If you experienced trauma as a child, you may feel (understandably) hopeless about your chances of recovering as an adult. Trauma can have such a profound effect on you, especially when you are young, that it leaves you vulnerable to a wide range of problems throughout your life. These include psychological problems like anxiety, depression, low self-esteem or hypersensitivity to stress. You may also struggle with emotional regulation, so you are constantly riding waves of distress and discomfort, then find it hard to calm yourself down.

Other common trauma-related difficulties include substance abuse and other addictions, eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia, as well as problems forming long-term relationships and a lack of confidence socially and at work. You may also struggle with detachment and dissociation – coping mechanisms in your brain that cut you off from your emotions and can make you feel empty, numb, spacey or disconnected from yourself and other people.

This is just an abbreviated list of all the problems that can result from childhood trauma. If any of this resonates with you, I am so sorry. No child deserves to be hurt or neglected. And no adult deserves to carry these wounds, struggling through life as best they can, but feeling battered and bruised inside.

It’s never too much and never too late to heal

Even though the word ‘trauma’ has now entered many of our vocabularies, I don’t think it’s widely understood just how common trauma is around the world. There are varying estimates of how many people have experienced trauma, but a general population survey conducted in 24 countries in 2016 showed that more than 70 per cent of respondents experienced a traumatic event, and 30.5 per cent had experienced four or more events. This is shocking – but to a therapist like me, who specialises in complex trauma, not at all surprising.

I hope that helps you see how widespread trauma is – and helps you understand that you are not alone. This knowledge can be very helpful, as trauma survivors often feel isolated and different from everyone around them. But this research tells us that you are no different from 70 per cent of the people you will meet as you move through your life. Your experiences make you human, not weird or different in any way.

Another crucial thing that I always explain to my clients is that it’s never too much and never too late to heal. Meaning: whatever happened to you, however bad it was, you can be helped. And whatever age you are, it’s never too late to seek therapy (I have treated people in their seventies, with life-changing results).

How does trauma healing work?

I know this may be hard for you to believe. And that’s OK – I don’t expect you to read these words and have a Shazam! moment, where suddenly all becomes clear. That’s why my Heal Your Trauma project contains so many different kinds of resources, from blog posts like this one to guided meditations/imagery and breathing techniques, webinars and workshops, and much more. Bit by bit, step by step, I’m trying to plant helpful thought seeds in your mind that will flourish and grow into powerful ideas, beliefs and understanding of how to heal and change.

One last thing – let me explain what healing actually means in this context. And to do that, let’s imagine you went skiing (hard to imagine right now, I know, but it will get cold again!). And you had a great time up to the moment you took a tumble, landed awkwardly and broke a bone in your shin.

You would be whisked off to a local hospital, where doctors would make sure the bone was straight, then protect it with a cast, give you some crutches and wish you luck. You would then hobble homewards, with some tricky moments, but eventually get back and collapse on your sofa – where you would stay, with various toilet/meal breaks, for some weeks.

And then, gloriously, one day your leg would be healed, you would have the cast removed and have physio, until you were able to walk again. But – and here’s the key point – none of the things I have described here would have actually healed the bone in your leg. They would have been vital, but merely helpful aids to the real healing, which would have occurred inside your body.

Natural healing processes

That’s because your body has innumerable, miraculous healing processes that happen, every second of your life, mostly outside your awareness. These healing processes would have repaired your tibia, knitting the bone together so that it would be stronger then it was before you broke it.

And exactly the same healing processes occur in your mind, brain, nervous and hormonal systems when you recover from trauma. All you need to enable this to happen is the right help, support and guidance from someone like me – a trauma-informed therapist who knows about these magical-but-everyday healing processes and how best to facilitate them. It’s neither easy, nor quick. It’s a slow, steady process that requires a great deal of hard work, on your part and mine.

But it is doable. I promise you that if you find a skilled, trauma-informed therapist, come along to my webinars and workshops (and find others that resonate with you), read these blog posts and self-help books by my colleagues in the mental-health field, meditate, exercise and do all the other things that we know to be helpful and healing, you will get better.

And I will be here with you, every step of the way, as you embark on your healing journey.

Sending you love, strength and hope, wherever you are and whatever hand life has dealt you,

Dan