Our past heavily informs our present. When we experience emotional neglect, chaotic family dynamics, or distinct psychological trauma during early development, our survival instincts build rigid internal walls to protect us. While these emotional defences keep us safe in childhood, they often follow us into adulthood, manifesting as chronic relationship anxiety, a fear of closeness, or a persistent feeling of being “stuck” in old, reactive survival loops.
At Corewell, founded by clinical psychologist Dr Farzin Shaykhi, our dedicated team of practitioners specialises in trauma-informed care and attachment-focused therapy. Operating from our compassionate clinical space in Mitcham, our clinicians support individuals across Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, including Ringwood, Croydon, Doncaster, Ringwood North, and Vermont, to safely untangle early-life wounds, shift deep-seated relationship cycles, and build a secure sense of self.
Breaking the Cycles of the Past: How Trauma Lives Today
Trauma is not just a painful event that happened years ago; it is the lasting footprint that the event left behind in your nervous system.
The clinical psychology team at Corewell works collaboratively with you to explore and heal the many layers of developmental and adult trauma, including:
Outgrown Emotional Defences: Unpacking and softening the coping mechanisms, such as hyper-independence, chronic people-pleasing, dissociation, or explosive anger, that no longer serve your life today.
Unresolved Childhood Emotional Wounds: Repairing the invisible, lingering impacts of emotional neglect, high-conflict households, or parentified childhood experiences.
Difficult or Distant Family Relationships: Navigating ongoing estrangement, ancestral burdens, or toxic dynamics with your family of origin.
Repeated Relationship Cycles: Recognising and stopping the painful habit of unconsciously repeating old family dramas or selecting partners who mirror your early-life wounds.
Attachment Insecurity & Hyper-Vigilance: Overcoming an intense, daily fear of rejection, abandonment, or suffocating closeness that disrupts your dating and adult relationships.
Trauma-Informed Frameworks & Attachment Assessments
Because trauma deeply impacts your cognitive structures, emotional regulation, and nervous system, Corewell’s team utilises safe, structured assessment frameworks during your therapy journey:
Complex Trauma & Dissociation Screening
We use gold-standard, trauma-informed screening metrics to assess for symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Complex PTSD (C-PTSD), mapping out how trauma alters your current daily sense of safety.
Developmental Attachment Style Profiling
Our psychologists evaluate your early relational blueprint. We identify your primary attachment strategies (anxious, avoidant, or disorganised) to understand how your brain naturally responds to intimacy and interpersonal conflict.
Somatic & Nervous System Trigger Auditing
We carefully map the physical markers of your trauma responses. By tracking where your body stores survival energy, such as immediate jaw clenching, shallow breathing, or emotional numbness, we locate the exact entry points for somatic healing.
What People Are Asking
“Why do I crave deep relationship intimacy but push people away the second they get close to me?”
Our Answer: This is a classic presentation of avoidant or disorganised attachment trauma. When early-life relationships are painful, your brain links closeness with danger. You desire love, but your emotional defences actively sabotage it to keep you safe from perceived rejection.
“What is the difference between standard PTSD and complex PTSD (C-PTSD) symptoms?”
Our Answer: PTSD usually stems from a single, isolated traumatic shock event in adulthood. C-PTSD results from chronic, repeated, or systemic trauma over long periods, most commonly childhood emotional neglect or ongoing domestic volatility where escape was impossible.
Deep Therapies for Lasting Neurological Freedom
True trauma recovery requires reaching the emotional and somatic centres of the brain where logic cannot always go. Our diverse team utilises highly advanced, evidence-based modalities designed to rewrite early-life wiring:
- ISTDP (Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy): To safely drop beneath your conscious defences, allowing you to access, process, and completely resolve the buried core emotions and blockages driven by early-life distress.
- Schema Therapy: Pinpointing and healing your “Early Maladaptive Schemas”—the deeply ingrained, self-defeating core beliefs (like “I am defective” or “People will always leave me”) formed in childhood.
- Trauma-Informed Somatic Regulation & ACT: Helping you ground your physical body, expand your nervous system’s window of tolerance, and safely re-establish a feeling of absolute physical safety in the present moment.
