Developmental and Complex Trauma

Developmental Trauma: The Slow Burn

Developmental trauma isn’t about one big thing—it’s about what didn’t happen. It occurs in the early years, when our nervous systems are forming. It's the result of misattunement, neglect, emotional absence, or inconsistent care during childhood. It’s when your needs weren’t met—not just food and shelter, but importantly things like being held, seen, soothed, and protected.

This is where we develop chronic patterns in our nervous system, and a pattern of psychological dissociation and physiological freeze. You might find it hard to trust others, feel chronically anxious or numb, struggle to feel safe in connection—or feel “too much” or “not enough” all the time. Developmental trauma is less about flashbacks, and more about how you show up in your relationships and in your own skin.

You might’ve looked connected to others on the surface—but underneath, you have had a sense that something is not right. People with developmental trauma become very adept at ‘masking.’ With developmental trauma we work slowly, relationally, and with great care. We build resources. We explore what safety feels like. We practice co-regulation in the therapeutic relationship. Because this kind of trauma didn’t happen alone in a vacuum—it happened in relationship. So healing needs to happen there too.

 Complex Trauma

Complex trauma is what happens when you live through ongoing, repeated experiences of threat or neglect—often both shock and developmental trauma rolled together over time. This might include childhood abuse, domestic violence, chronic bullying, or growing up in a highly unstable or unsafe environment, and, as new research shows, even growing up with a caregiver who is living in fear.

The body has a multi- layered system of survival strategies. Dissociation. Chronic hyperarousal. Emotional dysregulation. Difficulty with boundaries. And a nervous system that feels like it never quite comes off high alert—or never fully comes online at all.

In complex trauma, we go even slower. We titrate (work in small, manageable pieces), build internal and external supports, and focus on restoring a felt sense of agency, choice, and safety. The SE lens helps us honour the survival brilliance of your system, while gently expanding what’s possible now. The good thing about healing, is that the body naturally wants to move towards wholeness. The more we are able to grow our capacity to stay present to our experience, the more our system begins to flow, rather than stay stuck in survival physiology.

In the case of Developmental and Complex Trauma, this is where Somatic Resilience and Regulation is so helpful: it supports healing from trauma that impacted the development of your nervous system itself—often rooted in early life experiences like neglect, lack of safety, or chronic stress.

It works at the most foundational layers of your physiology to rebuild your capacity for regulation, resilience, and embodied presence—not just in your thoughts, but in your tissues, your organs, your breath, and your relational boundaries.

SSR is drawn from the teachings of Kathy Kain and Stephen Terrell, authors of Nurturing Resilience, who developed an integrated somatic approach to healing developmental and early trauma. Their work is informed by the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, which shows how early relational and environmental stressors can shape long-term health, behaviour, and nervous system patterns.

They describe something called the "faux window of tolerance"—a state where someone appears calm and functional on the outside, but is actually disconnected or shut down internally. This is often a survival strategy formed in childhood, when it wasn’t safe to express or feel fully. In this work, we aim to expand your true capacity—so that you can feel more fully, respond more flexibly, and stay grounded in yourself.

Whatever kind of trauma you’ve experienced, the most important thing to know is this: your body is not broken. Your nervous system is doing exactly what it needed to do to survive. It got creative, it adapted. And it’s still trying to protect you—even if those old patterns are no longer helpful.

Therapy offers a way home—not through digging into the past, but by learning how to feel safe in the present. Gently. Gradually. Together. By supporting the body to learn to not hold onto what is no longer needed.

If you’re curious about this kind of work, you’re welcome to reach out.