Healing Emotional Injuries From Childhood Physical and Sexual Abuse

A professional’s high performance can be fueled either by inspiration, or by the residual effects of childhood trauma.  If trauma has occurred, adults perform on thin ice.  Cracks of shame and doubt appear, often at times of an individual’s greatest success or intensity.  A professional with a history of childhood abuse may succumb to addictive behaviors, self-sabotage, or despair, often without understanding why, or knowing what to do.  

HonnolDCounseling helps adults recover from emotional wounds suffered as children.  If unaddressed, these wounds impair an adult’s emotional wellbeing, personal and family relationships, and professional development. Injury may occur to an adult survivor’s:

• Self-esteem;
• Mood;
• Feeling of basic safety;
• Capacity to regulate emotions;
• Capacity for intimacy;
• Access to feelings;
• Impulse control;
• Ability to manage stress;
• Regulation of substances such as food and alcohol;
• Productivity; and
• Professional development.

    
Physical and sexual abuse cause enormous trauma to a youthful victim, because of the child’s formative and impressionable age, lack of emotional and physical defenses, and the breach of trust on the part of responsible caregivers (usually parents).

As a specialty practice area, HonnolDCounseling has significant clinical experience working with survivors of childhood abuse.  Edward Honnold, JD, LICSW:

• worked for four years as inpatient clinical social worker at the Center for Post-Traumatic and Disssociative Disorders (the “Center”) at the Psychiatric Institute of Washington (PIW), a nationally renowned specialty program for treatment of dissociative disorders;
• served for two years as the first Director of the Center’s partial hospitalization (day treatment) program;
• received advanced training on the theory, stages and methods of abuse recovery;
• has provided psychoeducation to many survivors on recovery issues;
• led support groups and therapy groups for survivors of childhood abuse for almost 20 years, both at the Center and in his private practice;
• worked individually with scores of survivors, both men and women;
• has developed special skills working with dissociation, including the highly complex phenomenon of Dissociative Identity Disorder (“DID”, previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder);
• has also worked successfully with many couples, where complex sexual and emotional issues arise because of past abuse of one or both members.

HonnolDCounseling provides treatment for trauma recovery that:

• maintains a survivor’s “safety” (freedom from suicidality and self-harm);
• follows a graduated sequence of recovery stages;
• paces the treatment to avoid overwhelming the client;
• enhances a client’s stability and ability to function;
• offers the prospect of an early return to “normal” experience of emotions;
• addresses cognitive “distortions” resulting from abuse; and
• resolves practical, “current time” issues as well as those from the past.

Choosing a therapist for trauma recovery work is highly sensitive, since the therapy is highly intimate emotionally, often involving expression of strong and uncomfortable feelings, accompanied by a high degree of emotional vulnerability.

HonnolDCounseling provides a respectful, experienced, and highly professional setting where early childhood injuries are responsibly addressed and healed.