How Does Childhood Trauma Affect Adulthood?
Traumatic events can significantly affect people in many ways, especially when they are experienced as a child. Childhood trauma can involve abuse, neglect, medical trauma, household challenges, environmental factors, social influences, or any traumatic event.
Trauma can lead to the development of psychological disorders like depression, anxiety, and PTSD. It can also influence a person’s attachment style, adult relationships, ability to trust others, and more.
Many types of psychotherapy can be helpful in healing from childhood trauma as an adult. You can begin therapy by seeking out a local therapist or matching with a licensed mental health professional through an online therapy platform.
What is childhood trauma?
Traumatic experiences don’t always offer an opportunity to feel your feelings. A child’s ability to understand their emotions is also limited due to developmental stages, and this can create lingering trauma reactions. Sometimes, the effects of childhood trauma may continue into adulthood, resulting in future relationship difficulties or struggles with self-identity.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
When a person experiences or witnesses something traumatic, they may develop PTSD as a result. PTSD can be defined as a trauma-related mental health condition that may develop after traumatic events. The disorder may not develop immediately following the trauma and can sometimes appear years later.
PTSD generally creates powerful, unwanted, intrusive symptoms that can affect your thoughts, mood, behavior, and overall comfort level. Many people with PTSD find that its symptoms impact multiple aspects of their lives, often causing severe functional impairment.
Repressed memories
Humans can go through something so traumatic that their brains block the memories to defend themselves. Trauma also tends to affect how you remember events. The concept of forgotten trauma and repressed memories can be controversial in the mental health community.
Still, a recent paper published in Scientific American suggests that brain imaging may lend some weight to the theory of forgotten trauma. As you grow older, you may start to recall previously forgotten memories or discover blocks of time you can't remember. However, memory can be notoriously tricky and subjective. It can be wise to be wary of false memories and speak to your doctor or therapist if you're concerned you may not remember events as they truly occurred.
Alcohol and substance use disorders
Childhood trauma can often lead to untreated mental health symptoms, and if you don’t have healthy ways to cope with the stress, it can be easy to turn to alcohol or substance use as an escape or avoidance coping mechanism. Children learn from watching their guardians and parents in many cases, so a child’s reaction to stress might evolve into substance use if this was something they were exposed to growing up.
What constitutes childhood trauma?
There can be many causes of childhood trauma, and the circumstances may differ for everyone. However, medical and mental health professionals have generally assembled a list of potential causes for childhood trauma and PTSD that may linger into adulthood.
Abuse
Children who experience physical, sexual, or emotional abuse are generally thought to have experienced childhood trauma.
Neglect
Emotional, physical, or financial neglect during childhood can be traumatic.
Medical trauma
Medical illnesses, frequent hospitalization, pain or injury, and medical procedures can be a form of childhood trauma.
Household challenges
Children who witness divorce, mental illness, domestic violence, substance use disorders, incarceration, or the death of loved ones are usually thought to have experienced childhood trauma.
Environmental factors
Natural disasters, homelessness, and poverty can all be a source of trauma for children.
Social influences
Racism, bullying, violence, and discrimination can also be considered forms of childhood trauma.
Exploring how childhood trauma and adverse childhood experiences can affect adults
Many people who have lived through childhood trauma can experience lifelong effects. Others may not experience any symptoms for years but may begin experiencing delayed reactions or repressed trauma symptoms as adults.
Attachment style
According to attachment theory, humans usually develop lifelong patterns for relating to others based on how their parents or caregivers met their physical and emotional needs during childhood and adolescence. Four attachment styles were developed based on the original 1940s theory.
Secure attachment
This attachment style usually results from caregivers consistently meeting the child’s physical and emotional needs. Those with a secure attachment style generally view themselves and others positively.
Preoccupied (anxious) attachment
Childhood care may have been inconsistent with alternating warmth and emotional distance. Those with this attachment style may view others positively while maintaining a negative view of themselves.
Dismissive (avoidant) attachment
Caregivers likely emphasized independence while meeting the child’s physical needs and maintaining emotional distance. Those with a dismissive attachment style may view themselves positively and others negatively.
Fearful (disorganized) attachment
A child’s parents or guardians may have failed to meet their emotional and physical needs. Abuse, trauma, or neglect may have occurred. Individuals with a fearful attachment style may view themselves and others negatively.
Attachment disorder
Children who experience abuse and trauma may develop attachment disorders, potentially making it difficult for them to form and maintain relationships with others throughout their lives. While attachment disorders are usually only formally diagnosed in children, many adults can experience unhealthy attachments and avoidance difficulties.
Adult relationships
One of the things children tend to learn from their parents or guardians is how to act with other people and what functional adult relationships should look like. However, if a child grows up in a dysfunctional home, they may not witness the kinds of behavior modeling that can teach healthy ways to act in a relationship.
Trust issues
Going through traumatic events as a child can lead to trust issues as an adult, especially if the trauma is related to abuse or neglect, in which caregivers who were supposed to safeguard them instead caused harm.
Mental health conditions
Studies usually show a significant link between childhood trauma and the likelihood of developing mental health conditions as adults. Children who experience trauma typically have a higher risk of developing various mental illnesses.
Emotional control challenges
Many children who experience trauma grow up to become adults living with PTSD and unresolved emotional issues that can make it challenging to control their emotions effectively.
Physical health challenges
Individuals who experience trauma in childhood may experience lasting effects on their physical health as well. Complex trauma symptoms can impact a person’s ability to manage their physical health and lifestyle. These distressing events may also lead to risky behavior like unprotected sex that could compromise their physical health.
How to heal from childhood trauma
Just as your childhood trauma may be a unique and individual experience, your path to healing from it will likely be specific to you. Recovering from childhood trauma can be a lengthy process that may leave you feeling worse before feeling better, but mental health is often an area that requires you to “trust the process.”
Talk therapy can offer the support and guidance of an expert in mental health to help you examine your past experiences and how they may relate to your current emotional state. Working with a licensed therapist can help you learn practical coping skills to manage your symptoms and process your unresolved feelings. You can also build your communication skills to learn how to express your emotions and needs in a healthy, effective manner. Types of therapy that may prove to be helpful can include the following:
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)
Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT)
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR)
Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET)
Prolonged Exposure Therapy
Benefits of online therapy
Many people who experience childhood trauma can develop mental illnesses and experience symptoms that affect their adult lives. If you’re having trouble controlling your emotions and managing the effects of various symptoms, consider working with a licensed therapist online through a virtual therapy platform. It can often feel more comfortable to speak about traumatic childhood experiences in the comfort of your own home, rather than in an unfamiliar environment like a therapist’s office.
Effectiveness of online therapy
Information from recent studies show that online trauma-focused therapy typically offers similar outcomes to in-person treatments, often at lower costs with shorter wait times. If you’re continuing to experience the negative impacts of childhood trauma, please don’t hesitate to reach out for the professional help you deserve.
Takeaway
How does unresolved childhood trauma affect adults?
Childhood trauma can include things, such as witnessing neighborhood violence, surviving a natural disaster, neglect, and experiencing emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. Childhood trauma can have have lasting impacts that extend into adulthood, including:
- Insecure attachment style: People who experienced child abuse or other traumatic events are more likely to experience insecure attachment styles (avoidant, anxious, or disorganized).
- Avoidant attachment may lead to insecurity, fear of intimacy, feeling as though you’re in survival mood, distancing yourself from loved ones, and feeling a deep need for indepence.
- Anxious attachment is characterized by a fear of rejection, clinginess, anxiety, romanticization of partners, and approval-seeking behaviors.
- Disorganized attachment may include trust issues, low self-esteem, fear of emotional intimacy, suspicion of others, difficulty controlling emotions, desiring either extreme closeness or distance from people.
These attachment styles can make it difficult to form healthy relationships.
- Depression: Adults who experienced four or more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are 460% more likely to experience depression, and 12 times more likely to attempt suicide.
- Low self-esteem: Childhood trauma impacts a child’s sense of themselves, and their ability to control emotions. Multiple studies have found that childhood abuse can negatively impact adult self-esteem and make emotional control more difficult.
- Trust issues: Past trauma can lead to distrust that extends into adulthood. Many who’ve experienced trauma also perceive others as threatening, even when they are not making negative emotional expressions.
- Substance use: Substance use disorder is strongly correlated with complex trauma in childhood. Substances may be used to numb painful emotions or distract themselves from their symptoms. Other mental disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety disorders, are also common in trauma survivors.
- Chronic illnesses: There is a graded relationship between the number of adverse childhood experiences someone has and their risk of chronic diseases (such as heart disease, cancer, and chronic lung disease). This means that the more someone was exposed to trauma as a child, the greater their likelihood of experiencing chronic physical health challenges in adulthood.
How do I know if I had trauma as a child?
Sometimes, people do not recognize that a childhood experience was traumatic, or they may repress the traumatic memory entirely (whether memories can truly be repressed is debated by psychologists). If you believe you may have experienced traumatic events in your childhood, you may notice some of the following signs:
- There are periods of your childhood after age three that you cannot recall
- You use avoidance to escape things that make you find triggering
- Experiencing a flood of intense negative emotions when you encounter a trigger (such as a certain person, smell, place, or sound)
- You have trust issues or an insecure attachment style, which may lead to repeatedly entering unhealthy relationships
- You find it very difficult to stay focused, and you may experience poor performance at your school or workplace
- You surround yourself with harmful friends or partners, engage in self-destructive behaviors, neglect your needs, or harm others
- You’re using substances or self-harm to cope with negative emotions
- You have low self-esteem, a lack of healthy boundaries, a need for validation from others, or a sense of shame
- You experience emotional volatility, high stress, and overwhelming fear
Psychologists measure these 10 Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) which constitute different types of trauma that can impact you in adulthood:
- Physical abuse
- Sexual abuse
- Emotional abuse
- Physical neglect
- Emotional neglect
- Family member with a mental illness
- Family member with substance use disorder
- Divorce
- Exposure to domestic violence against your mother
- An incarcerated relative
Can childhood trauma cause problems later in life?
Yes, childhood trauma increases the risk of mental and physical health challenges in adulthood. However, that doesn’t mean that people who’ve experienced trauma cannot get better. There are many strategies that can improve your mental and physical health, including:
- Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT): Research has repeatedly found that CBT is an effective psychotherapeutic approach for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). During sessions, therapists use a variety of techniques to help clients evaluate distorted thought patterns and learn healthier coping skills.
- Support groups: People who’ve experienced trauma may feel isolated, shameful, distressed, or closed off. Support groups can provide a network of individuals with similar experiences and advice for coping with the challenges of childhood trauma.
- Self-care: Practices such as eating a nutritious diet, getting regular exercise, prioritizing sleep, meditating, and building a network of social support can improve both mental and physical health.
- Medications: In some cases, survivors of childhood trauma may benefit from pharmacotherapy. Oftentimes, prescribed medications include antidepressants (especially SSRIs), mood stabilizers, sleeping aids, and anticonvulsants.
What does unhealed childhood trauma look like?
When childhood trauma goes unaddressed, it is often compartmentalized–a mental process in which you dissociate from traumatic memories, like placing them in a box that you pack away. Compartmentalization can be a conscious or unconscious process.
Unaddressed trauma can lead to intense physical and emotional reactivity, or a sense that the threat is still present. The following are symptoms of compartmentalized trauma:
- Hypervigilance, “jumpiness,” or always feeling on guard
- Denial of trauma
- Rationalizations of harmful behaviors
- Difficulty trusting others or communicating your feelings with them
- Dissociation, or feeling disconnected from yourself
- Feelings of worthlessness, shame, guilt, or low self-worth
- High emotional reactivity
- Physical symptoms, such as high blood pressure, nausea, migraines, muscle tension, or gastrointestinal issues
- Insomnia or nightmares
Though it may initially seem easier to pack away trauma rather than address it, trauma typically will not heal until it has been processed.
What happens when childhood trauma goes untreated?
When left untreated, childhood trauma can lead to physical changes in the brain, specifically the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex. These changes can cause hyperactivation of the “flight, fight, or freeze” response, reduced hippocampus function leading to reduced short-term memory, and difficulty controlling emotions and thoughts.
People who’ve experienced unaddressed childhood trauma are more likely to engage in risky behaviors, have unhealthy relationships, use substances, and experience chronic illnesses.
How do you know if you are traumatized?
In some cases, abuse doesn’t lead to serious psychological injury (trauma). You’re less likely to develop a posttraumatic stress disorder when:
- You were able to escape the threat. For example, you may be less likely to develop trauma if you were able to run away from a perpetrator, rather than being physically or psychologically trapped in a threatening situation
- You are able to discuss the experience soon after it occurs
- You used cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) after traumatic exposure
If an experience left you with lasting trauma, you may experience symptoms like:
- Startling easily and feeling “on guard”
- High emotional reactivity, irritability, and difficulty controlling emotions
- Feeling fearful of others or a need to appease other people
- Difficulty being vulnerable around others, or finding yourself becoming overly attached (clingy)
- Challenges with school, work, or other responsibilities
- Experiencing an overwhelming sense of guilt or shame
- Experiencing flashbacks or emotional flooding
- Sleeping issues, such as insomnia or nightmares
Do I have trauma or am I overreacting?
Trauma includes any events that culminate in psychological injury, meaning your sense of safety and security in the world is severely damaged. Whether a situation leads to trauma depends on many factors, including your genetics, the environment in which you were raised, your personality traits, and whether you were able to seek support and validation from loved ones (called “containment”).
If an experience leads you to feel overwhelmed, isolated, and fearful, you may have developed trauma. Trauma is an emotional response beyond an individual's control. It is not an overreaction.
Why is childhood trauma so damaging?
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), children who’ve experienced trauma may have learning difficulties, mental health issues, physical health issues, and increased interactions with child welfare services and juvenile justice systems.
Childhood trauma can be more damaging when abuse is perpetrated by a caregiver or there are multiple instances of abuse. When a caregiver is abusive or neglectful, children often become self-reliant and fearful of others, believe that they are bad or deserving of mistreatment, and view the world as frightening and dangerous. Trauma can impair brain development, nervous system, and immune system functions.
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