Carolyn Spring

@CarolynSpring

I help counsellors and psychotherapists to help their clients to recover from trauma via training/books/podcasts/resources: carolynspring.com.

MediaCityUK, Salford, UK linktr.ee/carolynspring Joined June 2009

5.2K Following 12K Followers 8.3K Posts

Latest posts 5

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Carolyn Spring @CarolynSpring Jun 10, 2024

Free trauma recovery guides!

50+ page Therapist’s Guide: A phased approach to trauma treatment.
100+ page Trauma Survivors’ Guide: Neurobiology-based advice for managing trauma.

Sign up to our mailing list: carolynspring.com/subscribe

#TraumaRecovery #TherapistsConnect

Carolyn Spring @CarolynSpring Dec 30, 2024

We need other people to sustain us through dark times. We have evolved as social creatures who are dependent on others for hope, sustenance, and nurture. This is the double-whammy after #trauma and #abuse: a lack of support.

Listen: carolynspring.com/podcasts/sunsh…

#TherapistsConnect

"When we don't have vision for ourselves, when we don't have hope and belief and imagination for things to be different, then we need to get that hope from outside ourselves."

Carolyn Spring @CarolynSpring Dec 30, 2024

One of my standard coping mechanisms after childhood #trauma was to refuse to hope for good things. Shame told me that I didn't deserve them, so what was the point in being eternally disappointed?

Listen to my podcast episode: carolynspring.com/podcasts/sunsh…

#TherapistsConnect #shame

"We're consumed by shame and that belief in our inherent badness, and we daren't reach out for anything better, because we don't want to be disappointed. So we're protecting ourselves from future pain, the pain of shattered hopes, by not hoping at all. And we just try to manage our symptoms and cope hour by hour, and we daren't lift our eyes to the horizon and wonder what's beyond."

Carolyn Spring @CarolynSpring Dec 30, 2024

I hated therapy breaks. They pressed every trigger in me of abandonment, rejection and isolation. But learning to first notice and then tolerate this distress, to work with it in the sessions, ended up transformative.

Listen: carolynspring.com/podcasts/recov…

#trauma #TherapistsConnect

"The gaps between therapy sessions can be as developmentally important as the therapy sessions themselves."

Carolyn Spring @CarolynSpring Dec 29, 2024

It's easy to blame ourselves (or be blamed by others) for struggling with our emotions and our mental health, as if we're 'choosing' in some way to be like this. But it's not a choice: we've missed out on key learning.

Listen: carolynspring.com/podcasts/recov…

#trauma #TherapistsConnect

"As trauma survivors we missed out on some fundamental developmental stages as babies, as toddlers, as young children, and instead we were exposed to the most horrific forms of abuse and emotional distress. And then we grew into adulthood thinking there's something wrong with us as people: that we're evil, we're toxic, we're bad, we're faulty – because we struggle to manage our emotions."