Defining Childhood Trauma
Let us begin with the identification of what is considered as the child trauma signs first and comprehending what childhood trauma is. Childhood trauma can be defined as those experiences that are alarming, risky, violent, or can involve risk to life during childhood. This refers to all forms of abuse, including physical, sexual, and emotional. It also includes abuse, parental separation, childhood exposure to physical and sexual abuse, and other forms of childhood traumas such as having a parent divorced, die, or being exposed to natural disasters. The most critical aspect is that this event had been alarming for the child at the time it took place.
Long-Term Consequences on Mental State
Early life stress can be very damaging to the human being, and the damages may be noticeable even in adulthood. The traumatic events disrupt the general brain development, but specifically the emotional, reaction, and self-preservation sections within the brain. This can be pretty detrimental for survivors in terms of handling stress, interpersonal interactions, and managing their moods or behaviors. The common effects that the survivors will experience include depression, anxiety, PTSD, substance use disorders, and personality disorders. Overall, the rate of suicide is affected, and there is an increased possibility of suicide among those with this type of mental disorder. These issues can present from the very beginning of the development or can manifest themselves in later stages of a child’s life, especially during periods of high stress.
There are some symptoms that are evident in adults who suffer childhood trauma, as highlighted in this paper.
Here are some of the most common signs I notice in my patients that indicate they may be struggling with childhood trauma:
Difficulty Managing Emotions
They tend to display exaggerated emotional responses to contexts that might otherwise not be overly stressful for most people. This is usually reflected in constant temper tantrums, crying jags, withdrawal, or outright panic at the slightest provocation. Mental health issues, including anger management and stress, have always been a struggle for them.
Trouble Developing Close Relationships
In addition, a large number of survivors have attachment issues that come from the traumatic childhood and make it challenging to develop trustful relationships. They may have no relationships at all or, experience poor boundaries, get into the wrong type of relationships, or being to end a relationship out of the blue.
Distorted Self-Perception
The fake messages that a survivor receives in childhood are usually repeated, and thus, the negative voices are continuous. Emotional distress, self-conscious feelings of embarrassment, guilt, or low self-esteem are likely. Some of the survivors also have issues with accepting compliments and other positive remarks made by others about themselves.
Self-Destructive Behaviors
Such behavior includes self-destructing, eating disorders, substance abuse, dangerous sexual conduct, reckless driving, etc, and is at a higher prevalence among survivors. These are viewed as maladaptive ways of dealing with feelings that stem from trauma.
Somatic Symptoms
To be more precise, unresolved trauma’s physical imprint may be seen as the embodiment of the adage, ‘the body remembers. ’ Analgesics and pain-relieving medications, especially for tension headaches, stomach problems, and body pain, including fibromyalgia, have been reported commonly in patients with a history of childhood trauma.
Sleep Disturbances
This is very true since nightmares, night terrors, and even insomnia are very rife among trauma survivors, mainly because of the frequent relapses of frightening memories at night. It has also been noted that some consumers of these substances also take them at night to avoid dreaming.
Triggers and Flashbacks
They can be re-experienced through situations that are similar to the initial situation through episodes called flashbacks. Other aspects that may elicit intense responses include smell, words, images, songs, etc, as they have the ability to remind the person of the trauma at any given time. Minimizing exposure to possible risk factors becomes a typical but unworthy strategy among a number of survivors.
Issues with Attentional Blink and Perseveration
Cognitive challenges that victims can experience include working memory, organization, planning, management of time, priorities, and decision-making. This is indicative of the effects that trauma has on the development of the brain and makes everyday living quite tricky.
Dissociation
It is also common for some survivors to detach from reality as a coping mechanism and will also have depersonalization and derealization symptoms. They may experience depersonalization, where they feel as if they are an outsider watching themselves; they may have feelings of derealization, where they feel as if the people and objects around them are only figments of their imagination; they may lose control of their thoughts; emotions, or physical self; or they may suffer from memory impairment where they have no idea how they got from point A to point B.
Next Steps for Survivors
The good news is healing is absolutely possible and is not predicated on the idea that you need to go back and treat your childhood trauma from yesterday. First of all, always advise the survivor to begin with therapy based on trauma, for example, EMDR therapy and somatic therapy. Another way that can prove very useful is getting educated through books, articles, support groups as well as workshops. Just remember it may take time to begin to heal from such deep rooted pain; be gentle on yourself. But you have every right to break the chains that are rooted in your past and emerge a happy, healthy individual.