Understanding Trauma, Regulation, and the Role of Therapy

During my practice as a psychoanalytic child psychotherapist, I often meet children whose emotional and behavioural struggles are deeply rooted in past experiences of relational trauma.

What Is Complex Trauma?

Complex, or relational trauma, refers to repeated exposure to frightening and / or neglectful experiences, usually within caregiving relationships in childhood.

Experiences of complex trauma impact a child’s brain in profound ways:

• The parts responsible for fear and threat become overactive
• The systems that regulate emotion and enable a child to build trusting relationships may become underdeveloped
• Although trauma experienced in infancy and very early years cannot be consciously recalled in memory, it is still remembered in the brain and emotional world of the child.

Children & young people who have experienced complex trauma may present with a wide range of difficulties including;

• Aggression or self-harm
• Anxiety or panic
• Social withdrawal
• emotional shutdown
• Regressive behaviours (e.g., bedwetting or soiling)
• Highly emotional responsive to everyday situations

How Can Parents and Carers Support a Child After Trauma?

Thankfully we know recovery from trauma is possible — and it begins with consistent, repeated experiences of safety with trusted adults.

• Parents & carers can help by talking calmly to their child when they’re experiencing big or overwhelming feelings, reassuring them, and finding ways to help them back to a regulated state. This is not a time for complex discussions.
• If agitated: offer physical activity to release energy and tension
• If anxious: use calming, soothing activities
• If shutdown and withdrawn create safety and warmth to help them venture back towards you again

🔹 Talk only when your child is feeling safe and calm, try to discover triggers and feelings together .

How Can Therapy Help?

Children who have experienced complex trauma might be in a safe home, but relate to the world around them as if they are still under threat. The effects of the past continue into the present, these children often have lots of feelings in their bodies, and few or no words to make sense of their experiences, or why they are struggling now.

Specific trauma informed therapies, such as psychoanalytic child psychotherapy, help children to make sense of their experiences, find words for feelings, and develop an understanding of current difficulties, enabling healing and recovery.

Caring for a child who has experienced trauma is emotionally demanding, and often confusing. It is important parents and carers are offered specialist support to enable them to understand the link between their child’s behaviour and emotions, and support them to developing trauma informed responses that are helpful for their child.

If you have any questions or would like to talk about how therapy might help, please feel free to reach out.