The topic of childhood emotional trauma is a difficult one to talk about.  Anyone who has experienced childhood trauma knows how devastating it is.  As a child, you don’t have the tools to deal with the trauma so you just push it to the back of your mind and pretend it never happened.  You may even completely forget about it for a time, only to be forced to think about it later in life when something happens to trigger the memory.  You may try to tell yourself that it doesn’t matter, that it happened in the past and it’s not important anymore but the truth is the trauma did happen and it did impact you and it does play a role in the person you are today.

There is nothing as painful as the thought of a child being abused especially by the people who should be loving and protecting the child.  Just ponder for a moment that right now as you read this article, there is a child somewhere being sexually molested, physically battered or emotionally abused.  It’s heart-breaking.  The fact that we allow this to continue as society says a lot about our level of consciousness.  It is something that should never happen and should not be tolerated and the perpetrators severely punished until this evil is eliminated from society.  

The thing about childhood abuse is that most people never talk about it and many live their entire lives without ever revealing what happened to them.  There’s a lot of shame that is experienced by the victims, which is crazy because why should the victim be ashamed?  The perpetrator is the one that should be ashamed of their actions, not the victim.  This says a lot about the world we live in, that the victim is the one who feels shame and the need to hide what happened.  This shame and the hiding of abuse is what allows it to continue and thrive in society.  Many people never even think to seek counseling to try and make sense of what happened to them.  We just live with the weight of the trauma constantly pulling us down and affecting our ability to live whole, fulfilled lives.

Fortunately, there is a movement today towards greater emphasis on mental health which is allowing people to start thinking about what may have happened to them during their childhood.  The starting point to healing is to acknowledge that something happened to you.  This might be very painful to acknowledge and accept and it feels almost better to just push it to the back of your mind and forget about it.  But the thing is, it takes a tremendous amount of energy to maintain the wall between your subconscious mind and your conscious mind which keeps the memory hidden.  In the end, it is much easier to just deal with it once and for all and be free.   There are techniques such as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) that can prove helpful in facing the memory and this should ideally be done with the help of a therapist, but I don’t see anything wrong with trying the technique at home especially if the memory is too painful to contemplate.

We may be tempted to think that childhood trauma does not impact us in any way as adults and that it is better to let bygones be bygones. But the truth is the trauma does manage to seep into various aspects of our adult life and this just goes to show how essential it is to face the trauma head-on and overcome it.  We cannot live whole lives with the trauma hanging over us because we become the net result of the trauma we are carrying.  It is better to do the hard work of facing and healing from trauma than to lie to ourselves that it has no impact on our lives and that we can live as if nothing happened to us.

We may be tempted to think that childhood trauma does not impact us in any way as adults and that it is better to let bygones be bygones. But the truth is the trauma does manage to seep into various aspects of our adult life and this just goes to show how essential it is to face the trauma head-on and overcome it.  

Below are some ways in which childhood emotional trauma impacts us as adults:

1. Nightmares

Everyone experiences nightmares every once in a while, mainly caused by external factors such as being too tired or going through a stressful situation.  For some people though, nightmares are a chronic problem they have to deal with on a nightly basis or several times a week.  This is especially true of people who experienced childhood trauma.  Nightmares are caused by a glitch in the system which causes the mind to become accustomed to an unhealthy way of processing memories.  Memories are normally processed while we sleep through dreams which are the language of the subconscious mind.  With difficult memories relating to traumatic events, this process doesn’t happen normally and the mind gets stuck trying to process the memory without success.  With time, the mind gradually learns to process all emotions in this unhealthy way resulting in chronic nightmares.  Many victims of childhood trauma endure daily nightmares without knowing that it is a habit that can be broken. 

The best technique for overcoming nightmares is to write out a description of the nightmare exactly as you remember it, then rewrite it but with a different ending, i.e., the kind of ending you would have wanted if you were the one writing the script.  As you continue reading and rereading the dream journal, the nightmares will eventually just fade away.  It’s almost as if processing the nightmare during waking hours is exactly what was needed to allow you to move on.  We may not realize it but we are in charge of our minds and we have the right to decide that we are tired of having nightmares and we do not want to continue experiencing them.  Many of us go through life feeling that our minds are outside our sphere of control but this is not the case.  It’s unfortunate that people suffer for decades with chronic nightmares without knowing that there is a simple solution to their problem.  

2. Lack of Self Love

Many people who have experienced some form of childhood trauma over time learn that they are not worthy of love and so they stop loving themselves.  They view themselves as unlovable and try as they may, they are not able to see anything in them that someone could love.  Lack of self-love manifests as a pattern of toxic relationships with toxic partners and toxic friends who treat you the way you subconsciously feel you deserve to be treated.  Someone who does not love themselves will feel lucky just to have someone in their life as they do not see anything in them that may cause someone to want to be with them.  They may cling to unhealthy relationships in the belief that they will not be able to get anyone else if they let go of the person they have.  They will endure bad treatment from their partner and the thought of leaving never even crosses their mind.  They do not love themselves enough to believe that they deserve good people in their life who will treat them with love and respect.  They surround themselves with toxic friends who feel better than them and treat them accordingly.  To these “friends”, they are nothing more than sidekicks, there to listen and admire and play the role of the lesser person who only exists to make them feel superior. 

When we wake up to the fact that we do not love ourselves, the first thing we need to do is let go of all such toxic people from our lives and realize that it is better to be alone than to be with people who do not value us.  This may not be as easy as it sounds because the lack of self-love also blinds you to the fact that you are not being treated well.  It may take a long time before we start seeing the truth about our relationships and even though the thought of cutting out people from your life may be painful, I cannot emphasize enough how essential it is to ruthlessly cut out anyone who pulls you down rather than build you up.  People who mock you or make fun of what you want to do, people who make you feel as if you need to keep explaining yourself and people who drain your energy and cause you pain simply need to go.

3. Burying your Authentic Self

When we are abused as children, it causes us to hide our authentic selves because we learn that there is something wrong with us.  We blame ourselves for the treatment we receive because we do not have the maturity to realize that we are not to blame for the actions of someone else.  We learn to hide our anger, our hurt and our real feelings because showing them is not safe.  When we live with cruel or unpredictable people, we learn early on that anything we do could result in an explosion of anger directed towards us.  So, we try to contract ourselves, to become as small as possible and to be as bland as possible, all to appease the abusive adult.  A child has no defenses against an abusive adult and will believe whatever they are told about themselves.  In the end, their authentic self gets buried and forgotten and they lose touch with who they are.

When we bury our authentic selves, we no longer know who we are or what we want and so we end up living lives that don’t make us happy.  We go along with whatever society tells us we are supposed to do or want and we never explore what makes us truly happy.  We never dare to choose ourselves, even if it means going against what society wants.  We learn to be “good” people, just going along with everyone and never daring to take a path that does not conform to what is expected of us.  When we bury our authentic selves, we feel that we don’t have a right to have what we want or to express what we feel.  Even though we have a rich inner life, we learn that it is never safe to express ourselves and so we keep this to ourselves.

To retrieve our authentic selves, we need to start reflecting on which parts of our lives don’t make us happy.  We need to believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that we deserve to be happy even if it means making drastic changes.  We need to start acknowledging our feelings, for example, feelings of anger or shame and ask ourselves where these feelings came from.  We should look at our feelings as clues or breadcrumbs that will lead us to the core of our issues.  We need to honour those feelings if we are to work through them; we have to feel them and allow them to lead us to the depths of our soul where the unresolved issues dwell.

4. Low Self Esteem

Low self-esteem means having a low opinion of yourself.  It means that you view yourself in a negative light and are overly critical of yourself and your abilities.  Your inner voice constantly criticizes you and never has anything good to say about you.  You see yourself as incompetent and less than others.  This causes anxiety and lack of confidence and unwillingness to extend yourself in any way.  When you have low self-esteem, your baseline view of yourself is negative and anything that happens to you leads to this idea you have of yourself.  It could be something like “I am unworthy,” or “I am a bad person,” or “I am inferior.”  This view of yourself is unconscious but it is the tape running in the background and it is the foundation upon which your entire life is built.  Can you imagine living life on a foundation that says “I am unworthy”?  You will never expect anything good to happen to you and if it does you expect it to quickly disappear.  You will always have low expectations for yourself regarding what you can accomplish. 

When we experience childhood trauma, it may result in low self-esteem.  We become unable to see ourselves in a healthy way i.e., as people who are loved, valued and worthy.  Healthy self-esteem does not come from outward things e.g. I am worthy because I am successful, I am worthy because I am beautiful, I am worthy because I have a high IQ, etc.  It comes from the inner knowing that I am a human being placed on this earth by my creator; I am loved by my creator and therefore I am worthy and I have a right to experience life just like anyone else.  I do not need to prove my worth or to add on anything to myself to be worthy. 

Healthy self-esteem does not come from outward things e.g. I am worthy because I am successful, I am worthy because I am beautiful, I am worthy because I have a high IQ, etc.  It comes from the inner knowing that I am a human being placed on this earth by my creator; I am loved by my creator and therefore I am worthy and I have a right to experience life just like anyone else. 

Overcoming low self-esteem is a long process that starts by looking inwards to see what is the baseline belief we have about ourselves.  Do we feel loved by those around us?  Do we feel worthy of having good things happen to us?  Do we feel like we have to prove ourselves to others?    Listen to your inner voice and notice what it defaults to.  If it defaults to a negative view of yourself, challenge that view and know that it is not the gospel truth but just a belief you have taken on and which can be replaced with a positive belief.  You could start a thought log where you list down some of the negative things you tell yourself, write down examples of events in which these negative thoughts come up and then think of an alternative way to view the events that is not negative or critical or judgemental of yourself.  Write down a new belief to replace the old belief about yourself e.g. “I am loved,” “I don’t need to prove myself,” “I am worthy,” etc.

5. Living below your potential

When we experience childhood emotional trauma, our image of ourselves as capable individuals is affected or even destroyed.  We lack the confidence to pursue goals and achieve them as we don’t see ourselves as having what it takes.  We become afraid of dreaming big and instead settle for much less than we are capable of.  We fail to see ourselves as being capable of growth and instead view ourselves as static beings without the potential to improve ourselves.  This static view of humans is, unfortunately, something that society programs us to accept.  We are taught to believe that some people have what it takes and others just don’t have it and we should accept that some of us were never meant to be successful.  The reality is that no one was born with the inability to grow; we all have the potential to be more than what we are today. 

Childhood abuse makes us feel as if we are meant to remain small and hidden in the shadows.  It makes us feel as if we are less than others.  People who experienced childhood trauma are reluctant to challenge themselves because of the fear that they are not good enough or will never accomplish what they set out to accomplish.  They see success as something only others can achieve.  They set modest goals which don’t require much of them and then shy away from overextending themselves.  They have a pessimistic view of the future because they don’t believe that good things could happen to them.  In case they achieve some success, they are tormented by imposter syndrome, feeling as if they shouldn’t be there or as if they will be exposed at any moment for the frauds they are. 

How does one overcome this tendency to live below one’s potential?  A good place to start is to set goals for yourself that seem unrealistic to you, preferably in written form.  Some of us may not understand just how hard it is for someone with low self-esteem to write down a goal that feels too big for them.  They have to battle with themselves before they can even write down the goal.  If you feel reluctant to write down a goal that feels unrealistic or impossible, just force yourself to write it down no matter how stupid it makes you feel.  Tell yourself that no one will see it except you and God.  Just that act of overcoming that thing in you that tells you that you’re stupid for having such a goal is the first step towards healing that low view of yourself.  You may be surprised when many years later you read through what you wrote down and discover that you accomplished everything to the letter.