Written by Maria Boncyk, LCSW | Reviewed July 2026
This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.
Maria Boncyk, LCSW provides fully virtual childhood trauma therapy to teens and adults across New York and Massachusetts. Using EMDR and attachment-focused approaches, she helps clients process difficult early experiences, from emotional neglect to frightening home environments, so those years stop steering adult life. Start with a free 25-minute consultation.
How Childhood Follows You Into Adulthood
The effects of a difficult childhood rarely stay in childhood. They surface in adulthood as an inner critic that speaks in a familiar voice, a hair-trigger response to criticism or conflict, relationships where you either cling or keep everyone at arm’s length, and an exhausting need to earn what other people seem to receive freely, rest, care, belonging. Childhood trauma includes the obvious harms, but in Maria’s clinical experience some of the deepest wounds come from what did not happen: the comfort that never came, the emotions no one helped you name, the parent who was physically present and emotionally elsewhere. Growing up in a home that was chaotic, unpredictable, or frightening teaches a child’s nervous system lessons it never forgets on its own, that safety is temporary, that love has conditions, that your needs cause problems. Perhaps you remember specific events, or perhaps you mostly remember an atmosphere. Either way, if your adult life keeps producing the same painful feelings your childhood did, that is not coincidence, and it is not a character flaw. It is unfinished business, and it can genuinely be finished.
How Maria Works With Early Wounds
Childhood trauma sits at the heart of Maria’s specialization in complex trauma, and her treatment approach reflects that depth. EMDR therapy is central to the work. Recognized by the World Health Organization and the American Psychiatric Association as an evidence-based trauma treatment, EMDR helps the brain reprocess early memories and the beliefs they installed, I am not safe, I am too much, I am on my own, so they lose their present-day grip. Maria completed EMDR basic training in 2021, intermediate training in 2022, and Relational EMDR training in 2026, a variant particularly suited to wounds that formed inside relationships. Attachment-based work examines how your earliest bonds shaped your current templates for closeness, and psychodynamic exploration connects present patterns to their origins with a clarity that is often quietly life-changing. Somatic awareness matters here too, because childhood experiences live in the body, in the bracing, the shallow breath, the shutdown, long after the mind has filed the memories away. The work is paced carefully. Stabilization comes before processing, you control what gets approached and when, and nothing about this therapy requires flooding yourself in painful material to make progress.
Ready to Take the First Step?
Childhood Trauma Therapy sessions are held virtually, so you can meet with Maria from anywhere in New York or Massachusetts. Request a free 25-minute consultation to see if it feels like the right fit, with no commitment required.
What the Healing Process Looks Like
After a free 25-minute consultation, sessions run weekly, 50 minutes, over secure video anywhere in New York or Massachusetts. Early sessions build the foundation: your history at whatever depth feels manageable, your goals, and the regulation skills that make deeper work safe. Processing work with EMDR typically follows, targeting the experiences and beliefs that drive present-day struggles. Later phases consolidate change, helping you inhabit relationships and self-perception that are no longer organized around old danger. Be prepared for honest timelines: childhood trauma work usually spans many months, sometimes longer, and it is common for the most significant relief to build gradually rather than arrive all at once. Clients often describe early wins, the inner critic quieting, less dread around family contact, boundaries that hold, well before the deepest layers resolve. Grief is part of this work too, grieving the childhood you deserved and did not get, and that grief, moved through with support, is what finally makes room for something new.
Who This Therapy Is For
This work fits adults who look functional from the outside while carrying patterns they can trace, or suspect they can trace, to how they grew up: perfectionism, chronic guilt, people pleasing, difficulty trusting, depression that has no obvious present-day cause. It fits teens, 13 and up, still living close to difficult family dynamics who need support and skills now, not decades of accumulation later. It is especially right for people who have already done insight-oriented work, who can narrate exactly what happened to them and why they are the way they are, yet still feel the same triggers in their body, because that gap between knowing and feeling is precisely where EMDR earns its evidence base. You do not need dramatic memories to qualify. Emotional neglect leaves marks as real as more visible harms, and the persistent doubt about whether your childhood was bad enough is itself one of those marks. If your early years still shape your present in ways that hurt, that is enough reason to reach out, and reaching out is a strength, not an indulgence.
Childhood Trauma Support Across New York and Massachusetts
Doing this work virtually carries real advantages. You process difficult material from a space you control, whether that is a city apartment, a quiet room upstate, or your home anywhere in Massachusetts, and you skip the vulnerable transition of walking out of a therapist’s office and straight into a busy street. Sessions are available Monday through Thursday, 9 AM to 7 PM Eastern. Maria is an out-of-network (OON) provider who confirms coverage details with each client first, provides monthly invoices for out-of-network reimbursement, and maintains a fully AI-free practice, no recording, no AI transcription, so the most private material of your life stays exactly that. A free 25-minute consultation is where it starts, whenever you are ready.
Common Questions, Answered Directly
Can childhood trauma affect you as an adult without you realizing it?
Yes, and it usually does. Early experiences shape the nervous system and relational templates before conscious memory fully forms, so adults often live with anxiety, trust difficulties, perfectionism, or relationship patterns without connecting them to childhood. Therapy makes those connections visible, which is the first step to changing them.
Does emotional neglect count as childhood trauma?
Yes. Emotional neglect, growing up without comfort, attunement, or help understanding your feelings, produces effects as significant as more visible harms, including depression, chronic emptiness, and difficulty with intimacy. The absence of what you needed is as real a wound as the presence of what hurt you.
What is the best therapy for childhood trauma?
EMDR and attachment-focused approaches have strong evidence for childhood trauma because they work at the level where the wounds formed, memory, body, and relationship, rather than insight alone. Maria Boncyk, LCSW combines both in virtual sessions across New York and Massachusetts, with pacing designed for early and relational trauma.