How do I test for childhood trauma?

UPDATE: I now have an actual questionnaire which you can try here

You might have assumed until recently that you had a happy childhood and tried to ignore your concerns or mental health issues. Some people seem to manage ok for decades until they reach a tipping point and then feel like they’re unable to cope. It can be confusing to feel like ‘you were ok’ and now you’re not as if you’ve broken some spell which can’t be recast.

Or maybe you’ve always known that your childhood was chaotic and painful. Sometimes there’s no hiding the discrepancies between what you saw everyone else living and what it was like at your house. You may have been all too painfully aware that other people did not live like you and faced the exhaustion of pretending you were ok. It’s common for me to hear from clients, that despite asking relatives, police or social services for help that people were disbelieved or failed on multiple occasions.

You may also have tried therapy in the past and felt let down by what you got. Listening can be helpful up to a point, but many people experience cold, uncaring or absent parents and can find it upsetting or triggering to talk and get nothing back in therapy. Although the intention can be to give you space and listen, for children who were ignored it can feel like screaming into the wind. Repeated attempts to get something back but feeling like you didn’t get it right because yet again you didn’t get what you needed.

If you’ve just started researching childhood trauma, you probably have a lot of questions.

• What is a traumatic childhood?

• Is there a test for childhood trauma?

• Can you get PTSD from childhood trauma?

• Why is my childhood trauma coming back now?

• How does therapy for childhood trauma help?

What is a traumatic childhood?

As people understand trauma better, the idea that trauma is not just about war and not necessarily just about violence is filtering down to society. However, I still think that trauma is largely misunderstood by the general population and I’ve heard ad read damaging and dismissive ideas about trauma (sometimes even from medical or mental health professionals). It’s therefore important to talk to people who listen non judgmentally and who listen to your perspective. Anyone who is dismissive, or who is more interested in telling you what to do that hearing about what you are struggling with should be taken with a pinch of salt.

If you’d like to read more about types of childhood trauma, you can do that here, please be aware that you may find descriptions of trauma triggering and stop reading if you feel overwhelmed or uncomfortable.

ACE study for childhood trauma

You might have heard of the ACE (adverse childhood experience) study which was created in 1995 and attempted to record instances of abuse, neglect or other problems experienced in childhood. The questionnaire covered experiences such as divorce, addiction and parental absence as well as sexual, emotional and physical abuse and neglect. It is generally recognised today, that there are far more factors involved in childhood trauma that those outlined in the original study.

Racism for example, does not feature in the study but is incredibly traumatic. It’s possible to score no ‘ACE’s’ according to the original study, be born into a loving and supportive family, but be incredibly traumatised in childhood by racism at school or in the community.

Childhood emotional neglect (CEN)

The nuances of emotional abuse and emotional neglect or childhood emotional neglect (CEN) are also largely missing from the study. Being ignored does not feature but can be incredibly damaging. Many shadowy behaviours which can be difficult to describe such as ‘knowing not to discuss certain topics’ ‘being expected to behave in a certain way’ despite not being told to are behaviours that are all too familiar in dysfunctional families but can be hard to pin down or explain to others who have not experienced it.

Additional issues such as tone of voice, lack of positive feedback, not feeling welcome, feeling unwanted, not having anybody be pleased to see you or spend time with you or having a dismissive or uncaring parent do not appear on the questionnaire but all have profound effects on someone’s self esteem, how they feel about themselves and their resilience in life.

It can be hard to put your finger on issues you don’t understand, or to explain these issues to others who don’t understand. You can end up feeling crazy, hysterical, delusional or as if you are exaggerating, oversensitive or melodramatic. And you might have been told these things either directly or indirectly which can exacerbate the problem and cause you to doubt yourself. It can be complex to quantify the effects of these behaviours.

Is there a test for childhood trauma?

There isn’t a definitive test used to identify childhood trauma.

Trauma is subjective, this means that different people might experience the same situation in different ways.

Trauma is normally described as a situation that was overwhelming in some way, and where you did not receive the required help or support. It may have been overwhelmingly scary or upsetting and it’s likely that you felt alone or unable to tell someone who would help you.

So if your parents got divorced but they were good at communicating in age appropriate terms, what would happen and you felt safe and loved with both parents, and they didn’t expect you to act as a go between and they took appropriate care of you, you may have been sad that they were splitting up but it may not have felt traumatic.

In a different scenario, a divorce may have meant the more ‘chaotic’ parent became your sole carer for some or all of the time. A parent who didn’t feed, clothe you or protect you will have left you feeling vulnerable and alone for some or all of the time. This is very likely to have been traumatic for you i.e. your capacity to cope with the situation was overwhelmed by the demands of the situation in simple terms you didn’t have the resources to deal with the situation (and of course as a child someone should have ensured that you were ok and helped you).

Can you get PTSD from childhood trauma?

Yes, you can get PTSD from childhood trauma.

PTSD from childhood trauma is also known as Complex PTSD or CPTSD. It can be responsible for many different symptoms such as:

Feelings of self hatred or being disgusting

Feeling unworthy or not good enough

Suicidal thoughts

Difficulty trusting or connecting to others

Difficulties with romantic relationships as an adult

Emotional flashbacks (feeling as if you are reliving a past situation or experiencing ‘disproportionate’ responses to a current situation)

Nightmares

Chronic pain or unexplained illnesses such as IBS or migraines (with no medical cause found)

Not all of the above are indicators of childhood trauma and may be caused by other factors or experiences. You can find out more about CPTSD here

Why is my childhood trauma coming back now?

Conversely, people can experience a resurgence of memories or emotions relating to childhood trauma when their situation improves, they leave the family home or cut contact with abusive family members. This can be confusing and disorienting.

We don’t always have the time or space to examine what happened to us until we are away from the situation. You spent your time surviving what happened to you and dealing with it the best way you knew how. Up until this point you may have cut off from emotions, used drugs or alcohol to cope or simply put your head down and got on with it. Experiencing safety for the first time either through a stable relationship, having enough money or food, feeling safe from violence can be triggering as it can cause us to compare then with now and remember past experiences.

My children are triggering my childhood trauma

Having children can be triggering for many reasons:

As children go through different ages and stages and reach the age of traumatic events that the parent experienced this can retrigger trauma in the parent. So if you were bullied at school from the age of 8, your child reaching the age of 8 can cause your buried memories to resurface.

You may start to compare the parenting you received (or didn’t receive) as a child with your attempt to parent your children. This can cause you to struggle with emotions that resurface or remind you of things you had forgotten. You might find your relationships with your family change as you parent your children.

You might realise that you don’t have the tools to parent how you would like to or that you’re acting in ways you said you wouldn’t as you don’t know how to respond differently. So if you’ve said you would never hit your children but you don’t have the tools to manage your own sadness and anger, you might find yourself resorting to hitting your children even though you said you wouldn’t.

I don’t know if my childhood was traumatic

Clients often imagine that there is some kind of threshold required to speak to a therapist. Society perpetuates this idea by treating what it considers severe issues and dismissing others. In an ideal world we would take everybody seriously and help them to feel supported and heard, of course in terms of funding it is not always possible to access help on the NHS.

If you feel like your childhood was traumatic then something was either missing or badly wrong and you have every right to get help for this. You don’t need a diagnosis to access private therapy in the UK.

Therapy for childhood trauma

Therapy helps people to untangle what happened to them and organise it in their heads. It helps them to start believing their own experiences and the impact that it had on them. It helps them to separate their own thoughts from their family beliefs and rules. It helps to repair some of the damage done by offering a new and safe experience of being listened to and believed.

If you believe you have suffered childhood trauma or feel as if your childhood was difficult or is affecting you as an adult, this is enough to get support. Although it is important to get the right help, this does not always mean that you will need a diagnosis.

I am happy to help you find a medical professional to support you should you require additional medical assistance such as medication alongside therapy.

If you’d like to find out how I can help, you can book a free 15 minute call to discuss therapy here