Therapy for Adults who Experienced A Painful Childhood

“When you’re in a broken family and your role model is a violent male, boys grow up believing that’s the way they’re supposed to act. And girls think that’s an accepted way men will treat them.”
– Jim Costa

The Adults Weren’t Safe

Your parents were supposed to protect you, take care of you, and nurture you. But they didn’t!

Sometimes they hurt and neglected you and didn’t protect you from the bad people.

Children have unique ways of making sense of poor parenting. And those unique ways of making sense of things don’t always fade with time – lingering for decades.

Kids believe in magic, pixie dust, and fairy tales. Your childhood had “bad guys” galore. So, you know that there aren’t always happy endings.

And in fact, you believe that the happy ending is the fairy tale, a form of make-believe, and it isn’t genuine.

But You’re the Adult Now

And you still don’t feel safe. The world still feels scary, and people are still not to be trusted.

Those feelings are “ghosts from the nursery.” The pain, fears, and beliefs we developed in childhood haunt us later in our adult lives.

As adults, we interact with our world in patterns that formed early in childhood. Today, you may wonder if people are mad at you, don’t like you, or if you’re good enough.

But when we peel that back, we see a past of fear, chaos, and uncertainty. So, it’s no wonder you live today in fear, confusion, and uncertainty.

Pulled in a Thousand Directions

Your way of living is exhausting. It’s hard to always be on guard – lonely and not trusting people’s intentions with fear crippling you at times.

But life has a way of carrying onward, so you keep pushing forward. You drove past your childhood and launched right into adulthood. You tried to leave your past in your past and become a new person.

You carved out a fresh path in life and locked away those memories in a black box buried deep in your mind – you compensate by putting on a cheerful face, staying as busy as possible, and overachieving.

But there’s still that knee-jerk reaction and an automatic reaction of fear. You continue to worry that others are going to hurt, abandon, or judge you. Those feelings keep nagging at you.

People-Pleasing as a Lifestyle

A sense of safety comes from making everyone happy. It’s perfectionism, a protective strategy to ensure that people don’t hurt, hate, or leave you.

Your mantra becomes, “If I do everything just right, then they’ll all like me.”

Saying “no” feels like a dirty word, a statement impossible to make. And “What I want doesn’t matter” feels right and natural.

You lose yourself in making others happy. It gives you joy and purpose but leaves you feeling used and undervalued. Resentment lives underneath it all.

But you feel that you can’t do anything about it – this is just the way it is. Forget about what matters to you and being yourself. These things don’t matter; they are an imposition.

The Buck Stops Here

But you’re determined not to repeat the past. You don’t want to be like the adults who raised you.

And you don’t want to keep doing what you’ve been doing because it doesn’t work, is not serving you, and it keeps you trapped in fear.

You’re determined that it needs to be different; something must change. People do this every day, so why can’t you?

Charting Foreign Territory

Changing the tides in your life sounds like a fantasy. You can’t fully imagine what it would be like or how it would look. And how could you? You’ve never had adults show you a better way.

You’ve heard of terms like ‘Boundaries’ – but you ask yourself, “What is that? They sound nice, but what are they?” And then you think, “How would I even do that? Oh, I don’t think I can do that.”

You see people stay calm in the middle of difficulty – which boggles your mind. “Aren’t they scared, worried, and angry?”

And what is this vulnerability nonsense that has become all the rage? Vulnerability sounds scary! And so, you ask yourself, “Who, in their right mind, wants to feel vulnerable?” Being vulnerable sounds like a pain to you.

Starting Anew

It’s hard to know how to make a significant change, especially when you’ve never had a useful guide. It’s time to partner up with someone who can teach you a new way.

Therapy helps you heal from a painful childhood, develop new patterns in adulthood, learn to say “No” without guilt or shame, and feel free and calm.

Let me be your guide in the next chapter of your life. We can get started right away. You don’t need to wait another minute to grow out of your childhood pains.

You can start the next phase of your life and begin your healing journey.