Childhood trauma and adulthood
- Akanksha Sharma
- Oct 3, 2022
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 7, 2022
Since the beginning of my interest in psychology I have been intrigued with the ideas of childhood and its impact to shape our lives. Especially which grew significantly from the introduction of Sigmund Freud and other researchers who were inspired through his work and continued their ways in my education. For people who are not aware of his work and the relation to the present topic might want to know that Sigmund Freud put a lot of emphasis on how childhood experiences have an extremely important role in shaping what we become as adults.
When we talk about childhood trauma the first thought that comes into mind is by associating the most painful and drastic situations of our childhood like sexual abuse, death of a close person or an impactful accident. But that is not it. Many a times it is also to do with what did not happen and what was not present. Like negligent parent/s, denial of access to basic resources and growing up without any guardian. All these situations and others which might differ according to the person have the ability to imprint their consequences in our brains. This is when they start impacting our life and create certain behavior patterns. These behavior patterns often hinder the way we look at the world but sometimes can also build completely opposite acts that help the person grow in a positive manner.
Negatively impacting behaviors are the ones that more often take place when the person experiences long term childhood trauma. Adverse Childhood Experiences’(ACE) studies have been done which aim at understanding how adverse experiences affect health of the individual. Many medical professionals started noticing how physical ailments and chronic illnesses might actually have a connection with the level of adverse trauma children encounter. One of the acclaimed professionals, Dr Nadine Burke Harris expressed that due to exposure to these experiences we are more likely to not only engage in high risk behaviors but also develop long term and serious health concerns like heart diseases, STDs, lung and pulmonary diseases. These might in some form even affect our flight and fight abilities which are responsible for stress responses. Sometimes when the trauma exposed is highly tragic it can even change the way our DNAs are structured and transcribed. This consequently makes us prone to negative health concerns which might have not taken place if not exposed to that level of trauma.
Other than health, adverse trauma has the ability to form disruptive relationship and attachment types which can lead to unstable relations in adult life or even affect a healthy and strong relationship with peers, partner/s and family members due to triggers that can be experienced in those relations. These triggers can take us back to the traumatic experiences which might make us remember painful memories and push away through fight or flight to avoid any sign of similar pain or hurt. Similarly, one of the neuroscientists, Besssel van der Kolk speaks about how after one’s traumatic experience has taken place and gotten over, parts of the brain wired for primitive survival communicate frequently. This makes us feel as if we might be in danger and pain. In simple words, we end up re-experiencing the traumatic event again and again. These triggers make us vulnerable and ask us to avoid any situation that feels similar to the trauma the body and brain went through.
During this avoidance, it is very much possible that we are unable to identify the good in the situation just because it shows similarities of the pain experienced while growing up. This requires a need to focus on how as a society we can reduce levels of adverse trauma while growing up through early detection to reduce the impact or reverse the negative effects while creating initiatives and reforms for people being affected by it in their adult lives.
Resources and evidence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95ovIJ3dsNk - How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJfmfkDQb14 - What is trauma? The author of "The body keeps score" explains, Bessel Van Der Kolk
Cover photo- <a href="https://storyset.com/people">People illustrations by Storyset</a>
Very informative and well written..
Thank you for this, very well