Why Childhood Trauma is Still Affecting Me
(shouldn't I be 'over it' by now?)
Whether childhood trauma involves abuse, neglect, or emotional unavailability, the effects of those experiences often last years, even decades past when the traumatic events have ended. These experiences can affect our self-esteem, relationships, daily function, and our physical and mental health. Something we often misunderstand about trauma is that when the event ends, we expect the effects to also end. We expected to "get over it" the minute it's not happening anymore. Then we feel confused when the effects persist for years. Healing from trauma is possible, but it takes much more than the events simply ending.
Why Childhood Trauma Affects Us Years Later
Childhood trauma profoundly affects brain development - it activates the brain's survival mode, floods the body with cortisol and adrenaline, and keeps the child's brain and body on high alert for danger. The child also learns from trauma that attachments are not safe, so they must adapt to survive. The body remembers these signals like default settings and carries them into adulthood.
Ways childhood trauma may still be affecting you
In my years of working with people from trauma, the most common effects I've seen are these:
1. Don't know who they are or what they like
The child realized they were not accepted as they were, so adapted to survive by becoming someone or something that would be approved. The hard worker, the class clown, the A+ student, the extra parent, the quiet one. Whatever was demanded of them, they became. As a result, instead of getting to know themselves as a normal, healthy childhood development would include, they survived. The result is later becoming an adult who doesn't know who they are.
2. Feel like a child in a world full of adults
Childhood development involves experimenting, playing, taking risks. When the child is safe and supported in these explorations, they develop a sense of self - they get to know who they are, what they like, how to relate to others, etc. When the child is not supported in these explorations, their development can become stunted. Exploration halts and survival takes over. Later in adulthood, those developmental milestones can remain unaccomplished, leaving the adult 'behind' in comparison to their adult peers.
3. Low self-confidence
A child who experiences abuse, neglect or a lack of availability or dependability by their primary caregivers can develop low self-esteem. They internalize the abuse or neglect as a signal of their unworthiness of love or attention. This internal sense of shame often sounds like a message played in the mind; "I'm not good enough", "I don't deserve..." "I am not lovable" or "if they really knew me, they would leave / reject me". "I'm a bad [mom/dad/friend/daughter/son]
4. Relationship Difficulties
A person from childhood trauma often experiences challenges in relationships because they learned attachment is unreliable or even dangerous.Or they may have learned that their role is to serve or rescue others. In adulthood, this can manifest as codependent relationships, finding themselves in a chain of abusive relationships, or living out a pattern of giving to others who only seem to take and take.
5. Difficulty Regulating Emotions
Trauma in childhood often results in the child's emotions being dismissed, rejected or mocked. Emotions are not allowed. As a result, they can grow into adults who see their emotions as bad, embarrassing or a sign of weakness. Also, since they did not learn how to feel and regulate emotions as children, those skills can be absent in adulthood. Adults can then experience a lack of emotions (dissociation), sudden explosions of emotions (suppression) or fear emotions because of their unpredictability and not knowing how to regulate them.
6. Disconnection with the Body
Childhood trauma can cause emotions to be experienced as unbearably uncomfortable and even dangerous. Disconnecting from the body sensations that are connected to those emotions is a survival adaptation. People from trauma often experience a sense of betrayal or disgust toward their bodies. Additionally, research shows that long term stress demands on the body contribute to a variety of health challenges (ie: cardiovascular, autoimmune, gastrointestinal issues. (Courtois, Ford 2018)
Will It Ever Get Better?
The good news is that we can heal and recover from childhood trauma. Counselling is a big part of recovery and can help overcome its effects. Therapy can help create new ways of experiencing emotions, new ways of relating to people, and improved self-perception. How specifically therapy helps varies with the particular challenges being addressed, but one of the primary tasks in therapy when helping trauma survivors to regulate emotions is to first "overcome the phobia of emotions" and learn to recognized the "visceral sensations that accompany and signal them" (Courtois, Ford 2018).
Kim Rempel is a counsellor in Steinbach, Manitoba, specializing in trauma, anxiety and ADHD. She has worked in the mental health field with a focus on trauma for over 5 years. For more information, email here, or book a session here.
* This article is not intended to replace professional advice.
