What is Complex PTSD or C-PTSD?

Complex PTSD (C-PTSD) is a form of developmental trauma that results from chronic, repeated trauma—often in childhood. Unlike single-incident PTSD, C-PTSD involves prolonged exposure to traumatic circumstances, particularly in relationships with caregivers. It affects how you relate to yourself and others.

What are attachment wounds?

Attachment wounds develop when early relationships with caregivers lack safety, emotional attunement, or consistency. This can result in anxious attachment (fear of abandonment), avoidant attachment (difficulty with intimacy), or disorganized attachment (conflicting needs for closeness and distance). These patterns often repeat in adult relationships.

What is intergenerational trauma?

Intergenerational trauma is trauma passed down through families, both socio-culturally and biologically through epigenetics. If parents, grandparents, or ancestors experienced abuse, war, genocide, famine, or systemic racism, their trauma may still affect your nervous system today. People often describe this as feeling like 'it's not mine' even while experiencing real emotional and bodily responses.

Developmental Trauma Therapy in Berkeley & Online CA | Long-Term Healing — Erin Fon at the Center for Mindful Psychotherapy

therapy for developmental trauma

What is developmental trauma?

First, let's define trauma. Trauma is the body's response to any event, series of events, systemic circumstances, or chronic misattunement that is overwhelming to your nervous system. In other words, anything that makes your body react as if it is in mortal danger. It actually doesn't matter what the event(s) or circumstances are; if your body is overwhelmed, it can develop trauma. That also means if you take two different people and expose them to the exact same event, one might develop trauma and the other might not. Trauma is really not a comparison game.

Developmental trauma is trauma that develops during the earliest years of life when we are most dependent on our caregivers. It's common for the causes of developmental trauma to be chronic, ongoing circumstances—whether systemic (growing up in poverty) or relational (abuse, neglect, smothering, emotional misattunement).

Other terms that fall under the umbrella of developmental trauma include:

Complex PTSD or C-PTSD
Childhood emotional neglect
Attachment trauma / anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, disorganized attachment
Intergenerational trauma

How long does therapy for developmental trauma take?

The frustrating answer is… it depends. There are so many factors to consider here that this is an impossible question to answer. Developmental trauma is trauma that is deeply embedded in the way you relate to yourself and others. It takes time for you (and your younger parts) to feel safe enough to really do the hard work, and it cannot be rushed. The pace of healing and change is not constant. Some weeks you might be ready for deeper work, and other weeks you may need to process and integrate what we've already done, or you may simply need to rest. Slow, deliberate, routine therapy is necessary to cultivate that safety.

It also depends on what your goals are. No one is ever fully "healed," but you can choose (and we can collaborate together on) what "enough" looks like for now. You don't have to be in therapy forever, unless you'd like to be. (And there's nothing wrong with that, either!)

When we're dealing with developmental trauma, though, it's safe to say our work will be measured in years, not months. In my experience (both from the therapist seat and from sitting in the client seat), some things won't show up in therapy until about the two-year mark. It's not because anyone is intentionally withholding, but rather because it can take that long to feel secure enough in the therapeutic relationship for your deepest longings to unfold.

Can childhood experiences still affect me as an adult?

Absolutely. As children, we are constantly absorbing, observing, and taking in the world around us. Experiences we have play a huge role in forming our worldview, our nervous system, and our coping mechanisms. If you've ever had the realization that you keep repeating a pattern in your life that you don't actually like or that doesn't serve you, there's a good chance that pattern started as a coping mechanism in your early life to help keep you safe and survive whatever may have been going on back then.

The good news is childhood experiences don't have to define your life as an adult. While they will always be a part of you and a part of your story, therapy can help you move through and loosen the grip of those experiences. You can have new experiences and start to shape new, healthier patterns in your life that are more rooted in who you are now.

I had a good childhood. Why do I feel so bad?

This is the tricky thing about trauma: the causes of trauma don't always look the same, and conventional wisdom might lead you to think you shouldn't "have" trauma because of privilege or a relatively happy upbringing. Because trauma is the effect of events or circumstances on you and not the events/circumstances themselves, there are a variety of ways you may have developed trauma. As babies and children with developing nervous systems, we rely on our caregivers for safety, emotional attunement, mirroring, needs fulfillment, and developmentally appropriate space-giving. When any of those things is chronically absent, our small bodies develop in a sort of constant fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response. This type of developmental trauma can often feel really confusing.

Trauma can also be passed down intergenerationally, both socio-culturally and biologically through epigenetics. For example, if a parent, grandparent, or older ancestor lived through abuse, famine, war, genocide, systemic racism, or really any flavor of trauma, that may still be affecting your body today. Often when I'm working with intergenerational trauma, I'll hear the phrase "this feels like it's not mine," even as the emotional and bodily experience is clear and real.