Childhood Trauma and It’s effect on Relationships

Childhood trauma refers to the experiences a child faces that are painful and threatening, which left the child with severe after effects. These effects can interfere with the child’s later stages of life making the child prone to different mental or physical health issues. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, childhood trauma is defined as: A child’s experience of emotionally distressing or traumatic events is often  results in lasting mental and physical effects.”

Childhood traumas are severely affecting a child’s psyche. According to the SAMHSA’s statistics, more than two-third of children reported at least one traumatic event by the age of 16. At least one in seven children have experienced child abuse and/or neglect in the past year, and this is likely an underestimate In 2019, 1,840 children in the United States died from abuse and neglect. Eight percent of her high school students said he had been involved in one or more physical assaults on school grounds in her 12 months prior to the survey. Every day, about 14 young people die in homicides and more than 1,300 are treated in emergency rooms for violence-related injuries. 

The childhood traumas, basically involves the following causative factors:

• Psychological abuse
• Physical abuse
• Sexual abuse
• Bullying in schools
• Witnessing domestic violence
• Neglect from parents
• Sudden loss of a loved one
• Life- threatening illness
• Parental divorce
• Severe accidents etc.

All these factors can lead to severe issues in child which can be mental as well as physical.

Physical issues involve:

• Asthma
• Coronary heart disease
• Diabetes
• Stroke etc.

Mental issues involve:

• Anger issues
• Depression
• Emotional distress
• High levels of stress
• Anxiety disorder
• Psychotic disorders
• Personality disorders
• Post-traumatic stress disorders etc.

How childhood trauma effect Relationships

Children who suffered with these kinds of issues also develop ill-relations with the people around and the society. As all the relations has to do with a great deal of emotions, so, since these children could not handle their emotions well, they’ll not be able to maintain healthy relationships with people, including their family, caregivers, friends etc.

When a child is faced with all the causative factors as mentioned above, then this way or the other a child’s emotions become disturbed which further leads to high emotional instability. Also, because the child is becoming highly aggressive, so he will definitely show a much greater involvement in violent acts that can be fatal.

All the traumas of childhood can haunt a person for their entire life, making their life complex and burdensome. It’s very easy for these traumas to manifest in adult life making their relationships troublesome. When comes to relationships, these people cannot rely on people around them and always face great trust issues. When looked from a neglected child’s point of view, since they do not know the way of affection and love so they cannot reciprocate even when people show them affection. They remain very reserved and reluctant to have healthy conversations with people. These people make themselves to remain separate from the society. They are always in a continuous despair that they may be hurt again, therefore the avoid any kind of bond or attachment. Unintentionally and unknowingly, people start building boundaries with everyone, living their life in complete solitary.

Ways in which childhood traumas manifests in adult relationships can be:

• Fear of abandonment
• Getting easily irritated
• Lacking in Problem Solving
• Lacking decision making ability
• Constant arguing and fighting
• Staying in toxic relationships
• Having low self-esteem
• Poor emotion regulation
• Trust issues
• Relationships break easily etc.

Until and unless we don’t focus on recovering from these traumas, they will keep on interfering and haunting us for the rest of our lives. So, to deal with them therapies are the most effective source of treatment. Psychologists can be the best medium in helping to overcome them.

Here are some of the most common therapies that can help with these traumas and issues:

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy {CBT}

Cognitive behavior therapy is an approach that is focused on identifying destructive and ill thoughts that are having a negative influence on you. It aims to help you recognize how your emotions and thoughts are regulating your actions. Its basically based on the idea that your thoughts, emotions and actions are connected.

•  EMDR

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy is a psychotherapeutic technique that involves moving your eyes in a specific way while you process traumatic memories. EMDR mainly treats mental health conditions that happen because of memories from traumatic events in your past.

• Psychodynamic Therapy

Psychodynamic therapy helps to facilitate a deeper insight on one’s emotions.

It’s basically a type of talk therapy. It’s helpful in understanding the emotions of a person in detail.

• Cognitive Processing Therapy {CPT}

It’s a type of cognitive behavioral therapy that focuses on understanding the trauma which helps in understanding the relationship between thoughts and emotions

• Prolonged Exposure Therapy {PE}

It’s a behavioral therapy mainly for PTSD that involves confronting your fear to reduce anxiety around it.

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