The Sad Reason Why Childhood Trauma Is Holding You Back As An Adult
Mental health issues and behavioral patterns are clues that childhood trauma might affect you in adulthood.
Alex Bascuas, aga7ta, Tess Emily Seymour | Canva When you've experienced childhood trauma like abuse or neglect, it can lead to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as an adult.
Why does trauma in your childhood affect your adulthood?
The answer is simple: it lies in how the brain and nervous system encode memory. But, like many types of trauma, the simple answer is a bit…complicated.
To understand why your past traumatic experiences can affect your life as an adult, you first need to understand a few things about emotional pain.
First, how the brain and nervous system process memory. Second, about the nature of trauma.
The sad reasons why childhood trauma is holding you back as an adult:
1. The brain and memory are affected.
The brain’s memory roadmap starts when sights, sounds, smells, touch, and tastes enter your central nervous system (the brain and nervous system). They do this via sense organs like our eyes, nose, skin, etc.
This information is channeled to a brain structure called the thalamus, whose job is to relay information simultaneously onto two paths: the "fast" path to the amygdala (the brain’s alarm circuit, think of a smoke detector, and the "slow" path to the pre-frontal cortex (the conscious thinking part of the brain).
This "fast" path to the amygdala is important in trauma. This is because the amygdala is the body’s fear center (or smoke detector) that does several things. It interprets sensory information, attaches emotional significance, and allows your system to start preparing for potential danger before you even know what the danger is.
For example, think of a time when you were walking and saw a dark, long, thin object on a path. The amygdala determines a possible danger and sends signals to the hypothalamus. In turn, the hypothalamus sends signals to your autonomic nervous system (ANS) to prepare for the fight of flight. The ANS increased your heart and respiration rates and engaged your leg muscles to slow.
Only a bit later did the prefrontal cortex (the "slow” path) determine with the hippocampus, the brain’s collector of memories, that the object was a stick and not a snake.
Had the cortex determined the object was, in fact, a snake, the nervous system would have propelled a fight or flight or freeze response based on the memories the hippocampus has stored about encounters with snakes.
This last part is why childhood trauma affects adulthood.
2. Trauma affects memory
When you've been traumatized, the brain’s memory system can work a bit too well.
For example, 18-month-old Kate sees a new dog at the park and happily runs to it. The dog, not used to small children, tackles Kate and bites her. The wounds are significant and require surgery. In the hospital waiting room, Kate’s parents anxiously await the surgeon to come out. Her grandmother murmurs, "It’s lucky Kate is so young. She won’t remember what happened."
We’d like to believe Kate won’t remember the dog bite or be affected as she matures. Unfortunately, it often doesn’t work that way.
3. Implicit and explicit memory play a role
Kate sees no danger in this new dog because of her positive interactions with the family dog. Specifically, her amygdala has logged good experiences with the mental category of "dog". Kate doesn’t perceive the possible threat from this dog at the park. This is because, at 18 months, her hippocampus is only beginning to track, sort, and categorize conscious memories that include thought.
These thought-containing memories are called explicit or declarative memories.
Because she lacks an explicit memory that includes the thought "some dogs are dangerous," Kate goes with the happy impulse to run to the dog. That is, Kate acts only on procedural memory (also called implicit memory), which relies on instinctual or conditioned responses and emotional associations ("Doggy!").
How Kate responds to strange dogs in the future depends on how well her parents and other adults helped her nervous system contain and process this event. If the outside help is insufficient or not well-matched to Kate’s nervous system, she likely will have a fearful response to strange dogs in the future. Her fear is driven by procedural memory, though she won’t have a conscious memory of the attack.
Now, if Kate’s hippocampus is online and functioning (that happens sometime after 18 months, give or take), the brain will more likely have explicit memories that help inform how the body should react to threats in the here and now.
How Kate’s body "should" respond in the present is driven by how it responded the last time to survive the threat. So, in the future, Kate may freeze when she encounters a strange dog — just as her system froze during the attack.
This will happen even though present circumstances may suggest that fighting or fleeing might be more appropriate responses.
That is how the brain and nervous system form memory. Now, we can look at what trauma is. There are many ways to define it, but two stand out.
4. The cognitive definition of trauma has a part
In this definition, trauma is horrific, terrifying, or threatening, and a person doesn’t have an adequate frame of reference to make sense of it.
A good example is the experience of September 11, 2001, in the United States. While the coordinated attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the related downing of United Flight 93 were horrific events, they were not psychological traumas for the vast majority of the American people.
Why? In the days and weeks following the attack, people across America who were not directly affected by the events talked about it incessantly and collectively created a frame of reference for the event. To be clear, people at Ground Zero or those with pre-existing related traumas rightly experience 9/11 as trauma.
Now consider the nature of childhood, particularly early childhood. By definition, childhood is a time of not having an adequate frame of reference to make sense of the world. When things go as nature designed, parents, caregivers, and other adults help the child to make sense of their experience, creating frames of reference.
For example, think of a 2-year-old’s birthday party. The cake, blowing out the candles, singing the happy birthday song, the gifts — all are accompanied by smiles and laughter — and by explanation.
"Jack is two years old today. Yay! Let’s sing for the birthday boy! It’s your special day. Happy birthday, Jack!"
All those experiences and explanations work to contain the emotional experience. They also build a frame of reference — a mental category of "birthday" for the child.
In trauma, the event is generally not a happy one. Indeed, it is highly emotional and threatening. And those critical clues and all important explanations are not there or are inadequate.
For example, 8-year-old Rachel hears the harsh sounds of her parents fighting despite her closed bedroom door. The next day, after breakfast, Rachel’s parents tell her they have decided to divorce. They tell her, "Nothing will change, but Mom will live in a new place." Overcome by their own emotions, they share little else. Rachel asks to be excused and goes to her bedroom with certainty her parents’ decision to divorce is all her fault.
This painful experience mars Rachel’s mental category of "marriage." The explanations provided by her mom and dad were inadequate to help Rachel make sense of the event. Lacking an adequate frame of reference, Rachel’s brain comes to a default meaning: "It’s my fault."
These default meanings are always negative and about the self. It’s as though the brain lays a floor with the worst possibilities so any other meaning becomes possible.
5. The somatic (body) definition of trauma has a part
This definition of trauma addresses the physical aspect of trauma. Here, trauma is defined as something threatening that overwhelms the body’s ability to cope or defend itself in the moment. The trauma comes too fast, too soon, too much, or too … you fill in the blank.
For example, a car accident happens too fast and overwhelms the body’s responses to defend and protect itself. The body wants to get away from the threat but is trapped. Consequently, the body’s defensive and protective responses aren’t complete.
Instead, the thwarted survival energy of these motor patterns remains trapped in the nervous system, and, according to Peter Levine, the developer of Somatic Experiencing, underlies the symptoms and signs of PTSD.
To illustrate, let’s go back to the example of little Rachel. The divorce threatens Rachel’s world, her intact family, and her home. The event taps into survival physiology. Her parents, overwhelmed by their emotions, fall short of helping Rachel. Specifically, they don’t sufficiently help her nervous system contain and process the activation that the threat to survival is producing.
Short of sufficient containment and "digestion" of the survival threat, the energy of the thwarted fight/fight/freeze or submit responses lives as trauma in her nervous system. As Rachel becomes an adult and enters relationships, this survival energy of childhood trauma still simmers underneath, silently affecting adulthood. It exerts an often subconscious warning when relationships start to feel intimate: "Get away! It’s not safe!"
The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study shows the link between childhood trauma and illness in adulthood, whether physiological or psychological. If you’re uncertain if you had childhood trauma, you might want to consider taking the brief ACEs screening.
Mental health issues and patterns are clues that childhood trauma might affect you in adulthood.
6. Signs you have experienced childhood trauma
Chronic Anxiety or Depression
PTSD symptoms
Personality Disorders such as Borderline or Narcissistic
Dissociative Disorders
Substance Abuse or Dependence
Process addictions or compulsivities such as eating disorders, sexual addiction, etc.
Autoimmune Disorders
Unremitting patterns in relationships or other aspects of life such as work
Chronic sleep disturbances
Problems with anger management
Persistent feelings of shame
Self-harm, cutting, self-mutilation
If you realize that you've been affected by childhood trauma, what's your next step?
Childhood trauma resolution generally can’t be done on your own. Ignoring the trauma and other forms of overriding will usually just further entrench symptoms. Nor is childhood trauma something that responds very well to regular talk therapy.
Research has shown that body-based therapies are the most helpful in resolving childhood trauma affecting you in adulthood.
Find a therapist trained in one of these therapies that specifically addresses trauma:
- EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
- Somatic Experiencing (the touch element of SE can be particularly helpful for early, non-verbal childhood trauma)
- Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
- Somatic Trauma Therapy (the work of Babette Rothschild, MSW)
If you or somebody you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, there is a way to get help. Call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) or text "HELLO" to 741741 to be connected with the Crisis Text Line.
Jean Tschampa is a co-owner and principal therapist at Life Care Wellness, a group psychotherapy practice. She specializes in wellness, life transition, anxiety, and addiction treatment and is a Board Certified Coach and professional counselor.