Childhood is the life stage in which we are most sensitive to the influence of the environment and the way we relate to people.
Not only is it the time in which we begin to understand what the world is like and build our perception of reality on the foundations of that learning, but our brain develops at such a rapid pace that any small alteration in the way we how our neurons communicate can leave a mark… or emotional wounds that will be reproduced in the years to come.
And the impact that the environment has on us when we are children can be a change for better or worse. We already know the changes for the better: learning to read, move, communicate, perform operations, and everything related to basic education inside and outside of school. However, The changes for the worse, which will emerge in our adult lives, are already more difficult to identify.
The painful experiences that occur during our early years can become a confusing blur in our memory, so It is not easy to relate them to the unhealthy habits and behavior patterns of our adulthood..
This list of emotional wounds is a guideline for knowing how to identify those traces that could have left a mark on us years ago.
The basic form of painful experience is abuse based on physical or verbal attacks.. People who have suffered beatings or insults during their childhood and/or adolescence tend to be insecure during adulthood, although not necessarily shy. In many cases, a simple hand gesture can startle them and make them jump on the defensive.
This defensive attitude is not only expressed physically, but also psychologically: these people show a propensity to distrust, although they do not always express it with hostility but, sometimes, with polite reserve.
2. Constant insulation
Boys and girls who suffer from a lack of care can develop serious disorders when they reach adulthood, especially if their parents do not provide them with the necessary care. As we began to see through the studies of psychologists John Bowlby and Harry Harlow, Isolation during childhood is related to serious emotional and relational problems in adulthoodas well as with sexual dysfunctions.
3. Anxiety and fear of others
If isolation occurs in a more moderate way, its consequences in adulthood can come in the form of difficulties in social skills and intense anxiety when dealing with strangers or speaking to an audience of many people.
4. Fear of commitment
The fact of having established strong emotional ties that were then suddenly cut short It can lead to a fear of forming other romantic relationships.. The psychological mechanism that explains this is the strong pain produced by remembering what it is like to feel a strong affection for someone and spend a lot of time with this person: you cannot simply evoke those pleasant experiences that you had in the company without going through the influence of the others. memories about the loss of that bond.
Philophobia, or extreme fear of falling in love, is an example of this phenomenon.
5. Fear of rejection
Both neglect and abuse or bullying at school can make us feel predisposed to exclude ourselves from informal social circles. Being accustomed to rejection from an age in which we do not have the tools to understand that the fault is not ours makes us stop fighting to demand decent treatment, and the fear of rejection means that we do not even expose ourselves to receiving the evaluations of others. others. Simply, we spend a lot of time alone.
6. Disregard for others
Emotional wounds received during childhood can cause us to incorporate classic sociopathy behaviors into our way of behaving. Since there is a feeling that others have behaved like predators when we were vulnerable, We begin to incorporate into our thinking scheme the idea that life is an open war against others.. In this way, others become either possible threats or potential ways to achieve the desired objectives.
7. Dependency
Having been overprotected by parents or guardians makes us get used to having everything we want and that, upon reaching adulthood, we live in an eternal state of frustration. The most negative thing about this is that, to escape this frustration, we look for a new protective figure, instead of fighting to learn the behaviors necessary to gain autonomy over our own life.
It is a type of behavior typical of people who have been used to being capricious and demanding things from others.
Having been subjected to situations of exploitation during childhood, even if this consists of being forced to spend most of the day studying due to the demands of parents or guardians, makes one predisposed to being exploited in adult life. In this way, it is understood that the value of oneself as a person who sells one’s labor power is very low, and that this must be compensated through long periods of daily work.
In a context with a lot of unemployment, This can lead to professional stagnation.since there is a tendency to accept all the precarious jobs that are offered.
In addition, one begins to feel gratitude for the people who benefit from this exploitation, something that can be called satisfied slave syndrome.
