Childhood Trauma and Mental Health

Growing up in a house with people who don’t give you what you need in life can leave an impact on you. It can last a lifetime and in most cases, an adult do anything to erase that part of their life. They will hide behind drugs and alcohol to cover up the lasting effects of their childhood, but there are also people who will learn from their past and break the cycle. They promise themselves that if they were to have kids, they won’t treat them the same way. Having relatives that struggled with addiction will stay with you. You can either follow them or you can turn your life around.

Childhood trauma doesn’t necessarily have to involve the child itself. They could have witnessed a loved one go through an illness or experience a parent go through the abuse from a partner. The child can go through all the motions like, anger issues, attention problems, changes in appetite, development of new fears, increased concerns about death or safety, irritability, loss of interest in normal activities, problems sleeping, sadness, school refusal, somatic complaints like headaches and stomach aches.

Over time, trauma will eventually catch up with the child and cause more harm than good. It’s something that the child will take into adulthood. They will have to learn how to cope in the real world and have to deal with the aftermath. Relationships are also affected because there is a lack of connection. Depending in the type of trauma, kids may be afraid of adults, or they don’t trust males if trauma was mostly caused by a male. As an adult, they may shy away from having male friends or committed relationships because they fear that history will repeat itself.

How you grew up will define you as an adult. You can either grow from it and mature or you can be suck in the past and try and fix something that no longer matters. A lot of the time someone will remember, and it will trigger them, making them act hostile towards others. They tend to hold on to something that they know they can’t change. They hope they can somehow make their childhood a happy one. People can have PTSD from what they’ve experienced as a kid.

Even if you were raised in a safe and secure environment, you can still struggle with mental health. It’s just how your brain developed. You can everything going for you, but you still have a hard to regulating your thoughts and feelings and that’s okay. There’s always someone there to help you. You can get it under control, it’s just how to you handle the situation.

You can’t always use your childhood as an excuse for how you turned out in life. It takes a lot for a person to admit that it was because of their childhood that caused them to be who they are, but some people will use it as a reason without really thinking about the consequences of their actions. They will become the victim and say that its everyone else around them that is causing the problems in their life, which in some way its true, depending how your childhood affected you, but more often than not, someone won’t fix the issues which in turn will make everyone else the bad guy. They are suck on one part of their past and using that to project onto others.

It’s important to look back and ask yourself why it’s affecting you, why are you holding on to something that can’t be changed. The only way to overcame what has happened is to hold accountability, take action. Admit that you have something in your past that you need help with. Don’t assume that the people in your life are going to know what’s going on if you are not open and honest. Don’t let the people that caused you trauma continue the hold on you. You have to let go of the past. It’s going to be hard, but it’s something you need to do. You have to face the fears, confront whatever it is that holding you back.

You don’t need to reply on substances and alcohol to cope. If you catch your struggles early on, the better for you to get help. Don’t push it aside and tell yourself that you’ll tell with it later. It’s now or never. The older you get, the harder it’s going to be to get better. The only way to get better is to work on yourself. Nothing else matters, but your mental health.