While there’s a perception of children being extremely fragile (parents worry about a child’s skinned knee or bumped elbow or monitor media consumption) there’s also a competing perception of children as resilient, able to bounce-back from things because they are young and fresh, perhaps also because they are thought to be unable to understand the complete ramifications of certain events or actions like a “grown up.”

The truth is, childhood trauma is real and a challenge to overcome. What adults sometimes perceive as “bouncing back” in children may actually be a maladaptive strategy of repression, trying to push away or forget unpleasant memories. Over time, and/or through repeated instances, the pain being pushed away creates major unresolved trauma and leaves internally separated “states” or senses of self.

It will be painful, but overcoming childhood trauma means owning those disowned experiences and parts of ourselves. Freedom from past miseries comes only with wholeness.

Trauma and Children

Children may not be able to comprehend all the complexities or ramifications of events and actions, but this limited perspective is more likely to mean that any negative experience is interpreted as their fault, rather than increasing their ability to “bounce back.” Childhood psychology tells us that children understand the world around them in relationship to themselves in a more self-centric way than adults. If something bad happens, a healthy adult may be able to see other causes such as “my father is an alcoholic and he needs help.” A child would see “my father is upset at me and my mother lots of the time, this must be because I did something bad.”

The part of our self-identity that is injured by this trauma will usually remain at the age this trauma occurred. So we may have conflicting parts of ourselves at ages four, fourteen, or as adults in our forties, for example.

Shame and Self-Judgment

Abuse and trauma are damaging to a child’s well-being and this damage lasts into adulthood as well. Overcoming childhood trauma is not just about addressing the negative things that have happened in the past, but the lack of positive attention received as well.

As a child, we may have felt shame as part of the trauma. As an adult, we may feel this same sense of shame compounded by another: shame that we are “letting” something that happened to us so many years ago have such an impact on our happiness today. We’ve been trying to push these negative feelings away for so long and yet we still can’t “get over it.”

Overcoming Childhood Trauma

Shame and fear have kept us trapped with our childhood trauma for a long time, almost like compounding interest in a bank. The more years we’ve had to practice burying our past emotions, the more of a challenge it can be to untangle the knot that is our interior self. Nurturing self-love doesn’t feel natural when we’ve experienced feelings like self-hate for so long. But it can happen. Time alone does not heal all wounds, but learning, surrender, and love do.

Reach out for support, even when your instinct may be to withdraw. Think of how free you will feel when you stop being afraid of disappointing others and allow yourself to embrace your emotions and be compassionate with yourself rather than being afraid of feeling or seeming vulnerable.

You are in control, not your past. Take care to eat well and exercise regularly as you begin the healing process so your body works with your mind to combat stress.