Karolina Christopher Integrative Psychotherapy and Therapeutic Arts

12/09/2024

Self-esteem and self-confidence are two issues that often show up in therapy.

It can be something that you know you'd like to 'work on' as you begin in therapy - or it may come up later on in sessions.

There are many courses that teach us how to 'be more confident' but, as many of us know (I used to struggle with confidence and self-esteem a lot when I was younger), it's often not as simple as that.

We can learn new skills, speak in new ways, take new consistent action, change our routines, get into new activities, work on our mindset, build new habits (and try to let go of old ones), step out of your comfort zone...but somehow, that feeling inside remains whatever you do.

Feeling small.
Feeling not good enough.
Feeling like deep down I'm a failure.

So what are we missing?

The change needs to happen through the way we relate. Self-esteem and confidence builds from the inside, and it comes from being related to in a certain way.

💕 Being treated like you matter
💗 Being treated like you belong
♥ Being treated like you're good enough
💞 Being treated like you're lovable
❤️ Being met with compassion when you struggle.

Children who are related to in this way develop a natural sense of self-esteem: I matter, I belong, I am good enough, I am lovable.

We all need someone to accept us and believe in us, and in time, we begin to internalise these qualities. From this internal place of self-trust, we feel safe to build our confidence by trying new things.

If you missed out on experiences like these growing up, therapy can provide a new opportunity to relate in a way that helps you grow and flourish.

The importance of being related to in this way comes from person-centred therapy, and was promoted by Carl Rogers, who called them the 'core conditions of growth.'

Even though I am a depth-oriented therapist supporting people with emotional health and trauma healing, my attitude towards my clients is always relational and person-centred.

If you would like some emotional support this autumn, I have some availability for online therapy sessions to start in September.

Send me a DM to book a 20-minute introductory call.

24/03/2024

Healing from emotional wounds often begins with journey of self-discovery.

Many adults unknowingly carry suppressed emotions from their childhood. These can manifest in various ways later in life, such as anxiety, depression, or somatic complaints.

Aches and pains, tension in shoulders, neck and jaw are all common ways for the body to 'outsource' emotional pain through physical dis-ease.

In order to heal, we need to consciously come back into our body and feel our feelings, so we can process them.

Here are some aspects of early relational trauma:

🤡 Developing a 'false self.' Children of emotionally immature/unavailable parents develop a false self to appease their parents and gain approval. This disconnects them from their authentic needs and desires.

🏆 Unrealistic expectations, or constantly moving the goal posts. Children raised in this way may internalize a pressure to succeed, leading to low self-esteem and a constant sense of inadequacy.

😥 A lack of unconditional love. Every child deserves to be loved for who they are, not for what they achieve. A child who experiences the damaging effects of conditional affection may carry feelings of not being good enough, and may try hard to prove themselves in adulthood, which can lead to burnout.

🛑 Not learning about boundaries. Growing up without a healthy sense of boundaries, including having your 'no' respected, makes it harder to for us to protect ourselves from emotional manipulation or abuse as we grow up.

😞 Intergenerational trauma. Parents who haven't healed their own wounds may unconsciously repeat unhealthy patterns with their children.

The good news is that as adults, we have the power to break this cycle. By recognising the impact of our childhood experiences, acknowledging past hurts and practicing self-compassion, parents can heal and build healthier relationships with their children.

Here's how therapy can help:

❤️‍🩹 Therapy can help you to connect with your true self and identify your genuine needs and desires, so you can nurture yourself, live more authentically, and let go of your limiting 'false self.'

❤️‍🩹 Therapy can help you to explore and understand your emotions in the context of your life story, and tune into where you've been holding them physically. With better self-awareness, it is easier to make better self-care choices.

❤️‍🩹 Therapy can help you to identify and set healthy boundaries in your life. And to learn how to communicate your boundaries to others.

Therapy can lead to empowerment and transformation. By acknowledging their past and practising self-acceptance, individuals can release old narratives and patterns.

This can lead to more fulfilling relationships and a more authentic life.

13/10/2023

Early relational trauma can cause a disconnect from your body and leave you with a permanent 'split' that makes it difficult to go about day to day life.

Here are some ways in which this split can show up in adulthood:

🔸️You find it hard to tune into your body's signals, such as knowing when you're hungry or when you need the loo. (You may even pride yourself on being able to bypass these needs).

🔸️You find it hard to 'feel your feelings.'

🔸️Because you're unsure of what you feel, it's much harder to know how to navigate relationships or to make good self-care decisions.

🔸️Because you're out of tune with your body, you push it too hard. You disregard feelings of stress and fatigue and just keep pressing on, leaving you at risk of burnout.

🔸️When you're anxious, you tend to dissociate or 'zone out.'

🔸️You find it difficult to stay present with others' emotions and feel uncomfortable when someone is upset.

🔸️You may use self-destructive behaviours, including alcohol, to manage overwhelming feelings.

This is common if you grew up in a home where one or both parents or carers weren't able to understand or respond to your emotional needs.

(Now you may say: "But my childhood was perfectly fine!"

And it may have been fine in many ways. You lived in a nice house, you had beautiful toys and you went on holiday every year.)

However, if a parental figure is often emotionally unavailable, inconsistent, easily triggered, critical or angry, for whatever reason, the baby's need for soothing goes unmet.

Many parents with their own history of early relational trauma are threatened or overwhelmed by a baby's crying, and find it difficult to soothe their child.

The child is left in a dysregulated physical state and has to cope by trying to disconnect from these feelings.

When a parent cannot meet their child's legitimate emotional needs, the child unconsciously picks up powerful non-verbal messages: that he or she is unreasonable, demanding, selfish, overly sensitive, or too needy.

These unspoken messages become the stories we tell ourselves.

You may know logically that body and mind go together, but with a trauma history, it doesn't feel like that.

Instead, it feels like it's safest to live entirely in your head. But it can also feel like something is missing.

Therapy can help you to restore the connection with your body so you can feel your feelings and begin to process them in safe, healthy ways. Over time, you will feel more alive in yourself and be able to care for yourself better, both body and mind.

You will be able to feel more connected to others and feel comfortable with their feelings too.

I am opening up a few more therapy spaces in October. If you would like to find out more about how therapy could help you, DM me to book your free 20-minute introductory call.



Art work: my own

18/07/2023

Early relational trauma is about relationship injuries in childhood.

Most of all, it's about the things that were absent, that the child could reasonably expect: such as loving care and emotional warmth.

Infants are born with genetic expectations; that there will be at least one safe, caring adult to attach to, that there will be friendly faces to look into, that there will be gentle hands to hold them.

They expect playful, attuned 'serve and return' interactions as well as protection from too much stimulation. It helps them figure out who they are and what they need - essential skills that we take with us into adulthood.

And they expect consistency (ie.that their needs are seen and met most of the time), so that they learn to trust that someone will be there. (If not, they will learn helplessness and despair).

These things are must-haves, not nice-to-have. Without good-enough emotional care, we will struggle to develop a sense of self and understand and regulate or feelings. And we will wonder where our anxiety or low mood comes from.

Many people who have suffered early relational trauma say:

"I don't understand why I feel so bad, I had everything as a child! There was food on the table, and I had clean clothes."

But that's just one aspect of caring for a child.

The first unspoken messages we receive about our worthiness is how we are held and handled in our earliest months of life.

Our first experiences of emotional regulation comes from being soothed by a calm, safe other.

Early relational trauma is as harmful as the other types of trauma including physical and sexual abuse. And it is always a part of the latter two.

The good news is that things can get better. Your past has brought you to where you are now, but it doesn't define you.

And exploring early relational trauma is about understanding how your experience has affected you, not about blaming parents.

Relational depth-therapy is particularly good for giving yourself time to figure out your early emotional experiences and how they impact you in the present.

This way, you can begin to reparent and heal your inner child, instead of engaging in unhealthy ways to 'fill the buckets' of what you missed out on.

If this resonates with you and you would like to find out how I can help you, send me a DM.

Send a message to learn more

07/12/2021

Trauma is a big and scary word. A word that most people don't like to think about. Yet we could all do well to understand it a bit better.

You may think that trauma is a terrible experience that has been inflicted on someone, such as war or a natural disaster, being in a serious accident or suffering sexual abuse.

And that's all true. But it's not the whole truth.

There are other kinds of trauma. And one of the most overlooked types of trauma is relational trauma.

Relational trauma is the trauma of disconnection. It is the love you didn't receive as a child. The lack of emotional nurture and protection. Feeling insecure and scared. Crying yourself to sleep in your pillow. Feeling lonely and unseen. Not having anyone to comfort you when you were upset. And wondering if it's all your fault.

Relational trauma is the prolonged experience of emotional misattunement and the repeated failure of connection. It can also be a turbulent mixture of feeling loved and unloved on an unpredictable basis. This makes us work very hard for love.

It leads to feelings of helplessness, internal despair, lack of self-esteem and trouble with identifying your needs and boundaries.

In adulthood, it sets you up for unhealthy relationships where you may be treated badly.

So why am I creating this depressing post?

Well, because I want you to know that if this resonated with you, you are not alone. Many people suffer relational trauma without realising that's what it was, because everything looked good on the outside.

Perhaps you lived in a nice house and your parents had good jobs. You went on family holidays and you did well at school.
No one ever understood how sad and lonely you felt in your family.

And perhaps you haven't made sense of the internal sense of dread, anxiety or low mood that has followed you into adulthood, even though your life seems good on the outside.

Perhaps you still wonder if there is something wrong with YOU.

I specialise in helping people heal from relational trauma, and I'd love to hear from you if you would like to talk.

01/12/2021