In 20,000 therapy hours with clients the world over,

I discovered something profound.​

My clients were coming to therapy with a staggering range of presenting issues. Many came with emotional struggles; others described relational problems; some talked of mental symptoms; plenty had physical health issues; and some spoke of issues of an existential nature. 

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My clients had often read all the books, watched all the videos and listened to all the podcasts. They had attended online courses and done somatic exercises and mastered the language of trauma. Often, they had spent years in various talk therapies. Yet despite these efforts, they still felt they have somehow failed to translate any of it into tangible changes to their actual experience - where they yearned for it most.

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They felt perplexed by their ongoing suffering. Confused by the patterns of experience they could not change. That despite what they considered to have been ideal childhoods and successful lives, something hidden, powerful and painful was dominating their inner world, disrupting their day to day experience, and defying their understanding.

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Over two decades of listening to hundreds of clients from all walks of life and all parts of the world, I discovered that despite their vastly different stories, they all had one surprising thing in common.

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And that one thing, was an unrecognised history of relational trauma.

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Relational trauma (also referred to as complex trauma or C-PTSD) is the outcome of harmful relational experiences. Whether occurring in childhood or in adulthood, relational trauma is understood to have a devastating impact on all aspects of a person's experience.

 

But relational trauma remains the least known form of trauma and is frequently misunderstood, misdiagnosed and simply missed, in mental health treatments.

 

Identifying relational trauma requires a specialist lens brought to common symptoms like anxiety, depression, dissociation, emotional dysregulation and hypervigilance. Physical health issues, relationship struggles, parenting problems, a lack of life purpose, addiction, self harm and disordered eating can all be overlooked as symptoms of relational trauma. Inexplicable feelings of rage, terror, grief or numbness can also be hallmarks of relational trauma, but are often simply labelled, pathologised or medicated instead. 

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Contemporary theory - based on the latest psychobiological insights - has confirmed that the treatment of relational trauma requires a particular form of psychotherapy that pays equal attention to mental, embodied, emotional, existential and relational experiences. And that it requires a particular kind of therapeutic relationship that uses the therapeutic relationship itself, as the primary vehicle of change.

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Inspired by my clients' heroic journeys of recovery, I have dedicated the past two decades to the treatment and prevention of relational trauma. My unique methodology brings together trauma theory, human development theories, interpersonal neurobiology, somatic psychotherapy, and psychoanalytic theories in a transformational paradigm that treats issues at their root cause. In the safe holding of the therapeutic relationship, allows relational trauma recovery to finally begin. 

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It is never too late to heal from harmful relational experiences and restore meaningful connection to yourself, others and the world around you. 

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