Many people work hard to heal from major traumas—accidents, abuse, betrayal—only to find their symptoms return again and again. This article explores how unresolved early childhood attachment wounds quietly keep the nervous system in survival mode, reinforcing later trauma responses. Healing the root, not just the event, is essential.
Why Big-T Trauma Keeps Resurfacing: The Hidden Role of Childhood Attachment Wounds
You’ve been through something big—an accident, a breakup, a betrayal, a loss—and even after therapy or time, the impact still lingers. You might find yourself hypervigilant, anxious, shut down, or easily triggered by things that “shouldn’t” affect you this much anymore. This can feel confusing and frustrating. You’ve processed the trauma. So why does it keep resurfacing? The answer often lies deeper—beneath the event itself—inside the nervous system shaped by your earliest relationships.
The Missing Piece: Childhood Attachment Trauma
Most of us think of trauma as a specific, overwhelming event—what psychologists call Big-T trauma. But often, early attachment trauma—things like emotional neglect, inconsistent caregiving, being shamed, or not feeling safe to express emotions—lays the groundwork for how we experience and store later traumas.
In other words: when your early needs for safety, connection, and soothing weren’t met consistently, your nervous system learned to stay alert, self-protect, or disconnect—even in moments that aren’t truly dangerous. So when a Big-T trauma happens later in life, it lands in a nervous system that was already trained to see the world as unpredictable or unsafe. That trauma doesn’t just “get stored”—it gets woven into a survival pattern that’s been there since childhood.
Trauma Isn’t Always About the Event — It’s About What the Nervous System Learned
Let’s say you were in a car accident as an adult and developed symptoms of PTSD: flashbacks, insomnia, tension, avoidance. Standard trauma therapy might help you process the accident itself. But if you had childhood experiences where no one came to soothe you when you were scared—or where your emotions weren’t safe to express—your system doesn’t just hold onto the memory of the accident. It holds onto the felt sense of being alone, unsafe, or trapped, all of which were already wired in from early on.
That’s why trauma work that only focuses on the event can feel incomplete. The emotional landscape of early attachment—what your body learned to expect from others and the world—plays a huge role in how you respond to and recover from Big-T trauma.
Attachment-Focused EMDR: Going to the Root
This is where brain-based therapies like Attachment-Focused EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) become so effective. EMDR helps reprocess traumatic memories at the level of the brain and body, reducing the emotional charge of those experiences. When used with an attachment lens, it doesn’t just target the later event—it traces it back to where the survival response began.
For example, someone who experienced emotional neglect as a child and then a painful breakup in adulthood might not just feel sad—they may feel abandoned, worthless, and deeply unsafe. These responses are not just about the breakup. They’re echoes of the early wound. EMDR helps release the charge not only from the recent trauma but also from the original experience, making recovery more complete and long-lasting.
Why “Just Talking About It” Isn’t Enough
Many clients I work with say, “I’ve talked about this so much—I understand where it comes from, but I still feel it in my body.” That’s because you can’t think your way out of a nervous system that was trained to survive. Early trauma lives in the body—in the implicit memories that don’t respond to logic. Therapies that involve the brain-body connection (like EMDR, somatic experiencing, and parts work) help shift the emotional and physical imprints that talk therapy alone may not reach.
Accelerating Healing Through Intensives
For clients who are ready to go deeper and want to accelerate this healing, I offer EMDR therapy intensives—typically two 90-minute sessions per week. This format allows us to work with the nervous system more consistently, which may significantly reduce symptoms in a shorter time. These intensives are particularly effective when working with developmental trauma, because the nervous system needs both safety and repetition to integrate new experiences. When we revisit core memories of fear or abandonment in a safe, regulated way, we create the conditions for true rewiring—and relief that doesn’t fade after a few good weeks.
Healing Means Going Back—But Not Staying There
It can feel scary to revisit early pain. But with the right support, doing this work doesn’t mean reliving the past—it means reprocessing it so your nervous system no longer has to carry it alone. If you’ve been wondering why healing still feels incomplete, or why big emotions keep getting triggered by seemingly small things, it may be time to look deeper. Not just at what happened, but at what your earliest relationships taught you to expect—and how we can begin to shift that, together.
About the Author
Dr. Pauline Chiarizia is a Counselling Psychologist specialising in trauma and eating disorders. She provides online talk therapy and EMDR for individuals who are ready to explore and understand themselves more deeply, break free from unhelpful patterns that affect their self-esteem and relationships, and overcome burnout. Dr. Chiarizia focuses on helping clients build resilience, develop self-trust, and gain the confidence to navigate life’s challenges. Her approach empowers clients to cope with adversity while being fully present for moments of joy, love, and connection.