What do I do about my childhood trauma?
If you've tried healing from childhood trauma yourself you've probably:
Read a load of books or listened to podcasts about childhood trauma
Tried meditating, exercising or yoga
Felt like a failure because you didn't feel better
So what's missing, how are you supposed to get past all of this and will it ever happen?!
In my experience, most clients are missing out a few critical steps.
Relationship
What do I mean by relationship?
Relationship means connection, friends who we can talk to about anything, a partner who cares about our feelings and our hopes and dreams. Families who don't laugh at us or remind us of things we found embarrassing or got wrong. These interpersonal relationships are critical to grow up feeling safe and accepted.
In childhood abuse, most clients were hurt by their mother or father, the two very people we are told will love us and treat us the best.
Traumatic childhood events commonly include physical abuse, domestic violence, emotional abuse or verbal abuse. For more information on the type of trauma that leads to childhood trauma and complex trauma click here:
People who experienced abuse in childhood often become very distrustful of others
This is normal; someone hurts us so we try and protect ourselves by becoming self sufficient and not relying on others.
The problem with this is that relationships could be a vast source of feeling accepted, offer a supportive environment, being validated, being remembered, noticed and feeling cared for. The effects of childhood trauma mean we miss out on a lot by trying to operate by ourselves.
We all need relationships, whether we're healing from trauma or not. We need support, we need to feel loved and valued. Hiding away from others or swearing off people doesn't repair what happened to us.
Shame
If you 'felt like a failure because you didn't feel better' the key words here are 'felt like a failure'.
Feeling like a failure happens when we feel shame, that we aren't good enough or we feel faulty or bad.
The pain of childhood trauma generates a lot of shame even in adult life. Most people don't know or realise this or the negative impact shame has on them. But they should. In the same way that fire generates heat, child trauma and the effects of trauma cause shame.
Feeling unloved or unwanted by your parents generates a lot of shame and affects the child's daily life. Childhood trauma survivors end up feeling like it's them that's the problem rather than seeing that their parents didn't have the resources, the understanding or the bandwidth to meet thier needs and feel connected to them.
The reason why I want people to know that childhood trauma causes shame is because many people wrongly assume that they are pathetic, disgusting or a loser.
They assume that when they feel shame the source must be them. They wrongly attribute the shame to themselves instead of seeing it as a byproduct of their experience.
Unreasonable expectations
People set unrealistic expectations for themselves in a few different ways:
By expecting perfection
By giving up after a few attempts
By being unkind to themselves when they make mistakes
By not believing in themselves
Consistency and practice is so important in recovering from childhood trauma but many people underestimate this.
It's not their fault; it's often the first two problems that combine to create the third.
The lack of support or trust in people mean that they don't have people who encourage them and cheer them on and the shame means they stop prematurely believing that there is something wrong with them rather than that they need more practice.
To talk to me about how I can help you heal your unresolved childhood trauma, set up a free 15 minute call here