Working With Childhood Memories And Avoidance In Trauma Counselling (the Power Of Remembering)

Advocating for the active exploration of childhood memories and the natural avoidance that accompanies them, this book provides a clear entryway into complex and childhood trauma work, particularly in cases where tangled histories and overwhelming symptoms make it challenging for both counsellor and client to prioritize focus areas.

Advocating for the active exploration of childhood memories and the natural avoidance that accompanies them, this book provides a clear entryway into complex and childhood trauma work, particularly in cases where tangled histories and overwhelming symptoms make it challenging for both counsellor and client to prioritize focus areas.

Childhood history often serves as a record and a preliminary foundation for therapeutic work, yet childhood memories rarely become substantial material for ongoing exploration. This leaves childhood "ghosts" hidden, unattended, and unexplored, yet powerful drivers of psychological symptoms that keep individuals stuck and make trauma difficult to treat. To address this, Mikhailouskaya offers a trauma counselling framework built on two key pillars: working with early memories and actively engaging with the avoidance that naturally arises around them. Filled with actionable insights, strategies, and case examples, the text provides a roadmap for addressing hard-to-reach trauma cases and resolving key therapeutic dilemmas, such as balancing client choice with therapeutic expertise and navigating the tension between avoidance, clinical judgement, and the guidance needed to support recovery.

Designed to transcend any single therapeutic approach, this book is an engaging read for psychotherapists, counsellors, and mental health practitioners seeking to enhance their practice with a deeper understanding of the role memories and avoidance play in trauma recovery.

About the Cover

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part 1: Childhood Focus: Exposing Hidden Trauma.

1. The Haunting Echoes of Childhood Ghosts

2. How Can Childhood Memories Be of Service?

3. The Invisible Trauma of ‘Unremarkable’ Childhoods

4. ‘What if?’ Keeping Ghosts in Their Closets

Part 2: The Power of Remembering: Working with Childhood Memories

5. Elusive Ghosts: Reporting Versus Zooming In

6. Pulling Ghosts from Their Closets

7. ‘What if?’ The Risks and Rewards of Remembering

Part 3: Avoidance Unmasked: How to Identify, Understand, and Respond Therapeutically

8. Humans and Their Natural Avoidance

9. The Taboos

10. Fear of Loss

11. Desire to Move On

12. ’What if?’ The Hidden Intelligence of Avoidance

Part 4: Therapy as a Chance to Heal. Give it your best shot! (Counsellor’s Role)

13. ‘Judge Judy’

14. Counsellor as an Active Participant

15. ‘What if?’ Exploring the Practitioner Responibility

Part 5: Therapy as a Chance to Heal. Give it your best shot! (Client’s Role)

16. Mental Health Services and Consumers

17. Raising a Capable Self-Parent

18. Counselling That Goes Beyond Appointments: Central, Not Sideline Task

19. ‘What if?’ The Heavy Demands of Trauma Work

20. Conclusion

Index

''This beautifully written, accessible book is an important addition to the literature on Complex Trauma. It highlights the importance of finding the impact of hidden trauma in many clinical presentations. It carefully navigates the reader into how such an exploration can be sensitively and therapeutically achieved. Emphasising the role of understandable avoidance in managing the trauma Mikhailouskaya clearly articulates, through many clinical examples, how the clinician can both appreciat