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Marina O'Connor/Trauma-informed therapy, Cascais (2026)

10/01/2026

Everyone ages, but not everyone grows up.

Many people spend their lives stuck in outdated relational patterns, systems of beliefs, and emotional survival strategies passed down through generations. When we operate from these adaptive parts, we react to the world and to ourselves, based on old fears, chronic shame, or learned ways of staying safe.

We miss opportunities for growth and expansion, not because we are not capable, but because we are still being guided by parts of ourselves that learned long ago how to survive, not thrive. These adaptive patterns can make us defensive when challenged, overly punitive, self-critical, or hesitant to take risks in relationships and life.

The first step toward change is recognition: noticing when these old survival strategies are running the show. From there, we can begin to respond to ourselves and the world with more curiosity, compassion, and choice, gradually moving from reactive survival toward conscious, integrated growth.

09/01/2026

I often say we don’t grow up only in our own childhood, we grow up inside our parents’ unresolved stories.

One of the cornerstones of transgenerational work is exploring permissions. Permissions are subtle, often non verbal and unconscious messages children receive about whether they are allowed to live fully, succeed, take up space, and feel safe in the world.

In this sense, both parents matter profoundly.

The mother’s role is to offer nurturing and the core message “You are loved as you are.”

The father’s role is different and just as essential.
He provides a secure base from which the child can move into life.

Fathers give permission for:

* Success
* Life energy
* Protection
* Potency
* Agency

When a father is emotionally absent, unavailable, or never had a secure base himself, the child cannot internalise that base. There is no inner place to stand while moving forward. Later in life, this often shows up as chronic self doubt, difficulty sustaining success, fear of visibility, or a sense that safety and worth must be earned through achievement rather than assumed.

Many fathers pass on what they themselves were denied, not because they don’t love, but because we cannot give what we never received.

Healing transgenerational trauma often means consciously building what was missing, an inner object that offers protection, permission, and steadiness. When this happens, something profound shifts. Life energy returns, ambition softens into confidence, and movement forward no longer feels dangerous.

A secure base is what needs to be passed on across generations.

07/01/2026

What we often experience as our identity is an early-formed system of survival adaptations. Once absolutely necessary and protective, these strategies can later obscure our essence and limit how fully we live, how we express ourselves, and whether we make the impact we truly want.

Part of the journey isn’t about getting rid of those adaptations. It’s about reconnecting with what has always been hidden behind them.

That part of the journey requires the ability to stay with what is in between: the unknown, the unfamiliar, the place where the old no longer fits but the new hasn’t fully formed. This is the most potent space where growth, presence, and authentic expression emerge.

06/01/2026

We are never taught how to be truly relational.

Most of what we know about intimacy, love and connection comes from templates we learned early on, adaptation we developed to survive, to belong and feel safe.

There are skills you can learn to become more relational with important people in your life.

If we don’t develop those skills intentionally as adults, our relationships unconsciously organise around unresolved patterns from our past.
That is why so many couples struggle with disconnection, even when they love each other.

05/01/2026

Many people are eager to change their lives and improve their relationships. At this time of year especially, with the pressures of “hustle culture” and being encouraged to make resolutions about what they want to achieve.

The focus is often: What needs to be fixed or improved so I can get what I want?

Very often, people come into therapy carrying this deep-rooted belief that “I should be fixed.”

Something is wrong with my feelings. Something is wrong with my needs. Maybe I am too much, or maybe I am not trying hard enough.

From this place of “not okayness,” they try to change their lives and relationships using the same strategies they learned as children.

They might repress their feelings or parts of themselves, just as they did when they were little. They might act out, play the “victim,” or blame everyone else to get their needs met.

But these strategies don’t work as adults and when they fail, it reinforces the story that they are broken. Something is wrong. The world and people feel hostile. Others seem unwilling or unable to help or understand.

The goal of therapy isn’t to fix, it’s often to make room for more. To expand and grow what’s already within you. What’s waiting to emerge. By creating inner safety first. By teaching your nervous system that’s it okay to expand, to have desires, to dream, to receive.

02/01/2026

Trauma does not just live in memory.
It lives in the story you tell yourself about who you are, what others are like, and how the world works.

These trauma shaped beliefs often feel like truth, but they are adaptations formed in moments when your nervous system was trying to keep you safe.

Trauma says “I am unsafe,” so your body stays alert to what felt threatening in the past.
Healing begins when safety is no longer just an idea, but something you can feel and cultivate in your body, paired with the capacity to be assertive and protect yourself.

Trauma says “I am unworthy,” especially when your needs went unmet or were too much for others.
Healing reminds you that worth is inherent. Early wounds shape beliefs, not value.

For many, trauma speaks through abandonment.
“If I need too much, feel too deeply, or show who I really am, I will be left.”
Adults can’t be abandoned. Healing is learning to stay connected to yourself even when others are unavailable, so relationship no longer requires self-abandonment or self-neglect.

Trauma often says “It’s my fault,” collapsing accountability into shame.
Healing restores differentiation between the child parts who adapted and the adult who can now choose. Accountability does not require self- attack.

Trauma teaches that feelings are dangerous or overwhelming, so they get suppressed or enacted.
Healing reframes emotions as information and builds the capacity to feel, regulate, and respond with choice.

Trauma keeps the nervous system on constant alert, unable to distinguish past threat from present reality.
Healing helps the body relearn the difference between perceived danger and actual risk, allowing a shift from hypervigilance into connection.

And finally, trauma says “I am alone.”
Healing gently introduces a new truth. Being alone is not the same as being abandoned, and support is possible even when the nervous system expects loss.

Trauma rewires the nervous system toward disconnection, fragmentation, and self protection.
Healing rewires it toward safety, self trust, and meaningful connection.

Not by erasing the past, but by changing the story your body is still living in.

31/12/2025

It became a small family tradition to spend few days for New Year in Spain for my husband and I.

This year has been the year of relational learning and growth, wherever I look. From completing my advanced diploma in relationship therapy with to pursuing another certification as RLT couples therapist with to having a better understanding of my own relational patterns (very humbling experience) to supporting clients with changing their relationships and healing what has been unfinished in my private practice to supporting leaders and their teams with

Having fulfilling life is not possible without having fulfilling relationships, starting with our own relationship with ourselves. We live through the pandemic of emotional loneliness, where so many people feel isolated and alone, whether in relationships or not. The most painful experience we can have as people is to not be fully seen for who we truly are.

Understanding our own relational patterns, what have we learned and what impact we might have on other people, can be a lot to swallow, to digest over and over. It requires both compassion for those early wounded parts, understanding of how we learned to protect ourselves as well as a strong adult ability to hold yourself accountable. These two are fundamental to the process of change.

As I often tell my clients: “By coming into this space, you are entering a judgement free zone, the space where you get unconditional positive regard for every part of yourself, however I will point out any harmful relational pattern, whether directed at yourself or others”.

I wish everyone a Happy New Year!

I hope that you can create and nurture relational spaces where you feel truly held, seen and welcomed with all your parts ❤️

30/12/2025

Much of what shapes us did not begin with us.

What could not be felt, spoken, or protected in one generation did not disappear in the next. It was reorganised. Passed on as conditioned survival responses, relational templates, bodily tensions, and implicit rules about safety, closeness, and belonging. Carried less as explicit memory and more deeply rooted emotions and belief systems, posture, affect, and instinct.

Across generations, we inherit more than stories and traditions. We inherit ways of regulating emotion, tolerating intimacy, responding to authority, holding desire, and managing danger. We pass on not only trauma, but the adaptations to trauma: vigilance, compliance, self erasure, hyper responsibility, emotional absenses. These strategies once preserved life. Later, they quietly shape it.

The work begins when we become aware and re-connect with these inherited patterns and adaptations. Not to fix or override them, not to “fix ourselves”, but to understand the conditions that required them. To bring what was once hidden back into relationship with the present, where choices become possible. Where de-decisions happens.

Only then can something new be passed on. Not survival alone, but safety. Not silence, but capacity. Not repetition, but repair. Not re-enactments, but relational healing.

Let’s make 2026 the year where this work can take place!

29/12/2025

I often see relationships that look calm, functional and yet feel disconnected, even dead, underneath.

This is pseudo-harmony: the absence of conflict without the presence of intimacy.

Pseudo-harmony forms when partners learn (often early in life) that connection is maintained through emotional regulation of the other: keeping things smooth, avoiding tension, managing reactions, staying agreeable.

No one rocks the boat. No one risks being fully known. There is underlying anxiety about conflict and expressing what feels true.

In relationships where levels of differentiation is low, closeness feels unsafe unless sameness is preserved. So desire, disagreement, anger, sexual energy and individuality are slowly edited out. The couple might seem stable, but at the cost of aliveness and vitality.

You’ll often hear this as:

“We never fight”
“We’re very aligned”
“I don’t want to upset them”
“It’s just easier this way”

But under the surface there is often:

Emotional flatness
Sexual disconnection
Quiet resentment
One or both partners feeling unseen
A loss of individuality and desire

Intimacy does not grow through comfort. It grows through self-definition in the presence of the other.

Real intimacy requires the capacity to: tolerate your partner’s discomfort without rescuing or collapsing. Hold onto yourself while staying emotionally connected. Speak truth without needing agreement. Allow difference without experiencing it as threat.

When couples move out of pseudo-harmony, conflict often increases before closeness does. This is not regression, it’s development.

26/12/2025

We don’t choose our partners randomly.

At an unconscious level, we choose someone who resembles the emotional landscape of our childhood.

We fall in love with our own projections.
We stay in relationship with a developmental task.

As we enter intimate partnership, we bring with us unconscious contracts shaped in childhood:
“This relationship will finally give me what was missing” or “This time, love will be different.”

Some of the most common unconscious contracts include:

• If I stay emotionally available and attentive, you will finally be emotionally present to me.
(often formed when caregivers were loving but inconsistent or distant)

• If I limit or neglect my needs, you won’t withdraw, shut down, or disappear.
(developed in environments where emotional expression overwhelmed the system)

• If I adapt to you, anticipate you, and keep the peace, I will remain connected.
(rooted in families where pseudo harmony mattered more than authenticity)

• If I stay strong, capable, and self-sufficient, I won’t be abandoned or rejected.
(learned where vulnerability was unwelcome, unsafe or mocked)

• If I am loyal and devoted, you will finally choose me fully.
(common when early attention was divided or conditional)

• If I take responsibility for your emotional world, you will eventually take responsibility for mine.
(often carried by those who were parentified early)

The problem is not that partners fail to meet these contracts. The problem is that it was never their job in the first place.

Partners experience each other as withholding, controlling, needy, or unavailable, not realizing they are reacting to old pain activated in the present. Each becomes both the healer and the trigger for the other.

This is the paradox of intimate partnership:
The person we hope will heal us is the very one who reopens the wound.

Mature love begins when partners stop asking,
“Why aren’t you giving me what I need?”
and begin asking,
“What is this relationship inviting me to grow into?”

23/12/2025

The real measure of your relationship with yourself isn’t what you do or how well you can tolerate pressures.

It’s what happens when you are still.

No distractions.

No tasks.

No phones.

No one telling you what you “should be doing”.

Do your thoughts start racing?

Does your body start getting tensed, uncomfortable, heavy?

Do old fears, memories, or emotions resurface?

For many, stillness can feel unsafe.

Trauma teaches the nervous system to stay on alert. To either be stuck in the past or in the future, scanning for threats.

Movement, hypervigilance, and distraction equals survival.

When you pause, everything you’ve been ignoring or repressing comes back.

Stillness does not mean doing nothing.

It’s the moment you can truly listen. To reconnect with your body, your emotions, and what has been held inside.

This is where healing begins. When the nervous system learns it is safe to feel.

Are you comfortable with stillness?

21/12/2025

Many people come to therapy saying they feel “stuck” or as if something inside them is being held back. What they often don’t see is that this holding back once made perfect sense.

In families shaped by transgenerational trauma, survival and belonging mattered more than growth. Children learned, often very early, what was safe to feel, to want, to show. Not through words, but through non-verbal modelling: atmosphere, reactions, silences.

You learn whether it is safe to be visible.
Whether success brings pride or punishment.
Whether your strength and voice would be welcome or threaten someone you love.

So parts of your potential go underground.
Not because you lack talent or drive, not because your don’t have anything to offer, but because your nervous system learns: this is too much, this is dangerous, this will cost me connection.

What we later call “self-sabotage” is often unconscious loyalty. A loyalty to old rules that once protected belonging.

Growth, then, is not about pushing harder or fixing what is “wrong”. It is about gently updating those internal rules. Giving yourself different permission that can override this early outdated learning.

– permission to want more
– permission to succeed without guilt
– permission to outgrow the roles that once kept you safe
– permission to be seen without shrinking

This is slow, relational work. It asks to notice when an old inner voice pulls you back into familiarity, and to respond from a steadier, more adult place inside.

Potential doesn’t disappear.
It waits.

Marina O'Connor/Trauma-informed therapy

10/01/2026

09/01/2026

07/01/2026

06/01/2026

05/01/2026

02/01/2026

31/12/2025

30/12/2025

29/12/2025

26/12/2025

23/12/2025

21/12/2025

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