Childhood is not only the stage of life characterized by innocence; It is also the one in which we are more delicate, more susceptible to psychological damage. This is not an unimportant detail, taking into account that there are many experiences or life conditions that can be negative for vulnerable people without the ability to seek help outside the family.
Thus, the marks of a complicated childhood can continue to be noticeable when we have grown up and enter adulthood. However, that does not mean that we should resign ourselves to it. As much as the discomfort and anguish are unbearable at times, in most cases it is possible to significantly improve the way we live with that past. To contribute to this, below we will see some guidelines for overcoming a difficult childhood, as well as a reflection on how we should approach this task.
Some people talk about this sensation as if it were a kind of emotional hacking: the pain reaches us through the vulnerabilities of the past, even though we believe that if we had not gone through all that suffering, today we would be completely complete people and capable of all without dedicating much effort to it.
In other words, The traumatic events and anguish experienced during our first years of life not only robbed us of childhood, but also of adulthood. The stain of trauma constantly spreads as we try to flee into the future.
However, we do not have to be slaves to our past, even if it took place during childhood, the moment when we became aware of what the world is like. There is always a possible change, as we will see.
How to overcome a difficult childhood
You must keep in mind that each case is unique, and therefore, if you really suffer from your past, it is best to seek the personalized treatment that psychologists can give you in their consultation. However, in the short term you can use these tools that we offer below.
1. Learn about the effects of psychological trauma
This is important, since In most cases, there is an excessively deterministic conception of trauma that leans towards pessimism.
It is true that trauma can contribute to various emotional management and attention regulation problems as adults, but that does not mean that people who have had a difficult childhood systematically develop PTSD, nor that these types of experiences have to leave us necessarily marked.
In fact, even in cases of severe violence and abuse in childhood, there are many people who mature into adulthood without significant mental problems and without lower-than-expected intelligence.
What does this mean? That in many cases, people with a complicated past face states of discomfort generated by pessimistic life expectations based on a problem that is not there. That is why when it comes to overcoming a difficult childhood, it is necessary to be clear that all or a good part of that feeling of discomfort can arise from fiction.
2. Change social circles
As far as possible, We must try to stay away from people who made us feel bad in the past and who currently have no intention of helping us. In this way, situations that remind us of traumatic events will appear less frequently.
Breaking isolation is a good way to break rumination that is, the propensity to give in to recurring thoughts that end up becoming obsessions.
The good thing about having an active social life is that it helps you live in the present and get away from those memories that come back again and again. Building life in the here and now is a good solution to prevent the mind from filling that gap with elements belonging to past times.
On the other hand, after spending time in the company of friends and loved ones, it is not necessary to impose this strategy on yourself. And the memories that generate discomfort, no matter how intense they may be at first, can quickly lose strength if we get used to not invoking them frequently for several months in a row.
4. Take care of yourself
Many times, going through outrageous situations makes us automatically fix our idea of Self to all the discomfort and vulnerability suffered in the past. This can cause us to act as if we don’t matter at all, that is, we treat ourselves the same way life treated us. If these complicated situations appeared during childhood, there is also a chance that we have not known another version of ourselves other than the victim role.
To break this vicious cycle it is necessary to force ourselves to take our own well-being seriously. This involves eating well, exercising, practicing good personal hygiene and sleeping well, among other things. In other words, we must dedicate efforts to demonstrate to ourselves the potential that exists in ourselves, even if at first we do not feel like it.
In this way, those beliefs linked to one’s own self-image will change until self-esteem improves significantly and, with it, our expectations do as well.
5. Reinterpret the past
There is no single interpretation of our lives: no matter how hard we try, we never achieve an objective perception of things. This is especially true when, in addition to considering the facts, we take into account the emotions to which they are associated.
In fact, our memory works in such a way that memories constantly change. The simple fact of remembering something while we are in an intense emotional state can make the events we evoke more congruent with those emotions.
Knowing this fact can help us a lot to not blindly believe that we retain those painful childhood memories because the experience was real and caused us discomfort. Perhaps, we keep that memory because we have learned to associate it with negative moods, even going so far as to distort its content.
So, feel free to reinterpret the past without fear of unconsciously modifying it: the latter is inevitable, but we can prevent it from harming us emotionally.
6. Seek professional help
There are cases in which, no matter how much effort and effort is put into it, very little progress is made in overcoming the traumas and problems experienced in childhood.
This is not due to a lack of willpower, but to something much simpler: in the same way that these mental alterations emerge from the influence of our environment, to get out of that kind of emotional quagmire we need someone to help us from out. And that someone must be a mental health professional.
