Six Signs Your Childhood Trauma Is Holding You Back

Children need effective and consistent care during childhood. Poor care or lack of it, causes the “hidden epidemic” of adults suffering from childhood trauma. Research shows that 53% of the worldwide population grew up in a dysfunctional environment and that childhood trauma triggers a variety of life impeding issues.

These adults use the same tactics they adopted to survive adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) such as keeping secrets, living in chaos, freezing their feelings and normalising abuse. Suppressing their sense of loss and abandonment, they lived life in denial. Now adults, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally they are still “living” in their childhood environment: they are adult children.

Let’s explore the six signs of childhood trauma that may be holding you back:

Money

In his book “How to get out of debt, stay out of debt and live prosperously”, Jerrold Mundis stated that the majority of adults who could not handle money properly, grew up in a dysfunctional household.

The compulsion to spend money recklessly, or hoard it to the extreme of inflicting physical and emotional damage, is driven by a need to smother one’s feelings of low self-worth.

In my case, I accumulated £350,000 of debt in an attempt to achieve personal success. I wanted to gain the prestige and adulation of the world, that so far, had eluded me. It wasn’t until things started getting out of control, (bailiffs threatening to repossess my properties, losing a good friendship over a loan I could not repay, having the bank put a lien on my salary) that I realised I had problems.

Finding out that my behaviour with money was linked to my childhood trauma was shocking. In my childhood home, there were constant arguments about money, and this inflicted psychological damage on me and my siblings. Consciously, I wanted money. Subconsciously, I saw money as the reason I did not receive love from my mother, so I pushed it away.

Intimate Relationships

Do you say ‘yes to sex’ when you want to say no? Do you like bad boys/girls? Are you into drama and constant disappointments? Are good relationships boring?

Growing up in dysfunctional households causes adults to identify themselves as being unworthy of love, as objects of hate. In a desperate attempt to avoid feeling abandoned and alone, you trade in your innate need to be valued and loved. At home you would hide from your primary caregiver’s anger and then reach towards them for attachment (which was denied).

Adults, who suffered trauma as a child subconsciously love from a position of fear and mistrust. After all, fear was the main emotion experienced in their childhood. This lack of a healthy relationship with your primary caregiver causes you to subconsciously sabotage your adult relationships.

Work

Relationships at work represent another scenario where you relive the issues faced at home as a child. Subconsciously, your workplace becomes your childhood home and your colleagues play the role of your siblings and caregivers. If any of them resemble your source of trauma as a child, negative emotions surface and your professionalism deteriorates.

In my case, just as I did as a child caring for my siblings and family members, I worked long hours in an attempt to look super responsible, I wanted to be the perfect employee. In reality, this behaviour was a cover for my feelings of low self-esteem. However, it drove people away from me as they felt they could not match up.

Colleagues would call me “superwoman”, but they wouldn’t invite me to their parties and left me out of their social circle. This reinforced my feelings of unworthiness, and made me feel just like I had as a child. In search of some form of comfort, I would shop.

Suppressed feelings will always find a way to rise to the surface.

Food

Madeline has had a life-long battle with her weight and overeating. Her father was an alcoholic, a drug addict and a gambler. Her mother was left with very little funds to run the household. Madeline became a lecturer to please her mother, who had wanted to teach, but wasn’t able to due to her husband demanding she stay home to cook his dinner. Despite her job as a lecturer, Madeline still felt like an underachiever, always striving to do more – to be more.

Since she never felt fullfilled in any area of her life and was always looking beyond what she had achieved, Madelaine often turned to food whenever she felt overwhelmed.

Procrastination

Procrastination is the inability to make a decision and follow through. This is a major issue for children who experienced childhood trauma, which left them wounded emotionally and physically.

Research shows that childhood trauma damages the physical structure of the brain and this has a direct link to procrastination. Teicher et al (2000) found that people who had experienced ACEs had a smaller brain than those who had not. Further, their brain lacked connectivity in the corpus callosum, the thick band of fibre that links the intuitive left and the logical right brain together.

He found that one of the symptoms this lack of brain connection resulted in was the tendency to think in black and white, or be emotionally sensitive or insensitive. Another words, to live at one extreme or the other.

The act of procrastination is to exist at either end of the wholesome-life scale, either doing too much and getting exhausted or not doing it at all: invariably also due to a lack of self-belief.

Addictions

Along with ACE studies, further research suggests that childhood abuse can lead to a variety of detrimental behaviour, as individuals search for some some kind of relief from their daily suffering. These behaviours are often practised to excess and some of the most common are overspending, alcohol/substance abuse, workaholism, self-harm, depression, and the list goes on.

Teicher et al also found that “adult children” had significantly higher brain-wave abnormalities than “non-adult children”. The area of the brain responsible for emotional maturity (the limbic system) has been found to be particularly affected amongst those who experienced childhood trauma.

Childhood trauma affects the developing brain in ways that result in emotional, social, and cognitive impairments, and for a significant amount of the population is the reason behind addictions, depression, suicide, and a variety of other problems. You may have left the family home but its effects live on within you.

Bio

Your Invisible Enemy, Your Invisible Power by Loreen McKellar is published by Clink Street and available wherever you buy your books.