Healing Trust, Intimacy and Self-Worth

Living with the aware

ness of a Complex Post – Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) diagnosis often means you have already spent time understanding your trauma, reading, reflecting, and working to make sense of these patterns. Yet, when it comes to love, trust, or intimacy, challenges can still persist, leaving even the most self aware individuals feeling vulnerable. 

You may recognise yourself in recurring cycles of overcompensating, excessive rumination, or struggling to dismantle the walls you have built around yourself. While you may yearn for intimacy, it can feel challenging to relax and be vulnerable around your partner. No matter how independent or successful your life may appear, a persistent sense of disconnection or being stuck can remain, fueled by the fear of being hurt by love again. 

There is nothing wrong with you. What you are experiencing is a natural response to relational trauma. 

When your experiences of love were once marked by danger, control, or disappointment, your physical body learned to protect itself. You want that romantic connection, but your nervous system says that it is “not safe”. 

As a trauma – informed hypnotherapist, I work with clients who understand their trauma, yet find it challenging to feel vulnerable or fully present in relationships. In this article, we will explore how CPTSD can affect intimacy, self esteem, and the ability to trust others. We will also explore how hypnotherapy for trauma can support you in reconnecting with yourself and others in a way that feels safe again. 

Why Love Can Feel Unsafe After CPTSD 

CPTSD is not only about addressing the memories of what has happened to you. It is equally about understanding how your mind and body learned to survive. 

When trauma is relational, such as emotional neglect, developmental trauma, or narcissistic abuse, the nervous system becomes conditioned to anticipate danger, triggering automatic tension in the body. As a result, even in a safe environment, your body may remain in a state of heightened alertness, responding if stress were still present. 

These physical responses may include your heart racing when your partner moves closer, or even tension in the body during moments of calmness and ease. You may find it easier to engage with love intellectually, analysing it, rather than fully experiencing it emotionally. These are the body’s protective strategies, designed to prevent you from being hurt again.

How CPTSD Affects Love, Trust and Intimacy 

• After trauma, trust rarely feels natural. You may analyse individuals’ intentions, waiting to see if they will hurt you. Even when someone shows affection, part of you may still expect it to disappear. 

Through hypnotherapy for PTSD and CPTSD, we work with the subconscious to help your nervous system relearn safety. By combining guided relaxation and imagery, the body gradually begins to understand that love, security, and connection are real, rather than fleeting. This process rewires patterns of fear and hypervigilance, creating space for emotional healing.  

• Intimacy Activates Survival Mode

Emotional and physical intimacy can awaken memories stored deep within the body. You may feel tense or disconnected just when you  want to feel close.

In hypnotherapy for trauma, the focus is on helping you disengage from these memories and develop skills to manage them when they arise. Through grounding techniques, regulated breathing, and guided practice, you can relearn to experience connection without being overtaken by your memories. Over time this can allow you to be fully present in moments of intimacy. 

• Self Worth Feels Conditional 

Many survivors of narcissistic abuse or developmental trauma learned that love had to be earned. You might believe you are loveable only when you are perfect, compliant, or giving more than you receive. 

In hypnotherapy for trauma, we work directly with those subconscious belief systems. Through guided imagery, suggestion, and repetition, the mind begins to accept and believe a new truth. You are loveable as you are. You are worthy of affection, rest, and care.

This is not a surface level affirmation. It is re- educating the subconscious mind.  

• Trauma Bonds and Familiar Chaos 

 You might understand intellectually that a relationship is unhealthy, but still feel pulled towards it. That “pull” is a trauma bond. It happens when the nervous system associates intensity with love. 

Through hypnotherapy for narcissistic abuse or other forms of trauma, we gently guide the body to shift from habitual patterns of chaos towards a state of calmness and safety, helping you reconnect with peace rather than remain caught up in reactive cycles. 

One begins to prefer peace over emotional turbulence. 

• Fear of Abandonment and Rejection

Fear of Abandonment is among one of the most challenging symptoms for individuals with CPTSD. You may fear that expressing your needs could lead to being left, and even small signs of disconnection can feel uncomfortable. 

Through hypnotherapy for trauma, we nurture the part of ourselves that fear being seen. Over time, the subconscious learns that separation does not equate to abandonment. This allows you to experience love and maintain trust, even in moments of physical separation from your loved one.  

The Nervous System and Love

Your ability to trust, connect, and stay calm in relationships is governed by your nervous system, not by willpower. 

When your body feels stuck in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, connection feels risky. This is where hypnotherapy for nervous system regulation becomes powerful. 

By helping your body recognise it is safe, you give yourself permission to experience intimacy differently. Many clients describe this shift as feeling “at home” in their bodies for the first time. 

How Hypnotherapy Supports Relational Healing

Hypnotherapy works with our subconscious mind, which holds emotional memory, attachment patterns, and automatic responses. 

As a trauma informed hypnotherapist, I use hypnosis to help clients regulate emotions, release guilt, and feel safe in their bodies again. 

 Rebuilding Safety

Safety in the body comes first. Trauma hypnotherapy helps you relax deeply and move out of survival mode. Over time, many people notice better sleep and the ability to regulate their emotions properly as they begin to feel safe again.

Reprogramming Beliefs About Love

Your subconscious carries old messages such as “Love equals control” or “If I let my guard down, I will get hurt.”

Through hypnosis for emotional trauma and PTSD treatment, we help you replace those messages with new truths:

Love can be calm.It is safe to trust.Connection can exist without pain.

When these beliefs take hold, your body begins to respond differently in real relationships.

Healing the Inner Child

CPTSD often develops when a child’s needs for love and protection are unmet. In hypnotherapy for trauma, we create a safe internal space to reconnect with that younger self.

You meet your inner child with compassion, offering them understanding and care. This helps integrate the parts of you that learned to hide or over-adapt. As your inner child feels secure, your adult self becomes more open, stable, and confident in love.

Releasing Shame and Building Self-Compassion

Shame is a quiet but powerful legacy of trauma. It tells you that you are unworthy of love.

In hypnotherapy for depression after trauma and trauma therapy, we help you see shame as a survival strategy, not a truth. You learn to meet your emotions with curiosity rather than judgment.

When shame dissolves, love feels possible again.

Healing from Trauma and Learning to Receive Love

Healing does not mean never being triggered again. It means recognising what is happening inside you and knowing how to soothe yourself when it arises.

Through PTSD therapy and trauma therapy, you learn how to stay grounded and present when old fears appear. Instead of shutting down, you remain connected to yourself and your partner.

You begin to notice when your inner child is scared, and rather than silencing them, you offer reassurance. This is how emotional maturity grows.

Reclaiming Your Right to Love

Building a Loving Relationship with Yourself

Hypnotherapy for codependency recovery teaches that your worth is not dependent on others’ approval. You begin to set boundaries without guilt, recognising that self-respect and self-care are the foundation of every healthy connection.

Redefining Love as Calm, Not Chaos

For many survivors, stillness once felt like danger. Through hypnotherapy for PTSD and complex PTSD treatment, your body learns that calm is safe.

You begin to crave peace rather than intensity.

Recognising Healthy Love

As your inner world heals, your outer world mirrors it. You find yourself drawn to people who are grounded, kind, and emotionally available. You stop chasing what feels familiar and begin welcoming what feels right.

Healthy love is not a performance. It is consistent, reciprocal, and deeply peaceful.

Integrating the Work

Healing from CPTSD is not purely intellectual. It is physical and emotional. Through ongoing hypnotherapy for trauma and developmental trauma therapy, your body learns safety, and your heart learns to trust it.

When that integration happens, love no longer feels like a risk. It feels like coming home.

Real Client Transformations

“I finally stopped confusing intensity with love. Now I choose calm, and it feels peaceful.”

“For the first time, I can stay present in a relationship without waiting for it to fall apart. I feel safe in love.”

These experiences are not coincidences. They are what happens when the subconscious mind and nervous system learn to feel safe together.

You already understand your trauma. You have survived, grown, and learned. What might still feel missing is the sense of safety needed to truly receive love.

Through hypnotherapy for trauma, PTSD treatment, and trauma therapy, you can release protective patterns and begin to experience connections that feel nurturing, mutual, and secure.

You are not too damaged to love or be loved. You are already loveable. You are simply learning that it is safe to believe it.