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Mental Health PTSD Treatment

How Childhood Trauma Impacts Adult Mental Health and Relationships

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How Childhood Trauma Impacts Adult Mental Health and Relationships

Childhood trauma has far-reaching effects, shaping the course of our lives in significant ways. Depending on several factors, including genetic predisposition, temperament, position in the family, and how young we were when encountering adverse childhood events, we may be burdened with a variety of symptoms.

For women recovering from addiction and mental health disorders, it’s important to recognize childhood trauma effects when they show up within our own personalities and patterns of relating. We will want to invest some amount of personal work healing our inner child, and undergo trauma therapy, in order to restore our true selves and regain control of how we show up in the world with others.

It is not necessary to fight darkness, but rather to turn on a light, the saying goes. It is very similar with traumatization. By restoring the flow of life force within the body, psyche, and spirit, trauma blockages will eventually dissolve, allowing psychological development that was once arrested to proceed. 

The first step is to recognize trauma’s presence by its signature energetics and impacts. In this post, we take a look at how trauma affects adult mental health and relationships.    

The Lasting Impact of Childhood Trauma on Women’s Lives

san diego childhood trauma therapist

In order to complete the most basic developmental tasks involved with growing up physically, emotionally, and mentally into a healthy, high-functioning adult, a degree of physical and psychological safety is required. Safety means both that we are nurtured and that we are protected. All humans have needs and boundaries. Children cannot thrive when developmental needs are unmet, nor when boundaries are violated. 

Provided we are sufficiently nurtured and protected, we naturally grow up, learning in a self-directed fashion through exploratory play and interactions with people, animals, and nature. In addition to safety, we need a high amount of autonomy – the chance, permission, and support to grow into our own unique self, in our own unique way. 

For a variety of reasons, many families are not able to provide the right mix of safety and autonomy that is required for children to have a healthy sense of self. In fact, our families may have done very poorly in one or more requirements of meeting needs, protecting boundaries, and supporting autonomy. If our families did a good job of this, that still doesn’t mean that our peers and teachers were able to.  

It’s important to understand that trauma is not in the events themselves, but in the way that a human nervous system responds to certain events. Many relatively common childhood experiences are identified by trauma experts as being traumatogenic, which means that children who are exposed to such adverse events tend to develop recognizable symptoms of trauma and even patterns of personality. Examples of traumatizing childhood events include physical, sexual and emotional abuse, physical and emotional neglect, having a parent who uses substances, witnessing domestic violence in the home, and separation, death of a parent, or divorce.   

What this means is that if you survived such circumstances in your childhood, chances are high that this impacted you in ways that are so ingrained into your personality and way of perceiving the world, that the effect might be invisible to you. Common signs of having been traumatized in childhood include sleep disorders, substance abuse, relationship troubles, intense emotions including fear and anger, spacing out, fatigue, illness, inability to relax, and shame. 

Understanding How Early Experiences Shape Adult Patterns

The key to understanding how untreated trauma from childhood affects life as an adult lies in recognizing trauma’s presence underneath cognitive, emotional, and behavioral patterns. Many mental and behavioral health symptoms can be unmasked as ingenious adaptations to trauma. Symptoms are likely to be mechanisms for coping with stress from being exposed to too many threats in the past. An excess of fear and anger indicates unintegrated experiences of being exposed to impacts which were life-threatening and violating. 

Keep in mind that events can be traumatizing to the human nervous system, brain and body, even when the people who affected us didn’t mean to hurt us. Remember also that many aspects of our culture which the majority of people consider to be normal are considered by some experts in the field to be lightly or even heavily traumatizing.   

We can begin to recognize trauma by getting curious about ourselves. Specifically, we must ditch the idea that we are sick, and ask instead how a symptom is helping us. What is the purpose of our depression? How does our irritability help us? What is anxiety good for?

When we get to know our anxiety, irritability, anger, and depression, as well as our seemingly counterproductive behaviors like substance use, self-sabotage, and low self-compassion, we may come to see that in actual fact, these legacy symptoms once helped us adapt to an environment that was trauma-generating. If we have symptoms of excess fear (anxiety, insomnia, dissociation) and excess anger (depression, irritability, self-harm, etc), that almost certainly means that we have spent some time in an environment that failed to meet our developmental and nurturance needs, violated our natural boundaries, or both. 

Breaking Free from Trauma Bonds and Unhealthy Relationships

It isn’t easy to heal trauma, but it is absolutely possible and certainly worth it. One area of life which can improve significantly through trauma healing is relationships with loved ones. 

If you experienced physical or emotional neglect, physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, or any combination of those in your early years, it is very likely that you have had trouble with founding and maintaining healthy relationships as an adult. You probably unconsciously sought out partners with whom you would experience a bond that resembles the bond you had with the same people who neglected or abused you. 

This may mean that you accept a low level of nurturance, a high level of boundary violation, or both. You may have an enmeshed, codependent relationship, in which you give your partner the love that you actually always needed to receive. You may prefer partners that treat you in a way that matches your own low self-esteem – with some level of neglect, misunderstanding, or disregard.

All of this is terribly common among women, and please hear us that this isn’t your fault. Rather, fraught relationships are unavoidable until trauma is addressed. Until we have healed our trauma, we likely wouldn’t know healthy love if it walked right up to us. Rather, we will tend to fall intensely in love with people who have similar patterns of relating as the people who hurt us the most. 

Nevertheless, each relationship attempt, even when it clearly mimics certain patterns of our childhood, is also a sign that deep inside, we have not given up on trying to get the genuine and appropriate love that we have always wanted and needed. And the good news is that, through trauma healing, we get one very important bonus: a chance at experiencing that love. We get this love when we activate our inner Self (https://ifs-institute.com/resources/articles/larger-self), becoming a source of the parenting, kindness, and even adoration that we always needed. We become the loving person we have always needed to have in our lives.

Learning to love ourselves, to recognize our own value, we attract a higher quality of emotional intelligence in partners, and interact differently with existing love relationships than we used to. Overall, we can expect that we gradually learn to behave with dignity and self-compassion, requiring that others treat us the same.   

Reclaim Your Story with Compassionate Trauma Treatment

If you have a trauma history, you have probably had moments in your life when you wanted to give up on trying to be yourself. Trying to be here in your best potential, in this world, in your skin, has felt too much at times – too painful and too difficult. 

To live openheartedly and authentically in this world, amid the interference of loud and often self-conflicting trauma symptoms; amid emotional instability, self-attack, and demoralizing outcomes; amid escalating substance abuse, relationship problems, and career struggles; it has undoubtedly been a lot for you at times. 

But hear this: trauma healing is possible. The work that it takes is worth it. The path of healing is emotionally intense, it’s true – but nothing you haven’t already been living with every day since the trauma started. There will be psychological pain at times, yes – but no more intense than the pain you already cope with. There is nothing to lose by healing trauma, and a lot to gain. In facing trauma, you risk short term triggering – having to re-experience what you already have experienced, and most likely still re-experience on repeat – for the potential reward of at last healing the wounds in a permanent way. 

You might be surprised, furthermore, to find out how sweet, rewarding, deepening, and meaningful the trauma healing journey is. You might feel silly for not starting the journey earlier, and have to remind yourself that you needed all the time you did, to get to the point of facing it. You might be happy with every aspect of your history, in the end, recognizing how each wounding poison also brought its own magnificent antidote into your life. You just might.

Villa Kali Ma offers trauma-informed treatment for women struggling with substance addiction and mental health disorders. We also run a state-of-the-art trauma treatment center, offering several forms of cutting-edge treatments for helping women address their trauma.    

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Love

How Does Attachment Style Affect Your Relationships?

Has it ever felt like you keep running into the same patterns in each relationship you’re in? Where it always seems to be going really great at the beginning, and then something shifts and you can’t believe you were ever with that person? And no matter how hard you try to break the pattern, you never seem to see the red flags?

It’s likely that your early childhood experiences in forming relationships have greatly impacted you and actually have a whole lot to do with the relationships you pursue in your adult life. Actually, this is true for everyone. We call this early learning about how to be in relationship with others our attachment style.

What “Attachment Style” Means and Why It Matters

A piece of wisdom that has always stuck with me about these patterns that exist in relationships is that ‘when you meet someone and it feels like you’ve known them your whole life, you probably have’. This reminds me of how often we seek partners for ourselves that resemble figures from our past, be it a parent or otherwise.

In our early years, our focus was survival -we learned to trust or not to trust based on the attunement of our caregivers. When finding ourselves in an unpredictable environment, we pick up tools and skills for what we could do to help keep safe and still get our needs met. This particular type of survival-based learning becomes encoded in us. As adults, this could play out in a variety of relationships from our lovers to our children.

Author Peter Hobson stated, “…one’s experiences of relations with others becomes a feature of one’s relations with oneself”. This quote is a powerful message to me about how we are affected by those around us, especially the people that we once relied on to meet our very basic needs. Building insight into our own attachment styles can help change the course in how we see ourselves and how we participate in relationships, both with ourselves and with others.

Okay, But What Exactly Is Attachment?

Attachment plain and simple is referring to how we go about meeting our needs based on early childhood experiences. Through these experiences, a certain style will start to emerge based on how we are able to meet those needs. This either represents a secure attachment, or typically falls into one of the three insecure categories: Avoidant, Anxious, or Disorganized.

For example, when our caregiver is attuned to us, then we are able to have a secure base from which to explore the world around us. With this style, we have confidence that the caregiver will respond to our expressed needs. If that is not the case, whereas a caregiver is inconsistent or unaware of our needs, then we, in turn, must develop different ways of coping.

Here are examples of behaviors you might notice in the four attachment styles mentioned above:

Secure Attachment

Needs were provided on a consistent basis by the caregiver and we are able to seek comfort when needed.

    • Trust that our needs will be met.
    • Able to make connections with others and self.
    • Can express desires and enforce boundaries.
    • Know that we are lovable and can give love in return.

Insecure/Avoidant Attachment

Needs were unattainable from the caregiver, so we coped by caring for our own needs or by suppressing them.

    • Uneasy with close contact.
    • Do not look for comfort in others and can be extremely independent.
    • Often have trouble expressing true feelings to others and ourselves.
    • Difficulties with committing or asking for help in relationships.

Insecure/Anxious-Preoccupied Attachment

Caregiver was inconsistent in providing for needs, so we coped by clinging to the caregiver to receive needs when available.

    • Is hypervigilant to concerns in the relationship.
    • Strategizes or lashes out in order to meet needs.
    • Struggles to know the boundary between our own feelings and the feelings of others.
    • Fearful of being dismissed or abandoned.

Insecure/Disorganized Attachment

Caregiver is both feared and reassuring to us, creating a sense of confusion and never knowing what to expect.

    • Afraid of being too close and too distant from others.
    • Often overwhelmed by the intensity of their emotions.
    • Dealing with unresolved trauma or grief from early childhood.
    • Both fearful of being abandoned, and trapped when they’re too close.

What Does My Attachment Style Mean for Me Now?

Those unmet needs from childhood set the stage for the rest of your life. Even as you grow older, your attachment style will play out in the majority of your relationships. This is especially true both in how you ask for what you need, and how you respond to others’ needs.  As adults, it makes sense that we crave connection and need a safe place to address our needs. You might notice this come up in certain arguments or cycles that repeat in your relationships.

Romantic Relationships

Depending on your attachment style, people with insecure attachments are likely to experience more discord in their relationships. It is not uncommon for someone who is anxiously attached to pursue a relationship with someone who has an avoidant attachment style. Without intervention, this couple will feel a constant push and pull, each trying to get their needs met. This can lead to manipulation, rash decisions, and difficulties in understanding one another.

The anxious partner, out of their fear of rejection, may become overly-clingy and out of their “neediness,” do the very thing that pushes that person away. The avoidant partner may try to deny their own needs for love and affection, whereas someone who has a disorganized attachment style will likely be sending off conflicting messages of their own about intimacy and distance. However, a securely attached couple is more likely to approach situations with care and trust and can better attune to their partner’s needs.

Parenting

Your own attachment style can also affect how you feel or act toward your child. In fact, this is the primary way that attachment style is “passed down” generationally. It’s likely that your attachment style will closely resemble that of your parents.

What often happens is that a parent with an anxious attachment may look to their child to meet their own needs instead of meeting their child’s needs. This person may feel like their child is the only person who has loved them truly.  In return, the emotionally drained child may feel clingy, desperate, or anxious. This can create problems when a child is misbehaving and the parent interprets it as a personal attack.

The avoidant parent may provide for the physical needs, but then could have difficulties meeting or recognizing the emotional needs of the child. Following their lead, this may result in the child dismissing their own needs, or they might feel like they need to have an emotional outburst for their parent to recognize their needs.

Parents with a disorganized attachment style of their own will likely create a similar environment for their child, acting erratically and unpredictably. As they likely experienced in their own history of growing up in a disorganized household, we can understand that here is where the seeds of intergenerational trauma are planted.

On the other hand, parents who have a secure attachment create a loving environment for the child to be able to safely express their needs. These parents are able to recognize the child’s emotional and physical needs and can respond appropriately. This is the goal for parents to strive towards, as Dan Siegel puts it, to help them feel safe, soothed, seen, and secure.

Addiction

Unsurprisingly, insecure attachment also often leads to a problematic relationship with addiction. In one particular study, those who were participating in an addiction treatment program were shown to have, on average, less secure attachment to primary relationships and instead expressed greater fears of intimacy, more emotional reactivity, and less differentiation of self.

We know from attachment theory that this is a function of our attempts to self-medicate and compensate for our lack of helpful attachment strategies. Some other figures to pay attention to:

    • Those with an insecure attachment in their romantic relationships tend to abuse substances more than those with a secure attachment.
    • Exhibiting an anxious attachment style is associated with increased and stress-motivated substance abuse.
    • Some studies link the drug of choice to attachment style. While those whose drug of choice is heroin were mainly found to have a fearful-avoidant (disorganized) type attachment style, cannabis abusers tended to be the avoidant type, and those who used alcohol demonstrated higher tendencies both in the avoidant and anxious-preoccupied attachment styles.

Where Do I Go From Here?

There is still hope! We are not chained to the attachment styles developed in childhood and can learn to become ‘earned secure’. This security is developed in the context of a relationship where we can practice different ways of expressing and meeting needs. 

In therapy with trauma-informed and attachment-oriented clinicians, we are able to explore our attachment histories by sharing our needs and experiencing nurturing and attunement in a safe environment. A trusted friend or partner can also provide the training ground to try out these new ways of relating. 

Professor and researcher Jude Cassidy describes what is needed to build a secure attachment: The ability to seek and give care, feel comfortable with your own self, and the ability to negotiate. Not all of us were taught how to enact these skills in relationships. However, we are able to learn and build these skills at any age.

Learning about your attachment style can give you context for your behavior and how it came to be. The more awareness you possess of your ways of connecting (or not connecting) with others, the better equipped you are to make changes. In this, you can build truth, security, and authenticity in your relationship with others and with yourself.

 

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