The Impact of Childhood Trauma in Adulthood
posted: Apr. 03, 2023.

It is a healthy need to be seen and known.
So, what happens when we’re not seen and not known?
Have you ever felt unseen and even invisible around people?
Have you ever felt misunderstood and misjudged? Like, people don’t get you?

It’s profoundly hurtful when we are dismissed, neglected, ignored, shamed, or punished for expressing our thoughts and feelings or having needs and wants that are not met.

When that happened as a child, we learned not trust or rely on our caregivers for safety or to meet our emotional needs. Also, if we did not feel safe being vulnerable, spontaneous, and authentically ourselves, it continues to affect us as adults. Even if there wasn’t abuse or an overt trauma, not having our needs met, can also produce painful emotional reactions in us – that become triggers.

Such experiences taught us to hide our authentic self.

As a result of not being deeply seen and known, we crave for the people today to affirm and validate us. We anxiously seek their approval.

We lose ourselves in chasing the approval of others. Many of us stopped focusing on developing ourselves in order to take care of those around us. With an essential need to be seen and known, we developed strategies in childhood – that we continue to use in adulthood – to try to get our needs met. Perhaps we learned to become the parent or the spouse for our caregivers? Perhaps we learned to become self-sufficient and not express our needs to others? Perhaps we learned to become enmeshed – becoming whatever others want us to be – instead of truly allowing our true-self to fully develop.

Taking on these relationship dynamics helped us survive. However, when they remain in place, over time it takes a toll and can become harmful to the extent that they overwhelm our coping ability.

Because many of us have lived in fear of abandonment and rejection for so long, we have learned to be hyper-vigilant and hyper-aware of what others think of us, and live in the stress of being self-conscious because we found our “self” through relationships. So the fear of loss of approval is threatening when we don’t have a fully-developed self. This is where our co-dependency issues originate. Because we are dependent upon the approval of others to give us our sense of self.

If you or someone you know is interested in therapy, call our office at (817) 601-5540

For many of us, we have turned our intrinsic needs for identity, into striving to people-please in order to lower our anxiety and/or we vacillate into avoidance of giving up even trying to please others.

When we feel that we cannot gain the approval of others, we tend to numb our pain with self-medicating behaviors like alcohol, sex addiction, workaholism, religious-performance, physical/emotional-affairs, and porn.

A few signs that may suggest that you have not fully developed your sense of self, may include, struggling to know who you are, not feeling like yourself, struggling to set and keep goals, or getting hyper focused on a goal until there is a set back at which point you give up on it, you may notice inconsistencies in your efforts including struggling to maintain healthy stable relationships, and set and keep healthy boundaries. You may find that you get initially idealize a relationship but then devalue the relationship with intense hot and cold swings.

I want to tell you, you are not alone, a lot of people struggle in these areas.

And yet, because of shame, we tend to isolate and not talk about it because we “feel broken” and erroneously think that we’re the only ones struggling. I have noticed that many people carry such painful emotional burdens from childhood and do not share them with anyone because of shame, guilt, fear, self-hatred, self-judgment, self-blame, and blaming others.

Even if we are insightful and are aware of the source of our symptoms. Many of us find it challenging to figure out how to “fix” the symptoms. So we keep trying to “fix” our problems and symptoms with the level of conscious awareness we have.

Our society is focused on symptom reduction through behavior-medication. We try to “solve” and “fix” the symptoms instead of realizing there is an entire unconscious mind – or hard drive – of our internal computer that holds the root dynamics producing the symptoms. Without addressing the root symptoms, we continue to chase behaviors without enduring progress.

Without awareness of how the internal world is designed to function, we continue living with instability, uncertainty, fear, and feeling stuck, keeping us from making changes. And these stuck places may appear in your career, parenting, work, school, life, relationships, etc. We also have external and internal factors that contribute to feeling stuck.

But the most to contribute is the environment you grew up in, where your mind, body, soul, and spirit have been programmed through our earliest life experiences that etched into the unconscious mind. In many of our families, we were taught to internalize and repress our emotions and not express our feelings or to get our needs met. Social media and society dictate who we should be, making us more confused, vulnerable, and helpless.

The Restoring-Self-Cohesion (RSC) model provides the insight into the internal world to help us recognize there are different parts of self – some stuck in the past – and some engaging in the present. We also have a soul and a spirit. Your spirit is your true-self while your soul is your mediator trying to help you meet your internal and external needs.

Many of us feel stuck because we are leading from our soul, rather than from our spirit/true-self.

An easy way to discern which part of you is leading is to determine the craving. Your soul will seek safety and consistency.

In contrast, your spirit will seek possibilities, connection, relationships, and excitement.

The soul and spirit are often at odds within us.

To cultivate the balance of creativity, connectivity, flexibility, consistency, and creativity, we use the RSC approach to help you learn how to restore cohesion among these parts of self.

Suppose you find these things affecting you now. The first step we will do together is to create a safe, trusting, collaborative, compassionate, and conversational environment where we will discover internal resources and your strengths to apply them to your healing and growth.

Next, you and I will work as a team to explore your internal world and parts of self that have fragmented and get triggered in different situations and times. Using the innovative Restoring-Self-Cohesion approach, you and I will intentionally re-engage these parts of self that were suppressed from the past to help restore these buried parts of you. This is the process that will help you “feel like yourself again.”

We will also work on creating an internal board meeting where we introduce each part of you to work together and get to know each other. Then we allow every part of you to be heard, honored, valued, and understood without interruption. My therapeutic setting will activate your inner protective resources to discover the authentic YOU!

I look forward to connecting with you soon.
I want to tell you that your healing journey has hope and a future. I am honored to help you reconnect with yourself and move toward your life purpose and relationship goals!