What if your Trauma…is what didn’t happen

Oftentimes, when we think about trauma, we focus on the bad things that have happened to us. But for people healing from childhood trauma, trauma is also about what didn’t happen. Maybe your parents were emotionally neglectful, putting their emotions first and ignoring yours. Or maybe your parents were so wrapped up in their own problems that they didn’t see your needs. Trauma is not just about specific bad events, but about all the ways you didn’t get what you needed.

The goal of childhood is to prepare children for adulthood. No childhood is perfect and no parent is perfect, so everyone has things to learn and unlearn in adulthood in order to help them live their lives. However, childhood trauma is more than just having imperfect parents, but having parents whose problems actually prevented the child from meeting certain developmental milestones.

For example, maybe you grew up with parents who fought often and fought mean. Maybe they struggled to solve even small and unimportant problems together and often resorted to name calling or criticism. Seeing these arguments was likely impactful in helping you learn how to manage conflict with others. AND what you didn’t see ALSO impacted you. Maybe you never saw them apologize or never saw them make things right. Maybe you never saw them work together. Were you impacted by watching the fights? Of course. You learned that winning an argument was more important than intimacy or collaboration. But you were also impacted by all the things that never happened.

Because maybe, with every argument, it also took precious time away from helping you with homework, going on family outings, or spending time with you. And maybe you needed that help. Maybe you were struggling with problems of your own, like figuring out math, and your parents had no idea because they were too wrapped up in their own issues.

Fast forward to today, you may still struggle in things that feel related to your trauma, like having a hard time with emotional or relational problems. But you may ALSO feel really behind on other difficulties that you don’t see as connected. For example, if you weren’t getting that help with math as a child, you may still struggle with math as an adult. And maybe you feel like you are stupid or lazy because you’ve never mastered math. When, with a bit of extra help at home or school, math wouldn’t be as difficult or as intimidating.

If you experienced a chaotic, unstable, or abusive family environment, you may feel “behind” in certain areas. Children who experience complex trauma are more likely to have problems in managing emotions, connecting with others, solving complex emotional or social problems, focusing, learning new things, sticking with it on tough tasks, controlling impulsive urges, and having a stable sense of self. These are all skills we are meant to learn through childhood. But for the person with a history of childhood trauma, the focus of childhood wasn’t on developing. – it was on surviving.

So where do you go from here?

It can be easy to feel overwhelmed when thinking about childhood trauma. It can feel like life has already dealt you a bad hand and there isn’t anything you can do to go back and change it. It’s ok to take some time to grieve the reality of what happened to you. It’s ok to feel angry or overwhelmed. But it’s important to remember: you aren’t responsible for how you got here, but you are responsible for how you get out.

There is hope for your life. You are already the proof of it. You recognized that something in your family wasn’t ok and decided to do something different – and that makes you a miracle. It will take time and effort, but you don’t have to do it alone. Reach out to a therapist today.

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What is Complex Trauma…and have I experienced it?