How do you overcome childhood trauma?

Dear Ron,

The first step to engaging in healing from childhood trauma is to recognize what happened, how it makes you feel, and which aspects of the trauma experiences affect you now in your current life. Once you take the step to reflect on these three components it is beneficial to look into why things like abandonment issues, issues with trust, and people-pleasing emerge from traumatic experiences. A good place to start with this is to keep in mind that when a person experiences trauma their brain rewires to reflect the experience. If a child has caregivers who are not present during those crucial first years of childhood, a child might develop defense mechanisms to cope with this experience. These defense mechanisms might include things like dissociation (disconnecting from the present moment) and hypervigilence, which the brain puts into effect to protect the child from experiencing any further pain. The bottom line is that once a child learns that the people who are supposed to love and protect them actually hurt them, the possibility of other people doing the same thing to them throughout their lives becomes a reality.

Understanding the way that the brain rewires in relation to traumatic experiences helps people realize that what happened was not their fault and that the way the brain adapted to adjust to the experiences was done out of survival. The next important step is to develop greater awareness of trauma triggers. For example, some people find that there are certain tones of voice or nonverbal behaviors that they find triggering because it reminds them of aspects of their childhood trauma. If you are afraid that your husband will leave every time the two of you disagree on things, it is important for you to ask yourself why you feel this way. What is it about possible trauma triggers related to the interactions that you have with him that lead to you believing that he will leave?

Behaviors like people-pleasing and having your guard up emerge in response to your fight-flight-freeze-fawn response. When trauma triggers occur the sympathetic nervous system stimulates the fight-flight-freez-fawn response. This leads to people going into a fight mode that might lead to them becoming verbally aggressive or explosively angry. It also might lead to someone going into a flight mode where they just want to escape the situation in some way by avoiding the trauma trigger or source of conflict. If someone goes into the freeze mode they might end up shutting down emotionally and isolating themself from others. Then if someone goes into the fawn mode they might try to placate the other person involved in the conflict or trauma trigger by engaging in behaviors like people-pleasing.

A vital component to being able to change how you interact with others in relation to your history of trauma is to be able to notice when you are engaging in unhealthy relationship patterns. It is also important to keep in mind that people who have experienced trauma will sometimes seek out similar relationship patterns that might continue to perpetuate unhealthy relationship patterns, as it is common to feel wired to engage in interactions with people who feel familiar in some way. If you find yourself having porous or loose boundaries with others consider taking some steps to explore how you can work on forming healthier boundaries. The thing about boundary setting that is tough is that you just have to set the boundary regardless of whether or not another person will respect it or understand it. If a healthy boundary is necessary for you to set in order to heal from childhood trauma, then you need to set the boundary.

Healing from childhood trauma is a process. Some people find it helpful to utilize resources like books, podcasts, support groups, or individual therapy sessions to assist them with navigating this process. It is not a linear process since trauma triggers are sometimes unpredictable. The tough emotions linked to the traumatic experiences might not ever fully fade and that is okay too. I hope you find this information helpful as you brainstorm how to heal from your childhood trauma.

Best,

Jasmine