What is childhood trauma therapy?

Childhood trauma therapy is a specialized form of therapy that helps adults process and heal from difficult experiences in childhood — including emotional neglect, abuse, parentification, and loss. At Marlo Drago Therapy, treatment follows a three-phase model: Safety and Stabilization, Processing, and Integration, using EMDR, somatic therapy, and IFS.

How does EMDR help with childhood trauma?

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) helps the brain reprocess stuck traumatic memories using bilateral stimulation — eye movements, tapping, or sounds. For childhood trauma, EMDR can reduce the emotional intensity of old memories so they no longer drive current behaviour, anxiety, or relationship patterns.

Do I need to remember my childhood trauma to heal from it?

No. Healing from childhood trauma does not require a detailed or clear memory of what happened. Many clients carry the effects of early experiences — anxiety, people-pleasing, difficulty with trust — without having explicit memories. Therapy works with your nervous system and present-day patterns, not just the past.

Is childhood trauma therapy available virtually in Ontario?

Yes. Marlo Drago Therapy offers fully virtual childhood trauma therapy across Ontario, including Toronto, Ottawa, London, Guelph, Mississauga, Hamilton, York Region, and North York. Sessions are delivered via a secure, HIPAA-compliant video platform.

Can therapy help with chronic pain?

Yes. Research consistently shows that chronic pain — including fibromyalgia, migraines, and medically unexplained pain — has strong connections to the nervous system and unprocessed trauma. Therapy using EMDR, somatic approaches, and polyvagal-informed care can reduce pain intensity, improve function, and address the emotional roots of chronic pain.

What is EMDR therapy for chronic pain?

EMDR for chronic pain uses bilateral stimulation to help the brain and nervous system reprocess pain signals and the traumatic experiences often connected to them. Marlo Drago is an EMDR-trained therapist with personal lived experience of fibromyalgia, migraines, and myofascial pain disorder, and her own healing through EMDR.

Is therapy for chronic pain available virtually in Ontario?

Yes. Chronic pain therapy with Marlo Drago is fully virtual and available to clients across Ontario. Sessions are delivered via a secure HIPAA-compliant video platform — accessible by phone, tablet, or computer.

What is therapy for moms?

Therapy for moms is trauma-informed care designed specifically for the challenges mothers face — mom burnout, postpartum anxiety, postpartum depression, birth trauma, mom guilt, identity loss, and childhood wounds surfacing through parenting. Marlo Drago Therapy works with mothers aged 16 and up across Ontario.

Does therapy help with postpartum anxiety and depression?

Yes. Postpartum anxiety and postpartum depression are highly treatable with the right support. Therapy can help you understand what's happening in your nervous system, process the emotional weight of early motherhood, and develop skills to regulate your mood and feel more like yourself again. Marlo Drago has personal experience with postpartum depression and anxiety.

What is birth trauma and can therapy help?

Birth trauma refers to a distressing or frightening experience during labour, delivery, or the early postpartum period. It can leave mothers with flashbacks, anxiety, difficulty bonding, or a sense of numbness. EMDR therapy is particularly effective for birth trauma and is offered at Marlo Drago Therapy virtually across Ontario.

Yes. Mom burnout is a real and recognized state of physical and emotional exhaustion caused by the chronic stress of caregiving with insufficient support. Signs include resentment, emotional numbness, irritability, and a loss of your sense of self. Therapy can help you understand the roots of burnout and rebuild in a sustainable way.

What is polyvagal therapy?

Polyvagal therapy is a nervous system-informed approach to healing that uses the principles of Polyvagal Theory — developed by Dr. Stephen Porges — to help people move out of chronic fight, flight, or freeze states. It focuses on building a felt sense of safety in the body as the foundation for emotional regulation and trauma healing.

How does polyvagal therapy work for trauma?

Polyvagal-informed therapy helps you identify which state your nervous system is in — safe and connected, mobilized (anxious, angry), or shut down (frozen, numb) — and develops skills to move toward regulation. Combined with EMDR and somatic therapy, it addresses trauma at the level of the body, not just the mind.

Is polyvagal therapy available virtually in Ontario?

Yes. Polyvagal-informed therapy with Marlo Drago is available virtually across Ontario. All individual therapy is delivered via a secure, HIPAA-compliant video platform — no app download required.

Why Am I So Triggered by My Child? What's Actually Happening (An EMDR Therapist Explains)

Marlo Drago
Aug 4
3 min read

If your kid drops a cup this morning and something in you wants to combust, here's what I want you to know: you're not a bad mom, and you're also not actually mad about the cup.

Marlo Drago, EMDR therapist for moms, Mom of 2, trauma therapist.

Getting "triggered" by your kids is one of the most common things the moms I work with bring into session, and almost every one of them starts the same way: with shame. They think the intensity of their reaction means something is wrong with them as a mother. It doesn't. It usually means something old got activated, and your kid just happened to be standing there when it did.

The Cup Was Never the Problem

Here's the thing about triggers: they point at something true, but rarely the thing you think. The whining, the backtalk, the fortieth request for a snack, those are the spark. They are not the fuel. The fuel was usually loaded into you a long time before you became a parent.

My own kid can ask me the same question four times in ninety seconds, and something in my chest can go from zero to volcano before I've consciously decided to be annoyed. That's not a patience problem. That's a nervous system recognizing a pattern it learned to brace for a long time ago.

Your Nervous System Doesn't Read a Calendar

Let's talk about nervous system capacity, because I use that phrase a lot and I want to actually tell you what I mean by it instead of just throwing it around like a wellness influencer. Picture a cup. Every unresolved hard thing from your past, every time you had to be the easy one, the responsible one, the one who didn't cause problems, takes up a little room in that cup before your day even starts. A toddler meltdown might only need a tablespoon of patience. But if your cup is already full from three decades of stuff you never got to process, that tablespoon overflows everything.

Your nervous system doesn't know it's Tuesday, and it doesn't know your son is six and not a threat. It just knows this feeling has shown up before, and last time, it wasn't safe.

This Is Where the Inner Critic Shows Up

I worked with a mom once (details changed, as always) who could handle her son's tantrums fine on an easy day. On a hard day, though, the second he raised his voice, a much older voice showed up first: "You're failing him. You're turning into your mother." That voice had nothing to do with her son. It was a decades-old recording playing on a loop, and EMDR is essentially how we track down the original tape and let it finally finish playing, so it stops running on repeat.

What Actually Helps When You're Triggered by Your Child

Name it out loud, even just in your head: "I'm activated, not evil."
Get curious about the age of the reaction. Is this a response from today, or from a much younger version of you?
Build nervous system capacity in the calm moments, not just the hard ones, so there's more room in the cup before you need it.
Process the original wound with EMDR or somatic work, so it stops hijacking your parenting in the present.

You do not need to become a woman who never gets triggered. That woman isn't real, and if someone tells you she is, she's either lying or dissociating.

I offer virtual therapy for women and mothers across Ontario, using EMDR, IFS, somatic, and polyvagal-informed approaches, with direct billing through Telus eHealth and Sun Life and Bluecross. My fall intake is currently open, book a free 15-minute consult. If this hit close to home, I'd love to hear about it. Drop a comment below, or come find me on Instagram @marlodragotherapy.

QUESTIONS, ANSWERED

Why do I get so triggered by my child's behavior? Most parenting triggers aren't really about the moment in front of you. They're old nervous system responses from your own upbringing getting activated by something in your child's behavior that feels familiar, even when it isn't actually dangerous.

Is being triggered by my kids a sign of childhood trauma? Not always, but often. If your reaction feels bigger than the situation calls for, it's worth exploring whether an old experience is being echoed rather than assuming you simply lack patience.

Can EMDR help with parenting triggers? Yes. EMDR helps process the original experiences behind a trigger so the reaction loses its charge, instead of just managing the behavior in the moment.

How is nervous system capacity related to mom guilt and anger? Low nervous system capacity means less room to absorb everyday parenting stress before it turns into anger, and the guilt that often follows. Building capacity, rather than relying on willpower, is what actually changes the pattern.

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