What is Attachment Trauma?

“Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.”
–Meister Eckhart

When parents and caregivers still carry unresolved pain from their own childhoods, they may either become frightened by or act out in frightening ways in reaction to their child’s basic attachment needs for closeness, comfort and care.  When a child’s early family environment is emotionally or physically unsafe, when a child’s emotional needs are dismissed, unattended to or neglected, then the child is forced to bear the unbearable  The child is thrown into a state of chronic and abject overwhelm while feeling helpless and utterly alone.

Chronic aloneness in the face of overwhelming experiences and events in childhood results in Attachment Trauma. These early, attachment wounds tend to become unconscious. They go underground only to resurface later in our adult years as emotional, relational and personality difficulties and/or physical symptoms and disease.

In my work, I specialize in helping adults whose early traumatic histories have surfaced in the form of  relational and personality struggles, depression, anxiety and panic as well as a host of psychophysiologic and somatoform symptoms.   This clustering of mind, body and relational difficulties is known as Complex, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or C-PTSD. Psychophysiologic symptoms can include but are not limited to chronic pain syndromes, tension and migraine headaches, TMJ, GERD,  fibromyalgia, insomnia, fatigue, irritable bowel or bladder syndromes, tinnitus and dizziness.