Healing Your Childhood Trauma Can Help You Understand Your Relationships Better

Unresolved issues from childhood can make it difficult to engage in relationships and difficult to trust ourselves or anyone else again. Trauma can be carried into adulthood as you experience feelings of shame and guilt, feeling disconnected and unable to relate to others, unable to sooth and regulate your emotions, experiencing anxiety and depression. As we grow older, we learned to distract, depress and numb any uncomfortable emotions. We tend to forget the inner child within us in order to fit in and we end up molding ourselves to what others want and need. We forget the child who was once carefree, full of love and curiosity. However, life happens, and we get hurt along the way. We carry these wounds with us into adulthood, and they continue to affect us in ways we may not even realize. These wounds tend to get triggered the most in the relationships we experience today. But it is not late to heal those wounds. It is never too late to give our inner child the love and care they deserve. We can start by acknowledging the pain we have carried for so long and allowing ourselves to feel it without judgment. We can give ourselves permission to cry, scream or do whatever it takes to release the pain.

We may found ourselves overreacting to situations and wonder why we did or say what we did. When we start wondering and reflecting on our behaviors and reactions, we start questioning and exploring the source of the wounds we still, as adults, feel and experience. For instance, if we look back to our upbringing and we realize that we grew up in an environment in which we did not receive a sense of safety and security and our primary caregivers were a source of fear, then we most likely have a hard time identifying when feeling safe or not with our current partners. We may go from withdrawing and clinging making it very difficult to connect and trust in our current relationships. Understanding our reactions to our relationships can help to be more present, more compassionate, more understanding and more connected not only with our partners but also with ourselves.

Once we have acknowledged our wounds, we can start to get curious about where we were wounded. We can begin to give ourselves the love and support we need. We can take care of ourselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We can engage in activities that brings us joy and connect us to our inner child. We can realize that what happened then does not have to define your present and your future. It is important to understand that when you feel triggered you have an opportunity to heal that specific wound. It is not as simple; however, it is necessary to have guidance from a therapist to help us navigate the uncomfortable emotions that may arise because of the the trauma we may have been exposured especially in the first years of our life. When our caregivers were a constant threat to our safety, our bodies and its nervous system will not feel safe and will have a trauma response.

Healing our inner child is not an easy process, but it is a necessary one. It allows us to break free from the patterns that have held us back and live a life full of love, joy and peace. During that process, we are able to look within and identify the source of the wound. We can challenge the beliefs we developed that limited us from being completely ourselves, unapologetically and authentically. We can learn to embrace every part of ourselves, including the parts we do not like and not show to others as much. Remember that a sense of felt safety is key in order to have connection and healthy relationships.

So, lets give ourselves the gift of healing by identifying the source of our limited beliefs, understanding our behaviors, giving ourselves what we need, and embracing joy which enriches our most intimate relationships, including the relationship with ourselves.

Happy Healing,

Tatiana