🌿 How Early Childhood Trauma Shapes the Brain — and How Therapy Begins

Ignatius Quek
Nov 7
3 min read

By My Inner Child Clinic, Singapore

Sometimes, your reactions make sense to you — a sudden outburst, a deep withdrawal, or a wave of shame that comes out of nowhere.

These aren't random.

They are echoes from a nervous system that once had to protect you.

A new study from Virginia Tech, published in Science Advances and featured in Neuroscience News (Nov 2025), gives scientific weight to what many trauma survivors already know intuitively: early pain changes the way the brain processes safety.

🧠 When the Brain Learns to Protect

Researchers led by Dr. Sora Shin discovered that early-life trauma heightens activity between the nucleus reuniens and hippocampus—areas that control memory, emotion, and decision-making.

Early Trauma and its link to aggression and self-harm — Dr Sora Shin from the Shin Lab at Virginia Tech and her team's publication on early trauma and its links to aggression and self-harm.

When this circuit becomes overactive, calcium channels in brain cells stay “switched on.”The brain begins to pair pain — including emotional pain — with threat, leading to a constant state of alertness and impulsive behaviour.

“Our findings suggest that aggression and self-harm may appear to be very different behaviors, but actually, they could share a common neural basis,” said Dr. Shin, Virginia Tech.

In other words, your brain didn’t malfunction; it adapted for survival. The same pathways that once kept you safe can later make calm feel foreign.

✨ From Protection to Connection

At My Inner Child Clinic, we understand trauma not as a disorder but as an adaptive response to danger. What looks like anger, numbness, or self-criticism in adulthood often began as your younger self’s best attempt to stay safe.

Our work begins with compassion for that child — the one who learned to be vigilant, to please, to fight, or to disappear. Through gentle, neuroscience-informed therapy, we help your nervous system remember what safety feels like.

Your nervous system remembers what safety feels like. Therapy helps you find your way back.

🌿 Our Trauma Therapy Process: Healing Through Safety

Safety and Regulation
We start by helping your body and mind slow down through body-based grounding, breathwork, and the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) — a sound-based tool that supports nervous-system regulation.
Reconnection with the Inner Child
You’ll meet the parts of yourself that carry unmet needs, not to relive pain, but to offer them what they always needed: empathy and reassurance.
Integration and Growth
As your body learns safety, your emotions become messages, not enemies. Together, we build emotional literacy — understanding your triggers, needs, and values so you can respond with choice and self-leadership.

💫 A Hopeful Path Forward

This Virginia Tech research bridges science and compassion. It shows that such behaviours are normal responses to trauma and with brain’s plasticity — the ability to rewire — healing is possible.

At My Inner Child Clinic, we walk with you at your pace, integrating trauma-informed therapy, inner child healing, and neuroscience-based tools to restore calm and clarity. Our trauma therapy is rooted in a salutogenic approach i.e. we focus not about fixing what’s broken, but nurturing what’s still whole.