6 Subtle Signs You Have Childhood Trauma And How to Heal

[0:00]Most people think that they had a good or normal childhood, so they get very confused when they hear about trauma for the first time. You see, trauma is not always the big T stuff, the abusive parents, a death in the family, war, car crashes, physical assaults, just to name a few obvious examples. Trauma is also the subtle, silent stuff, the stuff that people often times overlook completely. And it is important to understand this stuff because it is directly controlling and influencing your relationships from the shadows. So, here are six subtle signs that you have childhood trauma, and most importantly, what it actually takes to heal that will save you a lifetime of therapy. So, the first subtle sign that you have childhood trauma is that you don't trust peace. You don't trust the calm when things get quiet and easy. Instead of relaxing into it, you get suspicious. Your nervous system starts to scan for threat, even when there is no threat. It wonders, "What's about to go wrong? The shoe's about to drop somewhere." So you start arguments if you're in relationships. You worry about made-up problems, or even break things and cause fights when things are going too good. So you should ask yourself, "Where does this behavior come from?" For a lot of my clients, childhood peace was the calm before the storm. Maybe mom or dad were fine one moment, or maybe most of the week, and then all of a sudden, Friday night comes around, and they go into a fight, they go into a rage. Something triggers them, and they lose themselves, right? They go unhinged. Or maybe they were nice and calm one moment, and they turned cold and quiet the next. So now your body is always anticipating when things turn south, even when things are calm or peaceful. Okay, the second sign that you have trauma, you overthink everything. You replay conversations, you over-read between the lines that don't exist. You doubt every decision, you lay in bed dissecting one conversation after the next, one text message after the next. You do that for hours. Again, why do you do this? Because as a child, you couldn't afford to relax. You had to study your parents or the people around you, you had to study their moods. Always wondering, "Is my mom angry today? Is dad quiet because I did something wrong?" Overthinking was a coping mechanism to keep you safe back then, but today, as an adult, it drains you. Number three, you crave toxic connections. You say that you want real love, but you ghost the nice one and chase the unpredictable one. You fight, you break up, you get back together, and around and around this roller coaster goes in your relationships. Again, why do you do that? Because chaos feels like home. And maybe it looked like you tiptoeing around your parents all the time, walking on eggshells. Maybe love also came with yelling, guilting, and shaming. And so the subconscious part of your adult brain, even today, associates drama with love, and peace with boredom. And number four, you can't feel true joy. Even when you get promotions, vacations, a fun night out with your friends or family, but deep down, you feel numb. It's like watching life through glass. Again, why is this emptiness always there, no matter what you do? Because maybe as a child, you weren't allowed to be a carefree kid. You had to help to raise the siblings, clean up after a drunk parent, clean up the house, take on more responsibility that was never supposed to be yours to begin with. Or even hide your joy and excitement to avoid punishment, criticism, and ridicule. So you taught your heart back then, don't feel too big, don't enjoy yourself too much, don't have too much fun, don't be authentic and real. Because ultimately, it's not safe to do that. And number five, you say, "Sorry," for even existing. You over-apologize for being late, for asking for help, for having feelings. You feel like a burden even when people love you. Again, ask yourself, why? Perhaps as a child, maybe you got blamed for things that weren't your fault. Like the grown-ups in your house fighting all the time. Or you learned that love was conditional. Be quiet, be helpful, don't need too much, don't ask for too much. So now you shrink yourself, you abandon yourself, and you make yourself small in order to feel safe. And number six, this is a very common one, which is, you numb out constantly. Scrolling on your phone for hours, binge watching Netflix again and again, a drink or two or three every night, every other night. Perhaps you overwork, you're constantly consumed by work, you don't even know how to not exist other than working. Whatever it is, again, you should ask yourself, why do you do this? Because being alone with your thoughts perhaps terrifies you. Because as a child, feeling the sadness or the fear didn't change anything, it just hurt more. You were alone with those feelings, which is a terrible place to be. So you learned to shut down the emotions, distract from the emotions because no one's going to be there to hold you through them. Better to be stuck in your head, better to be distracted. So I'm curious if that's starting to hit, maybe a little bit too hard, too intimately. But I'm also willing to bet that you've probably tried to work on yourself, maybe done the basic therapy, the mindset work, reading books, trying to improve yourself, right? That's the only reason why you're probably watching this because you are the kind of person that's trying to work on yourself. But I'm willing to bet that you've been pretty damn stuck in that journey. Because even knowing all this about your past, why you do the things you do today, where it came from, what you should do instead, knowing this trauma is not enough to change the trauma. Telling the story is not what changes it, and even reading, watching a video like this isn't what changes it. It's a great beginning step that opens the windows, it opens the doors to seeing what's possible and where you should go. Real change means getting into your body because that's where the trauma lives. It lives deeply imprinted into the depths of your nervous system and your subconscious. It's not just your thoughts. Most of my clients come to me after years, sometimes a lifetime of talk therapy, coaching, mentorship, retreats, all kinds of stuff, and they still repeat their old patterns. They know all the stuff that I just told you today, but they were so stuck. So I'm telling you that if you want to change, like real change, you have to start processing the pain and the emotions in the body that you never got to do as a child. You have to go beyond the thinking mind into the subconscious and reparent that little boy or little girl still stuck inside, still struggling with those pains of self-worth, shame, neglect, and abandonment. You have to learn to feel your emotions safely through the body. You have to face the frozen fear, grief, and anger that the little child inside couldn't handle alone. You have to learn how to swim through those emotions and then regulate your nervous system. You have to learn to stop blaming yourself. You have to learn to feel safe and love, to feel calm and peace and silence, and feel free and joy. All this is a deep experiential journey that I guide clients through, and it's not easy work. It's very hard work, but it's worth it because when you stop coping, you start living. Not just surviving anymore, but feeling alive and thriving. Now, if even just one of those signs hit you in the gut, don't ignore it. Your childhood pain didn't get to choose who you became. You do. So I invite you to subscribe if you want more content like this, perhaps or even share it with a friend who needs to hear this. Or if you're interested in how I work with clients through a transformational journey, you can simply visit the link in the description below, and I'll see you in the next video.