‹ Back

How Childhood Trauma Shapes Adulthood & the Path to Healing

 

When we hear the word ‘trauma’ we often assume it should be something Big; but the reality is trauma cannot be measured by the incident itself but by the impact it leaves on the individual. It doesn’t matter how big or small that incident was; how long and intensely it affected one is the point of concern here. When it comes to childhood trauma, we can often misunderstand those as silly or insignificant when we view those incidents with our adult eyes. Yeah, many people have Big traumas that are called big T traumas, but many don't. They don’t remember anything drastically bad happening in their childhood, but they can still have small T traumas. These can be created simply when a parent leaves the child at home and goes out, or the mood shift of the parent, or just denying them something for their own good. And these wounds get bigger with repetition. These are nothing, but as a child, our brain was not developed enough to understand basic human limitations. Now, knowingly or unknowingly, we are all carrying that baggage of traumas with us. The baggage of childhood trauma holds us back from thriving in life. It keeps us stuck in a loop of survival. And in survival, we are busy saving our lives; creation is out of the picture in that state. We get busy saving our lives from danger; how can we think about creating something? There will be no space for that. We can also manifest autoimmune diseases from trauma like IBS, fybromalgia, 

 

I spent almost my whole life in survival mode. My digestion system got seriously messed up because my nervous system was always in the sympathetic state. Our nervous system gets into that sympathetic state when our fight or flight response gets activated after perceiving a threat. Usually it is supposed to stay in the rest and digest state, which is called the parasympathetic state of the nervous system. But when a kid doesn’t feel safe in his/her own home, they feel threatened by their parents, caregivers, or surroundings. It could be because their parents are absent or unpredictable; they may lash out anytime, anywhere, for any reason; or maybe they are addicted or alcoholic; or maybe one parent is abusive and another one makes the child a support system by giving his/her baggage of trauma to the kid. Any of those situations is enough to make a kid feel he/she is in some kind of life-threatening danger. Because as a child, they are entirely dependent on their parents; pleasing them or coping with them is a matter of survival for a child. That home is their whole world; they will suppress anything and everything that is not accepted in that home just to survive.

 

So if a kid sees any activity is not being accepted by their parents, they shrink down that part within themselves, and when they get rewarded or appreciated for an activity they are doing, they learn to do that more and more. It doesn’t matter anymore who they are meant to be, what their unique qualities are, or what they feel like doing spontaneously. They disconnect from their authentic selves to survive. Their authentic self is their instinct, their playfulness, but when they are not accepted as their authentic self, their existence feels threatened, and they disconnect just to survive. And keep on living a life that was never theirs to live in the first place. They get stuck in this survival mode and keep on living like this without even realizing it. As adults, they are not in danger anymore. They are free to do whatever they want or be whoever they want, but they themselves don’t know who they are anymore. Their authentic selves have been long lost in childhood. 

 

That is how we came here—living an epidemic of people who are disconnected from themselves, sleepwalking through life, trying to fill that void inside themselves with anything (money, success, attention, addiction, approval) but love. We feel lonely; we crave attention, love, and validation outside of ourselves. We are just replicating that wounded child within us who has learned it can only survive with other people's approval. We feel unworthy of love; deep inside we believe we don’t deserve to be loved and accepted as we are. But that is a false belief; that is faulty programming that we have learned as children. 

 

Now the question is, what’s the solution? Or is there any solution? We can’t change our past; we can’t go back and alter anything. Then what can we do? 

 

The good news is we are not doomed for life. We can reconnect to our authentic selves and start living the life we are meant to live in this world. We can heal ourselves. And healing begins with awareness, with the acknowledgement of the existence of our wounds. This can seem difficult sometimes because we will have to accept the reality of our parents. But here is a disclaimer: Accepting or acknowledging your childhood trauma doesn’t make your parents bad people; it just makes them human beings. Like any other human being, our parents also got traumatized in their childhood and adulthood and also carried generational traumas from their parents and ancestors. 

 

Being self-aware doesn’t mean blaming them for all our miseries and doing nothing about it. As mature adults, our life is our responsibility now, and our healing is also our responsibility. With knowledge about these things, we are one step ahead. We have the opportunity to heal ourselves and not pass this generational curse to our next generation. Blaming anyone or anything just takes the power away from our hands. The moment we start blaming, we are not in the drivers seat of our lives anymore. Denying your childhood traumas (no matter how insignificant it seems now; it was your reality as a child) will keep you stuck in that loop of trauma response. You will continue to feel the same way and attract similar people or incidents in your life. Changing your outer world begins with changing yourself from within. As Dr. Joe Dispenza says, ‘To change your personal reality, you need to change your personality.’

 

On the other hand, loving and respecting your parents doesn’t mean you have to keep tolerating their dysfunctional behavior for life. Remember, as an adult, your life is your responsibility? We can’t control how other people behave, but we can control our behaviors and actions. Learn to set healthy boundaries for yourself to protect yourself. You deserve to live a life that you want to live; you deserve to make your own choices. Just because they are your parents doesn’t mean you have to please them all your life and take every step thinking it may upset them. 

 

Recognizing yours and your family’s dysfunction and consciously choosing not to mingle in it is how you break the cycle of generational trauma. Awareness breaks cycles; remember that you can never be aware and repeat patterns at the same time.

 

We are not broken, flawed, or anything like that. On the contrary, this is the journey of our life. Maybe we were meant to get lost and learn again how to come back home to ourselves. We were meant to make this huge shift in consciousness and heal ourselves; we were meant to heal ourselves and get rid of those burdens. Otherwise, how would we realize how powerful we are? Right!