Not Ready to Talk About the Past? Why Trauma-Informed Therapy in Falls Church, VA Doesn’t Have to Start With Storytelling
You’ve been in and out of therapy for a long time. You have DONE talk therapy and CBT. It was tremendously validating when you were at some of your lowest points. But that’s just it, you are no longer at those lowest points, and the simple validation isn’t cutting it anymore. You keep looking for a therapist, and you leave the appointments feeling empty…like you are not really getting to the root of what is within you. What’s missing now? What else can trauma-informed therapy offer?
But is it Even Childhood Trauma?
Sometimes you wonder if you are looking in the wrong places and for the wrong thing. The impact of childhood trauma can vary from person to person. When we break down all of the “events” and look at what is happening to the body, mind, and nervous system, these are some of the experiences that are typical in childhood trauma:
Relational childhood trauma experiences, which can include physical and emotional abuse and neglect, such as:
Not having your needs seen, valued, or met.
Being afraid of people/adults who are supposed to show you love and care.
Not knowing when or whether your basic needs will be met.
Being continually and unexpectedly shamed or made to feel “crazy” by adults around you.
Feeling unsafe, unprotected, and surrounded by unpredictability.
Not having your boundaries honored and respected.
Taking care of adults and/or children around you rather than being taken care of.
When these elements of childhood trauma collide, they create multiple factors that can lead to emotional turmoil.
Systemic forces that can cause childhood trauma can include:
Living in a community and/or household with violence.
Struggling with access to food, water, shelter, and transportation.
Community-based or environmental experiences that left you feeling like your world was unsafe, untrustworthy, unpredictable, or that your future was not guaranteed.
Attachment, Trauma, and Wounding
You might be someone who says, “But nothing actually HAPPENED to me.” This is where attachment, relationships, and bonding play an important role. Attachment is the emotional bond that begins between child and caregiver, but as you grow, it evolves into the way you relate to others and your body’s intrinsic understanding of trust and security in your world.
Your basic safety needs may have been met, but did you feel seen, heard, and cared for? Did you have someone to go to when you needed help or when you had a problem? When you needed something or felt scared, were you able to bring up these worries to a safe adult?
When our most important needs are neglected, or when we are made to feel small, invisible, or insignificant during the most important developmental years of our lives, it can contribute to relational wounds—one type of childhood trauma. This can mean that you felt emotionally insecure or grew up with an insecure attachment style, or the feeling that you could not reasonably trust other people in your life, or trust that they would not abandon you.
And, in the context of childhood trauma, if your world felt unsafe, it illuminates another layer of why you may or may not feel distrust, anxiety, or disease in relationships today. Understanding this context can support foundational work in childhood trauma therapy and support appropriate goals for your growth and healing.
What are the signs of unhealed childhood trauma?
What if I have a hard time knowing or believing whether I have experienced childhood trauma? Signs of past childhood trauma in your present daily life can include:
Low self-esteem.
Codependency.
People-pleasing.
Difficulty navigating conflict and/or expressing anger.
Anxiety.
Difficulty relaxing.
Tendency to be stressed, overwhelmed, or “prone” to crises.
Tendency to overwork and then feel burnt out.
Fear of connecting to, making new friendships.
Feeling the pressure to hide your true feelings or your authentic identity from others.
Dissociation.
Self-doubt/self-gaslighting.
Self-abandonment.
What is the impact of unhealed childhood trauma?
Over time, unhealed childhood trauma may not just impact day-to-day moments. It can impact the quality of your relationships, how you feel about yourself, and even affect your physical health. You keep going to doctors, trying to “solve” your problems, fix things, going to different therapists, and it does not seem to be working. What’s going on exactly?
So You’re Sick of Talk Therapy…No Problem!
The key to impactful trauma therapy is a safe therapeutic relationship that can hold trust, connection, and challenge, knowing that connection is not conditional upon anything else you bring. That may be unlike relationships you had growing up. For example, if an unspoken rule was: if you make the adults mad, they stop talking to you until you grovel your way back to forgiveness, the underlying message was that conflict and connection cannot coexist in relationships that are supposed to be close and loving. Trauma-informed therapy in Falls Church, VA, is meant to rewire your system for safety, a higher level of tolerance for discomfort, and connection.
The other key element of working with a trauma therapist is bottom-up processing and healing that expands your system’s capacity for trust, safety, and capability.
What is Bottom-Up Healing?
Bottom-up healing refers to the way that trauma therapy appropriately meets the needs of your body and nervous system when you experience threat and helps you to regulate, rewire, and return to the present. More specifically, it refers to how, in trauma-informed therapy, we can find ways to communicate and pathways to healing that make sense based on which brain region is involved.
Essentially, your brain develops from the bottom (from the base of the neck) to the top (to the region within your forehead). Your logical brain (also called your pre-frontal cortex and the part of your brain that sits within your forehead) does all the judgment calls, decision-making, and critical thinking. This is the most adult part of your brain, and it does not stop developing until your late 20s.
This means that, during the early parts of your life, during some pretty vulnerable developmental stages, your body and brain exist in feelings and rhythms and sensations. Your roots lie in the least adult part of you, the part that is most difficult to speak about in your intellectual, adult manner. It is also this sensory data, this implicit information that we are most attuned to when we feel threatened or unsafe (i.e., the bottom regions of the brain)
Trauma therapy taps into this, and it’s also why talk therapy stops making sense or working so well when you delve into trauma histories. When we stay in the most logical part of you, we are unable to unlock the deepest, most hurt wounds within you (and often, the youngest and most threatened parts of you that do not possess adult language).
Let’s Get (Em)Bodied
Your brain experiences a threat and develops its trauma responses in the parts of your brain that don’t do analytical thinking. So, rather than talking, trauma therapy supports you in getting safely back into your body.
The path to getting back into your body (i.e., embodied) in a way that feels tolerable can take many different potential paths, all of them involving emotional expansion, sensory processing, and rewiring of your nervous system for safety, connection, and presence.
Knowing Your Nervous System the Trauma-Informed Way
With a history of trauma, your body experiences emotion intensely. In trauma therapy, you will learn that emotion is information about what you are experiencing (not a fact), and it can be information about what you experienced in the past or what you are experiencing in the present.
The more severely or intensely and acutely you are feeling activated by an emotional response, the more likely you are to feel triggered by threats from your past that continue to overwhelm your system in the present. It feels like they almost hijack your body out of the present moment, making it difficult to feel attuned to and attentive to what is going on around you in that moment, and to respond in a way that you would ideally respond. This is a signal that a younger, wounded part of you is still functioning without updates: without updates to how the adult, wisdom-filled you has adapted and how you have become capable in navigating the world around you. In these moments, your system believes it lacks the power that you truly have.
It is these key responses that trauma therapy targets to support rewiring and updating to help you navigate overwhelming moments and move them from overwhelm and incapacitation to thriving and confidence.
Rewiring For Safety Without Word Vomiting and Memory Rehearsal
It does not matter whether or not you remember past painful memories or feel ready to discuss them. In trauma therapy, we rely on emotional and sensory content to guide and inform us towards your body’s needs. We work slowly and gently towards strategies that integrate soothing and grounding into your daily life. This practice opens a door to meeting unmet needs and providing anchors in the present when emotional triggers overwhelm your system. As we move forward in working together at Nurturing Willow Psychotherapy, we utilize a variety of tools to support updating past, hurt parts of you, building resources (or strengths and caring/loving parts) within your system and slowly create the capacity for you to move from threat to an increased tolerance for discomfort and the ability to know that you can navigate whatever comes your way.
Ready to Begin Trauma-Informed Therapy in Falls Church, VA?
Alice Zic, MPH, LCSW | Trauma Therapist & Founder of Nurturing Willow Psychotherapy
At Nurturing Willow Psychotherapy, you’ll find compassionate, trauma-informed care designed to help you restore a sense of safety, reconnect with your inner resilience, and gently rediscover yourself beyond survival.
Getting started is simple:
Schedule your complimentary 15-minute consultation call using the link below.
Complete a brief pre-consultation form so we can better understand your needs.
Meet with trauma therapist Alice Zic to explore your goals and next steps.
Begin the healing process with childhood trauma-informed therapy tailored to your pace and experience.
You don’t have to carry this alone. Support is here when you’re ready to begin.
In-Person Therapy Services in New Orleans at Nurturing Willow Psychotherapy
Nurturing Willow Psychotherapy provides in-person therapy sessions on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in New Orleans, Louisiana. For individuals and families in the Greater New Orleans area seeking support, whether healing from childhood trauma, navigating the impact of an emotionally immature parent, or finding anxiety therapy for a teen, we offer a warm, accessible space in Mid-City New Orleans to begin the healing process.
Online Trauma-Informed Therapy Available Throughout Virginia
Online therapy offers a flexible, accessible way to begin healing from childhood trauma. As a therapist licensed in Virginia, I provide virtual sessions to clients located anywhere in the state. With a private space, a reliable internet connection, and your device, therapy can fit into your life without the added stress of commuting. It’s a simple, supportive way to get started. Schedule a free consultation call below to take the next step.
Other Online Therapy Services We Offer at Nurturing Willow Psychotherapy
In addition to childhood trauma therapy, Nurturing Willow Psychotherapy provides virtual support for teen anxiety across Connecticut, Virginia, and Louisiana, along with in-person sessions in New Orleans. Whether you’re navigating the effects of parentification, supporting a teen through emotional overwhelm, or working toward healing from childhood neglect, we offer a compassionate, nonjudgmental space where meaningful healing can begin wherever you’re located.
About Alice Zic, Licensed Childhood Trauma-Informed Therapist
Alice Zic is a licensed clinical social worker based in New Orleans, Louisiana, offering both in-person therapy locally and online therapy to clients throughout Louisiana, Connecticut, and Virginia. She specializes in supporting perfectionist, mother-wounded women as they heal from childhood trauma and grow into confident, self-trusting adults.
Alice practices from an attachment-based framework and is trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. IFS is a trauma-informed, evidence-based approach that helps clients heal both mind and body while gently reparenting wounded, critical, and protective parts developed for survival.
If you’d like to learn more about Alice, click here. If you’re interested in working together, you can schedule a complimentary consultation call here.