Therapy for Childhood Trauma in Singapore: Rebuilding Safety When You Still Live With a Parent

Bernadette Chin, MSc
Oct 15
5 min read

By Bernadette Chin, Principal Therapist, My Inner Child Clinic

Background: A Real Question From r/askSingapore

The post is found here, along with our shortened reply.

“Can anyone recommend a suitable therapist who can help with childhood trauma and parent-child relationship issues?

I’ve moved back in with my parent after a failed marriage, and it’s been emotionally exhausting. I don’t want these issues to affect my child.”

Many adults in Singapore quietly navigate this: returning to a family home that carries the same emotional echoes they’ve spent years trying to understand. On one hand, we try to model what ideal parenting should be, yet run the script of how we were parented.

This is amplified when living back in the family of origin and still being parented.

When the parent who once shaped your emotional world now shares your living space, your body remembers — not through logic, but through sensation: tension, withdrawal, vigilance, exhaustion.

These are not signs of weakness; they’re signs of how deeply your nervous system has learned to protect you.

A Trauma-Informed, Salutogenic Response

Hi there,

This must be a tough situation for you — holding space for your child’s well-being while managing the same relationship that shaped your early experiences. The fact that you’re reaching out already shows courage and commitment to healing across generations.

Before we explore anything else, I want to pause on this:

What have you already been doing that helps your daughter feel safe?

That one question reminds your body that you are not beginning from zero. You have already been practicing protection, awareness, and love — and those are the same capacities we build on in therapy.

The Salutogenic Model — Focusing on What Keeps You Well

At My Inner Child Clinic, we work from a salutogenic (salus = health, genesis = origin) framework.

Therapists tend to ask about the issue, our psychotherapy focuses o what's working — Salutogenic approach in psychotherapy builds from what is well

Instead of asking “What’s wrong with me?”, we ask “What keeps me steady, connected, and growing — even when life is hard?”

This approach recognises that every nervous system already has strengths and adaptive intelligence.

Through therapy, we help you:

1. Identify what supports your sense of coherence — what makes life feel understandable and manageable.

2. Strengthen regulation — so your body feels safe enough to access choice and calm.

3. Rebuild secure attachment — learning that closeness and selfhood can exist together.

Trauma Therapy

If this way of healing feels right for you — one that honours your resilience rather than pathologising your pain — you’re welcome to visit us.

Our therapists will meet you where you are, gently helping your system rediscover safety, meaning, and self-trust.

1. Regulate First, Decide Later

When life feels unpredictable, the nervous system takes the lead — not because it’s broken, but because it’s trying to keep you safe.

Regulation helps your body learn that it can experience intensity without losing stability.

Start small and often:

A 60-second reset: Feel your feet, look left–right–centre, name five colours you see.

A daily settling: Sit in the same chair, same time, hand on your heart, and let the exhale be a little longer than the inhale.

A kind internal phrase: “That was a lot. Of course I felt that. I’m still here.”

When your system steadies, choices become clearer and more compassionate.

2. Growing Secure Attachment From the Inside Out

Secure attachment isn’t a personality trait; it’s a felt experience of safety — “I can be close and still be myself.”

For adults healing childhood wounds, it begins internally.

Each time you keep a small promise to yourself, you rebuild trust within.

Each time you name a feeling instead of suppressing it, you strengthen self-connection.

Each time you return after a rupture — whether with your parent, partner, or child — you teach your body that connection can bend without breaking.

Secure attachment grows through repeated, embodied proof that safety and autonomy can coexist.

3. Boundaries When You Still Live With a Parent

Boundaries are not about pushing people away; they are settings that help safety exist.

Predictable rhythms: shared quiet times, clear routines, and simple agreements.

One-line limits with bridges:

“I’m not ready to discuss that right now. Let’s revisit after dinner.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I prefer to handle this my way.”

Safe exits: “I need a few minutes in my room,” followed by physical space.

Consistency and calm delivery speak louder than long explanations. Over time, these small adjustments help your system learn that it can create safety from within, even in environments that feel unstable.

4. Building Safety and Competence

Your nervous system already knows how to survive — our goal is to help it learn how to feel safe.

In salutogenic therapy, we look at your existing competencies and gently repurpose them.

Old Survival Pattern Emerging Competence

Building competencies empower clients to heal in trauma therapy — Helping our clients become aware of their competencies and agency helped them see themselves as capable and resourceful.

Hypervigilance: Clients tend to be running in to potential threats.. This makes them more attuned to physiological changes — sensing subtle shifts before overwhelm.

It is easier to talk about physiology than emotions, which trigger the amygdala. - Arizona Trauma Institute's Founder, Dr Robert Rhoten.

Overthinking: Clients who have a lot going in their head are reflective and using hippocampal activity based questions, clients engage curiosity and structured memory recall to discover resourceful narrative about the trauma.

Allowing clients to see how traits from growing through trauma have benefited them - like being independent, self-reliant, or in situations, being high achievers and perhaps perfectionists in select aspects of their lives, these help clients have a sense of perspective that there are areas of strength to build on.

Healing is not about unlearning everything. It’s about remembering what worked — and giving it permission to mature.

5. Rewiring Safety Through the Body

At My Inner Child Clinic, we often begin with nervous system regulation because healing can’t happen in survival mode.

We use approaches such as:

Multichannel Eye Movement Integration (MEMI): to help the brain integrate emotional memories and reduce their charge.

MEMI therapy for trauma — Multichannel Eye Movement Integration is used in therapy for reorganising trauma memories

Inner Child Healing: to safely reconnect with younger emotional parts seeking reassurance and safety.

Trauma-Informed Hypnotherapy: to access deeper states of calm and allow the body to process stress without overwhelm.

Every method begins with consent, pacing, and attunement to your readiness — not your therapist’s agenda.

6. For Parents Who Are Healing While Parenting

You are already protecting your child by seeking healing.

Children absorb our regulation more than our words. They observe how their parent has struggled to keep them safe, and they look to parents for the safe and secure attachment.

Create small rituals that build safety and predictability: