Through years of work with different patients across different backgrounds, I have recognized trauma and PTSD as a common root cause for many issues and symptoms. Trauma can develop as a result of difficulties with parents or other family members, conflict with peers, learning and cognitive challenges, emotional or physical abuse, an accident, a divorce, or a loss or death.

Unintegrated trauma from the past profoundly influences life in the present. It can result in:

• Uncontrollable anger that destroys relationships.
• Difficulty trusting or opening up, which reduces relationship satisfaction or the ability to have close relationships at all.
• Low self-esteem and poor sense of self.
• Extreme sensitivity that makes it difficult to function.
• Anxiety and looping thoughts.
• Severe shut-down or depression that prevents joy and pleasure, makes it difficult to do things that should not be difficult, and generally makes your life feel smaller.
• Repeated destructive patterns.

By working through and integrating trauma, which often originates early in life (although it can happen later too), you can restore your innate balance and sense of freedom, and many seemingly unrelated conditions can be resolved.