Overcoming Childhood Trauma:

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Childhood trauma is far more common than most people think. The burden of it is often carried in silence. Even the victims may not realize how scarred they are. These scars may last long into adulthood, and those who suffer from them may not believe they can be erased. However, they can with the correct support, guidance, and commitment. Treating childhood trauma is necessary because it adversely affects our relationships, mental and even physical health, and overall well-being.

This is a comprehensive guide to understanding and resolving childhood trauma. It’s time to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma so that we can be the best version of ourselves and cut our ties to the transmission of trauma behaviors that have been passed down through the generations.

Understanding Childhood Trauma and Its Impact on Adult Life

Broadly speaking, the effects of trauma can range from physical and emotional abuse to neglect and witnessing violence or any traumatic event. The emotional, psychological, and even physical scars that are left continue to affect our lives adversely if left unresolved.

Specifically, difficulties in relationships at work and home in the family are often a result of unresolved childhood trauma. It is so important to understand early childhood trauma and just how long it can affect us.

Common Ways Adults Experience the Impact of Childhood Trauma (examples)

• Pressure to please others (root cause: having a high-achieving parent, often disappointed)
• Efforts to avoid conflict (root cause: having a controlling parent)
• Difficulty with confidence (root cause: often an emotionally abusive parent)
• Stress from authority figures (root cause: often comes from having an overbearing parent)
• Difficulty setting boundaries (root cause: can often be from having an intimidating parent)
• Struggle to receive feedback (root cause: often from having a highly critical parent)
• Impostor Syndrome (root cause: parent questioned trustworthiness, competence, reliability, and/or follow-through)
• Difficulty enjoying life (root cause: overbearing parent, never/rarely satisfied in life)

As you might imagine, experiencing childhood trauma can have a profound impact on a child’s development and well-being. Understanding the different types of childhood traumas and their effects is essential in determining the most appropriate interventions and support measures. Identifying the particular traumas you have experienced allows you to confront the distinct challenges they pose and initiate your journey toward recovery.

Long-Term Effects of Traumatic Childhood Experiences

What are the possible long-term consequences of traumatic childhood experiences? There’s a wide variety of effects of childhood trauma.

• Increased risk of depression or anxiety and a lack of robust coping skills
• Struggle with relationships in personal and/or professional life
• Impacts an individual’s inability to manage stress and hardship
• Impedes ability to build support systems, resulting in isolation
• Increases our chances of having poor health (e.g., diabetes, cancer, heart disease)
• Contributes to shortening our longevity by as much as 20 years

Identifying and Acknowledging Your Childhood Trauma

Recognizing the effects of trauma is a vital first step in pinpointing and admitting that you experienced childhood trauma—it is what helps initiate the recovery process. Looking back over the significant events of your childhood can provide valuable insights into the effects of trauma on your life, your exposure to toxic stress you continue to suffer from and reveal where healing childhood trauma is needed.

One way trauma therapists can help is to teach the foundation of self-care practices. These practices help people build resilience and the ability to traverse and renegotiate traumatic memories. You will learn to adopt the skills of self-observation and regain control over the events that happened. This process is a delicate dance between you and your therapist, but eventually, what was once triggering has far less of an effect on you and, sometimes, no effect whatsoever. The undercurrent of unease inside is replaced with contentment, peace, and presence.

Self-Care Starts with the Nervous System

We have this extraordinary nerve in our bodies called the vagus nerve, which is an essential part of regulating our nervous system. Neuroscientist and Professor Stephen Porges, posits in his Polyvagal Theory that beyond the nervous system’s two main fixtures—the sympathetic and the parasympathetic—the vagus nerve brings in a third branch that stems from the parasympathetic; this branch serves to manage our social skills (e.g., communication and engagement) and helps regulate our heart rate, breathing, hearing, facial muscles, and voice. This is essential for the social aspects of thriving in life, helping us to connect with people in meaningful ways. Here’s what else you should know about this super-nerve:

• It connects most of your major organs to your brain, serves as the main line of communication between the mind and nervous system, and helps regulate organs to keep us thriving.
• It’s sometimes called the “love nerve” because it connects to oxytocin receptors that release the love hormone when you’re connecting with your honey bunny.
• It regulates inflammation response, which strengthens your immune system’s ability to fight off disease.
• Its biggest nerve bundle resides in your second brain—your gut—with 100 million neurons firing off. When people say, “Trust your gut,” it’s those neurons signaling a message to you. We do our BEST thinking from this wise, gut-brain—also known as your “instincts.”

However, the vagus nerve is not connected to our higher order thinking brain (the prefrontal cortex), which regulates our thoughts, actions, and emotions by bringing in more logic, reason, and objectivity (among many other benefits). So, until your primitive brain gets the signal from the vagus nerve that you’re safe, you will continue to feel unsafe (e.g., anxious, stressed, overwhelmed) in the face of normal, everyday stimuli. When the vagus nerve is settled and relaxed, you’re able to enjoy all the benefits I just mentioned, and you’re able to feel safe engaging your environment and the people in it.

The vagus nerve communicates with our primitive brain constantly. When you feel safe, it is because the vagus nerve releases its grip and relaxes the body’s organs. When you feel a real or perceived threat, the vagus nerve constricts the normal function of these organs as part of the preparation for a survival reaction (fight, flight, freeze). In these instances, you may feel tightness in your throat or chest, and your heart rate may increase (pound and race) or decrease. Digestion may slow down or speed up, and breathing may increase or decrease. These physiological responses are critical to survival.

But the main tasks of the vagus nerve go beyond even these functions. Resmaa Menakem, author of the book, My Grandmother’s Hands, astutely calls the vagus nerve the “Soul Nerve” because of its connection to our spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Menakem has even gone so far as to call the vagus nerve, “the physical manifestation of the soul.” The vagus nerve is where people experience the sensation of emotions—love, compassion, hope, joy, empathy, caring, happiness, and expansion. It’s also at the seat of fear, grief, dread, sadness, loneliness, depression, anxiety, and despair. It’s the place in the body where the path diverges, leading either into the den of your paper tigers (perceived threats, aka daily stressors) or toward safety, contentment, and love.

When in regulation, the vagus nerve can mobilize the mental and emotional capacity to meet whatever challenge comes your way. It dissolves fear and increases your immune system’s ability to prevent disease. Through daily practice, you can teach the vagus nerve to settle and, in turn, communicate to the primitive brain (amygdala) that you’re safe. The primitive brain will then open the gateway to your higher order thinking brain so that you can feel more expansive in your everyday life.

Acceptance and Self-Compassion

Acceptance and self-compassion are a very essential part of moving forward and recovering from unresolved childhood trauma. Some strategies to cultivate self-acceptance in order to overcome childhood trauma include:

• Dedicating time to self-care
• Establishing boundaries
• Being authentic
• Releasing grief
• Utilizing mindfulness and self-compassion
• Examining the things you don’t like about yourself
• Noticing yourself and your needs
• Gaining trust in yourself and others

Left unresolved, childhood trauma can become a toxic pollutant in the body, wreaking havoc on the body’s ability to protect us from disease. If you lean on your support systems instead, you can start to create coping mechanisms to overcome the challenges and obstacles from past traumas.

Developing Healthy Coping Mechanisms

Triggers and challenges need coping mechanisms to handle them, leading to good mental health. You must learn healthy ways to cope with toxic stress caused by trauma. Some effective coping mechanisms include:

• Seeking professional help
• Regular exercise and physical activity
• Practicing relaxation techniques
• Connecting with supportive friends and family members
• Engaging in creative activities such as art or writing to express emotions
• Prioritizing other self-care practices, including mindfulness and breathwork

It’s not easy. Recovery from unresolved childhood trauma can take time. However, you can work on it a little bit at a time, overcoming challenges and obstacles, and your future will open up to new possibilities.

Recognizing and Avoiding Triggers

Triggers are anything that reminds you of a previous traumatic event. Avoiding triggers can be very helpful. How do you know you are being triggered? One way is to see that your reaction is outsized to the current moment—emotions seem bigger than what is called for in the situation. Being aware of anger, irritability, mood changes, and overreactions can help you recognize triggers. Specific places, smells, sounds, or even anniversaries can be triggers that interfere with good mental health.

Building Resilience and Emotional Regulation Skills

So, how can you increase resilience and build emotional regulation skills? Examples include working on self-awareness, self-compassion, problem-solving, communication tone and delivery, and stress management techniques.

These skills can help you cope with stress and adversity, improve your work performance, and cultivate support networks. They also help you overcome misfortune, adjust to difficulties, and remain optimistic—all signs of good health. These skills are designed to help you control your emotions, increase personal development, and resolve childhood trauma, leading to a much happier adult life.

Seeking Support and Treatment for Healing Childhood Trauma

It is essential to seek mental health services if you want to heal your childhood trauma and increase personal and professional growth. Professional help from a licensed therapist, trained and certified in a trauma modality, can help you work through your unresolved past trauma, which opens you up to a significantly improved life and increased longevity.

Again, remind yourself that healing will be a lifelong endeavor, and professional help is necessary. With your therapist, you will engage in proper interventions and develop healthy coping mechanisms to help eliminate or significantly reduce the triggers that occur now from unresolved past trauma. Start living a much happier life. Tomorrow isn’t promised to us.

Breaking the Cycle of Intergenerational Trauma

Interrupting the cycle of intergenerational trauma is necessary if one is to stop the passing on of trauma to future generations. Intergenerational trauma can be passed down through learned behaviors, social and cultural experiences, and even genetic factors. By understanding the effects of childhood trauma on adults and addressing the necessity of stopping the cycle from continuing, we can work towards healing intergenerational trauma, tackling adverse childhood experiences, and breaking the transmission cycle of trauma to future generations.

To address the cycle of intergenerational trauma, it is important to:

1. Understand how childhood trauma affects adulthood
2. Identify and avoid triggers
3. Become more resistant and cultivate emotional regulation abilities
4. Seek professional support and treatment for healing from childhood trauma

These steps are the best way to break the cycle of trauma and cultivate a brighter, healthier future for us and our loved ones.

Understanding Intergenerational Trauma

Intergenerational trauma involves the transmission of unresolved trauma from one generation to the next, impacting parenting and family dynamics. It can result from unresolved trauma from past generations. Traumatic experiences endured by adults when they were children can affect future generations, making it critical to acknowledge and break this cycle.

Understanding intergenerational trauma begins with acknowledging how unresolved childhood trauma can affect parenting and family dynamics, as well as the importance of healing from these experiences. If you understand more about intergenerational trauma, you can begin to heal the emotional wounds that stem from your own childhood experiences and work towards breaking the cycle so the same thing does not happen to your own children. 

Steps to Break the Cycle

To interrupt the cycle of intergenerational trauma, steps can be taken, such as (1) trauma treatment by seeking therapy (2) establishing coping mechanisms, and (3) promoting open discussions within the family. Achieving self-awareness is critical. Individuals must see and understand the effect of trauma on their lives and the lives of their family members. By increasing self-awareness, you can detect patterns, triggers, and behaviors created by intergenerational trauma and make informed decisions toward healing and breaking the cycle.

Open communication within the family can enable individuals to:

• Be aware of the effects intergenerational trauma has on their lives and their family members;
• Recognize patterns, triggers, and behaviors that were passed down to you from your parents;
• Find healing through family constellations work or with your trauma therapist

By taking these steps, individuals can work towards breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma and creating a brighter, healthier future for themselves and their loved ones.

Summary

Childhood trauma and the results it can have on your adult life happen to many people.  In fact, it is estimated that over 40 percent of the world’s population is affected by trauma; some think it’s much higher number.

Healing and growing is a lifelong process, but you can stop, press pause, and return to it anytime. It is first important to acknowledge that it has happened to you and then explore its effect on your adult life; not all past trauma needs healing, just the trauma that is inhibiting you now. Seeking professional help is essential if you want to undergo healing from childhood trauma and live a life free of the effects. 

When you heal yourself, you break the cycle of intergenerational trauma.  A happier, healthier future is possible for us and the generations that follow. It has a ripple effect on the health of our communities, cultures, and nations.