Empathic Counselling provides a safe and non-judgemental space for you to heal past wounds that are impacting the present. Individual therapy can help you to address early traumatic experiences or attachment ruptures, and to understand how these wounds have shaped your thoughts, feelings, behaviours and relationships. Empathic Counselling tailors therapy to your unique needs and goals, supporting you to improve your mental health, emotional wellbeing and relationships.
What is Childhood Trauma & Attachment Trauma?
Childhood trauma is a broad category encompassing any emotionally painful or severely distressing event outside a child’s coping ability that results in lasting mental and physical effects. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are the potentially traumatic events that occur during childhood, such as abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction, that can lead to trauma.
Examples of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) include:
- Physical abuse
- Emotional abuse
- Sexual abuse
- Emotional neglect
- Physical neglect
- Parent divorce/separation or death
- Parent mental illness
- Parent addiction
- Parent incarceration
- Witnessing domestic violence
- Bullying
Attachment Trauma specifically refers to a parent or caregiver’s failure to meet their child’s emotional needs for safety, comfort, and validation, creating a broken bond. Attachment trauma impacts the foundational sense of security and self, making it central to relational patterns.
Examples of Attachment Trauma include:
- Emotional neglect from a parent/caregiver
- Neglect or abuse from a parent/caregiver
- Parentification
- Loss of a parent
- A parent or caregiver who is both a source of comfort and fear
All of these childhood experiences can have lasting impacts on:
- Your physical health
- Your mental health
- How you feel and think
- Your beliefs and understanding of the world
- Your behaviour
- Your relationships
Signs of Unresolved Childhood Trauma and Attachment Trauma in Adults can include:
- Difficulty regulating emotions
- Re-experiencing the trauma through intrusive memories, flashbacks and/or nightmares
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Low self-esteem, self-blame or feelings of shame or worthlessness
- Relationship difficulties such as unhealthy attachment patterns and challenges with expressing emotions
- People-pleasing behaviours and difficulties with establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries
- Somatic symptoms
Other Types of Trauma:
In addition to supporting adults who have experienced childhood trauma and attachment trauma, Empathic Counselling also has experience supporting adults who have experienced traumas in adulthood such as:
- Sexual assault
- Domestic violence (DV), Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and coercive control
- Betrayal trauma
- Birth trauma
- Medical trauma
- Vicarious trauma
- Bullying, intimidation and discrimination
Other important things to note about Trauma:
- Trauma is personal – if you feel the effects of trauma, then it is trauma
- Trauma is complicated – it can be obvious with a clear cause, or it can be buried beneath depression, anxiety and anger without any recognisable origin
- Trauma can affect you even if you don’t remember the event or experience
- The effects of specific experiences will be different for everyone – what is traumatic for one person might not be for someone else
- The more traumatic events you’re exposed to, the greater the risk they will have a significant effect on you
- You may not have a response to traumatic events until many years after you experienced them
Empathic Counselling also has experience supporting adults with:
Many issues such as anxiety and depression, are often treated as standalone diagnoses. We understand that these are often symptoms of trauma. Empathic Counselling takes into account not just the symptoms that are seen, but the underlying and often unseen root causes of trauma, grief and loss.
- Anxiety and Depression
- Self-esteem Issues
- Grief, Loss and Bereavement
- Relationship Challenges including attachment issues and fear of abandonment
- Parenting Challenges including raising children with Autism and ADHD (AuDHD)
Therapeutic Approaches
Empathic Counselling takes an integrative approach, incorporating a range of evidence-based therapies tailored to your unique needs. Please see Therapeutic Approaches to learn more.
You can book your appointment through the Booking page.