Developmental & Attachment Trauma Therapy | Vermont
Resolving Relational Wounds, Attachment Trauma, and Early Neglect
When you grow up in an environment where your emotional or physical needs were consistently missed, ignored, or unpredictable, your nervous system learns to adapt to survive. This adaptation is what we call developmental trauma, relational trauma, or complex PTSD (C-PTSD). Unlike a single shock-trauma event (like a car accident), developmental trauma is a chronic, invisible accumulation of early neglect, parental misattunement, or chaotic family dynamics. As an adult, this can leave you feeling chronically unsafe, hyper-vigilant, or disconnected from yourself and others.
Signs of Unresolved Childhood Trauma in Adults
Many adult survivors of trauma come to therapy believing they are simply "broken" or "bad at relationships." In reality, they are experiencing the long-term biological echoes of early relational wounds. Developmental trauma often manifests in daily life as:
Chronic Self-Criticism and Shame: An internal voice that tells you that you are inherently unlovable, a burden, or never quite good enough.
Anxious or Avoidant Attachment Styles: Finding yourself either hyper-independent (afraid to rely on anyone) or experiencing severe anxiety over potential abandonment and rejection.
Emotional Dysregulation or Numbness: Swinging rapidly between intense overwhelm (panic, anger) and periods of deep dissociation, numbness, or feeling empty.
Difficulty Setting Boundaries: Over-functioning for others, people-pleasing, or tolerating poor treatment because saying "no" feels dangerous to your system.
Moving Beyond Talk Therapy to Somatic and Parts Work
Because attachment trauma occurs before our cognitive brains are fully formed, these memories are primarily stored in the body and the subconscious mind. Traditional talk therapy—which focuses only on the intellect—rarely reaches these deeply rooted somatic survival states.
I prefer to go deeper. By blending Internal Family Systems (IFS) parts work and somatic emotional regulation, I do not just talk about your past; I actively help you change how your body holds it. I safely meet the hyper-vigilant protective parts of you that learned to keep everyone at a distance. As these protective shields learn they are finally safe, I will help you turn toward your oldest exiled parts to offer the protective presence, boundary repair, and deep emotional attunement they never received in childhood.
Advanced Trauma Integration: The Path to Secure Attachment
Healing from developmental trauma means rewriting your nervous system's blueprint. For clients who hit severe walls in their healing journey, I also offer the option to integrate Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP). Ketamine’s unique ability to temporarily quiet your brain's rigid defense networks opens up a powerful window of neuroplastic flexibility, allowing us to safely process and unburden early relational wounds that previously felt too overwhelming to approach.
Through this integration, your nervous system can move away from survival-mode hyper-vigilance and shift into a permanent state of secure internal attachment, self-compassion, and ease.
Compassionate Trauma Care Across All of Vermont
You do not have to carry the weight of childhood emotional neglect alone, and you do not have to live near a major city to receive highly specialized trauma care. I provide advanced developmental and attachment trauma therapy via a secure, HIPAA-compliant video platform to adults living anywhere in Vermont—from Burlington and Rutland to the most rural communities. You can safely engage in this deep, transformative healing from the comfort and privacy of your own home.