Emotional wounds can be very deep, especially if they occur during our childhood. Boys and girls do not have the appropriate tools to manage the problems that may happen to them, much less if they are events as serious as mistreatment or abuse.
Negative childhood experiences influence personality, so much so that in adulthood they can emerge in the form of psychopathology and symptoms such as stress, anxiety or social withdrawal, without the affected person knowing that it is due to an event from the past. that has not yet been managed.
In order to help people who may have experienced a traumatic event as children, today we are going to see the main characteristics of trauma in childhoodin the sense of how they manifest themselves in adulthood and what causes them.
What are the characteristics of childhood traumas?
There is no doubt that childhood is a vulnerable and determining stage. All the physical and psychological impressions received during the first years of life leave their mark on our personality, for better and worse.
Your brand is long-lasting, so if the impressions are negative, they will be experienced in a particularly distressing way. not only at the time in which they lived but also in adulthood. Particularly negative experiences during childhood can become childhood trauma.
What is childhood trauma?
A childhood trauma is an emotional wound as a result of a painful or distressing event experienced during childhood. These traumas are like wounds and can be more or less serious. This does not mean that certain traumas should be downplayed because, regardless of their severity, they will have a very negative impact on the personality and a whole process is required to overcome them as well.
Despite this reality, there are many people who come to psychotherapy saying that they are not worthy of calling their traumas that way. They feel that their suffering is not legitimate.
There are no real traumas or banal traumas.. All traumas must be repaired regardless of how serious they are. It is essential to teach those who express them to manage their emotions, to handle the painful memory of what happened to them as children and to know how to forgive themselves and others.
The effects of childhood trauma are long-lasting, but this does not mean that they cannot be overcome. In the worst case there will be some sequel, but there will be some improvement. It all depends on the severity of the experience experienced in childhood and whether adequate professional help is received to manage the emotions it awakens. You can have a full adult life, despite having suffered a traumatic childhood, although it will require therapeutic processes and deep personal development.
Childhood traumas cannot always be linked to obvious events from the past. Even when this is the case, what happens on many occasions is that the patients themselves are very resistant to bringing them to light, since doing so means breaking a lock, the one that they themselves placed on their memory as a defense mechanism. They left them cornered in some dark place in their minds, hoping they wouldn’t bother them again.
The problem is that, even if they don’t remember exactly what happened, their personality is disturbed by it. The bad memory, the trauma, is still there.
What are childhood traumas caused by?
There are many situations that can be experienced as traumatic and that have effects until adulthood. Some are more evident than others because they have more social recognition or are of interest in the media and through the legislative branch. Others, however, do not enjoy that weight of social recognition, even though they can also be very harmful.
Some examples of situations experienced in childhood that can crystallize in the form of trauma are:
Signs of childhood trauma
As we said, it is possible to have experienced trauma and not fully know it. You may have experienced a traumatic event in childhood that has left a deep mark on us and that it manifests itself in adulthood, but that we are not aware of it.
It may be that poor management of frustration, anger attacks, lack of self-esteem and other maladaptive situations are related to having experienced a traumatic childhood experience.
Some signs and symptoms that are related to having experienced childhood trauma are:
All of these signs are indicative of childhood trauma; However, it is interesting to go into greater detail about some of them that serve as defining characteristics of those who suffer from this type of experiences.
As we have commented before, There are many situations that can be experienced as traumatic, but all of them bring with them the same behavioral and relational patterns in the subject who has experienced them.characteristics which we explore in more detail below.
1. Inhibition and withdrawal
Withdrawal and inhibition are traits closely associated with people whose childhood has been difficult. They make their emotions and thoughts invisible, they do not show them to others for fear that it will be used as a weapon against them.. Withdrawn people find it difficult to reveal their inner world, they do not dare to express what they really think or do what they want. And they are also afraid of others.
We should not confuse this with introversion. There are people who are introverted and for that reason they are not very adept at social situations. However, this does not mean that they are afraid to say out loud what they think or feel. Just because they don’t rub shoulders with others doesn’t mean they don’t act with autonomy or say theirs when necessary.
Instead, When there are childhood traumas that have not yet been overcome, the person has the express desire to go unnoticed., not to attract attention for fear that she may be attacked. He is afraid of re-experiencing an experience that will cause another new trauma.
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2. Bad mood and frustration
Anger is one of the emotions most felt by those who have not yet managed their childhood traumatic experiences.. It is not that they are violent people, but they are angry with the world, a world seen as cruel and hostile. This also makes them have little tolerance for frustration and they appear very aggressive to others. It feels like they’re about to explode.
Their anger also expresses itself in the form of fickleness and frustration. They lose patience for certain things, starting things that, after a while, get tired, lose interest or get angry because it is not going the way they wanted. As a consequence, their academic and work performance may be affected, in addition to not performing well in work teams.
3. Self-esteem problems
People who have not overcome their childhood traumas usually have very low self-esteem, something evident in the form of a very exaggerated undervaluation of themselves. They feel very inferior to others and have a very low opinion of themselves. This often causes them to reject the compliments that others give them and even perceive them as attacks, sarcastic comments or ridicule.
The comment echoes in their mind that they are worthless and that if someone tells them they are, then they are lying. For this reason, they do not trust emotional reinforcements, words of admiration. For them it is a deception because they cannot understand that someone has a positive concept of them, based on the fact that they hate themselves.
4. Apparent overvaluation of themselves
It also happens that people who have experienced childhood trauma have an excessive appreciation of themselves, considering themselves superior to others. In reality, this is just a facade.. It is a defense mechanism to compensate for the poor opinion they have of themselves and to manage, using pathological mechanisms, the abuse or damage they received in their childhood.
Related to the previous points, people who have suffered childhood traumas that have not yet been overcome feel that neither their opinions nor themselves are worth anything. It is for this reason that, afraid of doing or saying something that is very wrong, thinking that they may unintentionally upset others, they apologize frequently. They apologize when they are going to speak, as if they have no right to express their opinion, or when they have to go somewhere. They apologize for everything.
This is a very notable characteristic of people with childhood traumas, a sign of having received a very restrictive upbringing. Their parents tended to humiliate them and show them few expressions of affection. This makes those harmed feel that they have to apologize for any action that gives them presence in the world.
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6. Flee or live from conflict
Most traumatic childhoods have developed in highly conflictive families. His childhood was marked by disagreements and aggressions, physical and verbal, from his mothers or towards him or her. Any word or act could trigger problems, punishments, recriminations or even humiliations, humiliations experienced in a particularly painful way. It is for this reason that people with this type of childhood can grow up with fear or fixation on conflict.
Those who fear conflict will constantly flee from it. In fact, They can go to the extreme of having to override their own convictions in order to avoid a contradiction.. On the other hand, what those who feel attracted to him do is turn any aspect of their life into one, turning the most innocent disagreements into authentic dialogic battles.
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The importance of psychotherapy
Childhood traumas are not going to resolve on their own. Very rarely do they disappear like magic. It is necessary to work with them, learn to handle them and manage the emotions they produce in us. Well, if we don’t do it, they will end up invading our personality, affecting us in all aspects of life. You cannot be happy or have emotional well-being if the past is relived over and over again in our minds and hurts us from within us.
Psychotherapy is essential to acquiring a better life, and people who suffer from childhood trauma are the best example of this. Only those who dare to take the step of visiting a psychologist and delve into the depths of their traumatic childhood to confront their personal demons manage to improve in life.
