Struggling with your past or family dynamics?
Relationship, Childhood & Intergenerational Trauma
The pain didn’t start with you—but the healing can.
You are more than the things that have happened to you.
You struggle to be in the moment. Feeling your feelings is hard. Being in your body is harder.
You feel stuck in life - you keep making the same choices, dating the same type of people - and you can’t seem to move beyond that. You feel like your upbringing or previous unpleasant experiences have had something to do with where you are now, but you don’t feel good thinking about it. You don’t know how to go about healing from the past, and you don’t have anyone whom you can talk to about it. There’s a lot of embarrassment, shame, and feeling of inadequecy.
But you are more than the things that have happened to you. It’s possible to move beyond the shame towards a life of contentment and peace. That doesn’t mean you forget everything that has happened, but instead you look back at the difficulties that you have face with a compassionate and understanding lens. You start trusting yourself, you are in touch with your body and feelings, and can live a life beyond the confines of the past. Overcoming the impact of trauma can be a long and arduous journey, but healing is possible. With powerful tools like EMDR and inner child work, we can move past the past towards a more fulfilling life.
You Can Break the Cycle Without Breaking Yourself
If you're struggling with trust, self-worth, boundaries, or emotional overwhelm, the root may go deeper than your current stress or relationship. Many adults carry unhealed wounds from childhood, family dynamics, or repeated relational harm—and it can quietly shape the way you move through the world.
At Love Power Therapy, I help high-achieving, self-aware adults unearth and heal the relational and generational trauma they’ve been carrying for far too long. You don’t have to keep repeating the same patterns or surviving on your own. You don’t have to keep holding everything alone. Whether you’re starting therapy for the first time or returning with new awareness, this is a space where your survival strategies are honored—and where you're supported in building something softer, stronger, and more connected.
Healing isn’t about perfection. It’s about learning to feel safe in your own skin, in your own story, and in your relationships.
Understanding Relationship, Childhood & Intergenerational Trauma
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Even as adults, we can experience trauma in intimate partnerships, friendships, or family systems. You might have:
Been in emotionally or physically abusive, codependent, or manipulative relationships
Found yourself repeating unhealthy dynamics despite your awareness
Felt stuck in anxious or avoidant attachment cycles
Lost yourself trying to hold the relationship together
When you've been hurt in relationships, it's natural to fear closeness—even when you crave it. Therapy helps you rebuild safety, boundaries, and trust from the inside out.
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You may have grown up in a home where love was conditional, boundaries didn’t exist, or emotions weren’t safe to express. Even if your caregivers "did their best," you might have learned to:
Stay small or invisible to avoid conflict
Feel responsible for everyone else’s emotions
Overachieve to earn love or validation
Struggle to trust others—or yourself
This isn't about blaming the past. It's about understanding how early emotional injuries shape your present—and gently repairing them.
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Sometimes the pain you carry isn’t just yours—it’s inherited. If you're the child of immigrants, grew up in a family shaped by war, oppression, or poverty, or carry cultural trauma, you may feel:
Pressure to succeed and honor your family’s sacrifices
Guilt for wanting rest, boundaries, or a different path
Emotional patterns passed down but never talked about
A deep grief that doesn’t have words
This kind of trauma often hides beneath the surface. Together, we can name it, tend to it, and begin breaking cycles with compassion—not shame.
Signs of Unresolved Trauma:
Abandonment Issues
You are seen as capable, put-together, and dependable — but secretly struggle with feeling “good enough.” You constantly compare yourself to others, think that everyone else has their life together, and feel like you will never measure up. You struggle with praise because you think it will just be a matter of time before people realize that you’re not as confident or smart like you try to be. Instead of celebrating wins, you're worried about failure and are highly self-critical.
Anxious & Avoidant Attachment
Your mind is always on—analyzing, planning, second-guessing. You replay conversations long after they’re over, struggle to make decisions without researching every possible outcome, and brace for problems that haven’t even happened. While your ability to think things through has probably helped you succeed, it can also lead to mental exhaustion, indecision, and emotional disconnection. It’s hard to feel present when you’re always ten steps ahead or stuck in your head.
Struggling with Boundaries
You’re the dependable one—always saying yes, always stepping up, often before anyone even asks. You take care of everything and everyone, but it often comes at your own expense. Saying no feels selfish or risky, like you’ll let people down or miss an opportunity. This can lead to chronic overwhelm, resentment, or burnout, even if everything looks “fine” on the outside. Setting boundaries and listening to your own limits feel so hard.
Low Self-Esteem
You hold yourself to incredibly high standards—standards you’d never expect of anyone else. Mistakes feel like failures, and even success can come with the nagging sense that you could’ve done more. Perfectionism might show up as procrastination, people-pleasing, or burnout, but underneath it all is often a fear of not being enough. You might feel guilty resting, or worry that if you let up, everything will fall apart. Starting tasks is hard because there’s a hyperfocus on “getting it right” and anything less than “perfect” is not good enough.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you have a question not listed? Reach out to get answers here.
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Trauma can mean different things to different people. I define trauma broadly as an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that overwhelms our ability to cope and function, and negatively impacts how we view ourselves, others, and the world. How we interpret and cope with an event differs greatly from person to person, and that means we must be careful to not dismiss or minimize the impact. Something can be traumatic even when it is not directly happening to us, but something that we witness. Learn more here.
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When a disturbing event happens, people might initially feel exhausted, confused, sad, anxious, agitated, numb, spaced out, physically on edge, or emotionally flat. These are normal reactions in helping individuals cope, and then disappear over time. Signs of more intense responses can include ongoing distress, dissociation, and vivid memories/dreams even when we are no longer in those disturbing moments. Our difficulties coping and making sense of what happened can lead to lasting tiredness, sleep issues, nightmares, a fear of reliving the experience, anxiety, flashbacks, depression, and avoidance of things that remind us of that disturbing event.
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The acronym "ACEs" stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences. It originated from a groundbreaking 1995 study that revealed children who faced physical and emotional abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction correlated with an increased likelihood of adverse outcomes later in life. ACEs are prevalent, with over two-thirds of the population reporting at least one ACE, and nearly a quarter experiencing three or more. The more ACEs someone goes through, the higher the chances of struggling with serious health problems later in life. Individuals who have faced substantial adversity or encountered numerous ACEs are not irreversibly damaged. However, it's crucial to acknowledge the impact of trauma on their lives. Learn more here.
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Studies have shown that people from different ethnic, racial, and cultural backgrounds are more likely to face negative impacts from various traumas and meet the criteria for PTSD. Trauma affecting communities and cultures can stem from collective experiences of discrimination, racial violence, or prejudices. Historical/generational trauma are intense and wide-spread events that influence the entire culture and can impact future generations. The genocidal policies of the Hutus in Rwanda and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia are examples of historical trauma.
Nevertheless, there can be a profound level of resilience from our cultural identity. Some strengths from our cultural identity can include: a strong connection with elders/family/community, finding support in spiritual/religious practices, strong work ethnic, and unique perspectives to make-meaning in the face of adversity.
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Trauma-Informed Care comes from a framework of recognizing that previous adverse or traumatic experiences, such as the ACEs, play a big role in understanding an individual’s life challenges. Healing happens by not simply addressing the immediate/current problems. We must getting to know our life story and how our past influenced the person we are today to make long-lasting change. In therapy, Trauma-Informed Care looks like collaborating together to create a safe space where you are fully in control of what happens in sessions. I want to empower you to use your strengths to create the life that you want.
How I work with Relational Trauma:
Relational – We explore your past through the therapeutic relationship, where new patterns can begin to form
Attachment-focused – I help you understand how early relationships shaped your view of love, worth, and safety
Culturally-attuned – Your background, values, and intergenerational context are honored
Somatic-aware – We gently tune into your nervous system, body cues, and emotional signals
Paced with care – You’re never rushed, pushed, or judged—healing happens in layers
What Trauma Therapy Can Help You Do:
Understand how past experiences impact your current thoughts, emotions, and relationships
Break free from survival patterns like people-pleasing, perfectionism, or emotional numbing
Heal attachment wounds and develop more secure, connected relationships
Reconnect with your body, intuition, and emotional signals
Build healthy boundaries without guilt or fear of rejection
Learn how to self-regulate and calm your nervous system during stress or triggers
Release shame, self-blame, or guilt you may still be carrying
Make sense of childhood or intergenerational patterns with compassion, not judgment