past, emotionally and somatically behind us.
In sessions, we retrain our inherent ability to connect with ourselves and be safe and secure within our relationship to ourselves. It’s gentle, intentional, and expansive. I like to think of myself as a hybrid practitioner, because I see value in using body oriented therapy for healing and traumatic imprints, the fundamentals of traditional psychology for understanding our patterns and also coaching for achieving our goals.
We all deserve to feel at home within ourselves and to be able to express, participate and contribute to the world in a way that is deeply authentic, present, and unbound from the past.
Perth • Telehealth Australia-wide. If you’re ready to begin, book a free 15-minute consult.
Understanding Different Types of Trauma Fact Sheet:
Blue Knot (complex trauma) • AIHW (stress/trauma) • WA Government child development & trauma guide. Blue Knot FoundationAIHWWestern Australian Government
