How your childhood affects your present
I remember playing hide-and-seek as a kid, and I also remember sleeping on the terrace with my cousins and getting sick in the morning. Oh! I also remember coming back from school and watching pokemon and singing along with the theme song. But you know what else I remember just as vividly? When my 5th-grade teacher called me skinny and said “do your parents not feed you?” as a joke.
As an adult, we tend to live life keeping the past and the future in mind but do you remember doing so as a child? Wasn’t it fun to live one day at a time and not care about what comes next?
Childhood happens to be a major make-or-break time of our lives but the power of making and breaking lies in the hands of our caregivers and our environment.
Experiences from childhood do more than just leave faint memories. They imprint on us and shape our behaviour and responses.
“Normal” Childhood Experience
It is a known fact that most brain development happens in childhood and is influenced by many factors, predominantly a child’s experiences and environment. Most of our present behaviours are a direct or indirect reflection of our childhood experiences and learnings.
Childhood is when a person needs to feel loved and wanted the most. It is the phase of life where people discover what they love doing and although that might change over time, they at least learn how to inculcate a hobby and turn it into passion if they desire. At this stage, every child needs to feel they are cared for and have a fallback which could be any guardian. Most children with a healthy environment learn to trust, build a creative imagination, be kind and most importantly make good decisions.
Children should feel safe in their environment and feel heard. They need to be treated as individuals rather than a child with no mind. These things play a strong role in shaping a person’s personality.
What a dysfunctional Childhood looks like
Not every dysfunctional childhood looks the same. There are many sources of toxic experiences which range anywhere from traditional forms of abuse to a major loss or grief. Either way, they have the same effect — sabotage our happiness and follow us for decades to come.
Traditional Abuse
Some individuals face traditional forms of abuse(of any form) and neglect in their childhood. This usually is imposed by any person of authority or the primary caretaker. There does not have to be a cut or bruise for the abuse to have taken place, the bigger scar is on the mind which doesn’t fade easily with time. People who go through this often tend to blame themselves for their shortcomings but what they don’t realise is they were just children- naive and innocent Children in an abusive environment seem to lack a sense of dignity and emotional integrity around their abuser. They feel so low about themselves and are always trying to please others. They feel that if they continually do things to make their caregiver happy, the abuse might stop, but this is far from true. . No one should ever have to feel that they deserved the abuse inflicted on them.
Often times the abuser tries to shift the blame to the child, also termed as scapegoating. This kind of toxic behaviour is what leads to trust issues and self-esteem issues from a very young age and takes years of therapy to undo.
Overbearing Caretaker
Parents or guardians who are controlling — either emotionally or physically — think they are protecting the child from the outside world. What they don’t realise is that the child will someday have to deal with the same world without them. This kind of control causes suffocation and creates a deep resentment towards the caretaker which is difficult to undo. The overprotectiveness later becomes a habit and the parent can’t seem to let go of their children even when they are well into adulthood. Stealing the child of their childhood experiences which would otherwise be normal does nothing but create distance between the two parties involved and leaves the child with deep regret as an adult for not having enjoyed the smaller moments of life. This also leads to anxiety, overthinking and sometimes depression which the parents often seem oblivious of.
Emotional neglect
When the parents or caregivers fail to give the love and connection the child needs, it hinders the child’s ability to show or receive love in future as well. The child, as an adult, wants to connect to someone but doesn’t know how to. It is important for parents to not only love the child as a toddler but also as they grow up.
Emotional neglect leaves the child yearning for the love and attention they didn’t receive and they question their worth based on this. It becomes worse when the parent denies any such allegation against them and shifts the blame on the child. The child grows up to be either extremely clingy and develops attachment issues or completely shuts out any form of affection and develops abandonment issues — sometimes both.
Loss of a loved one
Grief is a complex emotion. Everyone has their own ways to deal with it and sometimes those ways may not be effective. When a child loses someone close to them, even when they are too young to remember it vividly, it creates an impact they might not realise at a young age. As a child, it is hard to understand the loss and grief felt. They forget the incident but are unable to let go of the person they lost and refuse to accept their departure. This leads to deep mental trauma which lasts for years.
What advantage do people with better childhood experiences have over others?
Unfortunately, not all people can relate to having the idealized expectations of a colourful childhood. Some people believe that they are much safer as adults with their own company than they were as kids with their guardians. As adults, we are able to look at situations with logic and use our experience to reason things. But children do not look at the world through the prism of knowledge, instead, they believe exactly what they are told. For example, when a child is told by their parents that they are useless, even if they don’t necessarily mean it — the child will not only get upset about it but also note this piece of information as a fact for a long period of time. Such kind of thinking is a boon if given affirmations but a great bane if shown neglect.
Part of learning to be an adult means making sense of events in our childhood. People with good childhood memories and no regrets about their early situations have a great advantage over people who didn’t have a great childhood experience. They know how to process their emotions better and learn to communicate effectively. They have a sense of security and are able to handle negative situations with confidence and patience.
People who had some negative phase in their childhood tend to have a lot of issues as adults. They have trouble processing their needs and are not aware of how to deal with trouble in a healthy way. They are a step behind others emotionally because they haven’t fully understood their childhood and are unlearning the wrongs on the way.
When an individual is neglected as a child, they also face difficulty in forming and maintaining relationships with friends and partners since they don’t know how to receive love either. They are used to either conditional or no love at all and hence cannot believe when someone tries to love them otherwise. Trust issues, overthinking, insecurities, an unhealthy amount of jealousy, attention-seeking are just some of the issues poor childhood can have on an individual’s relationship.
A lot of times, children with trauma come off as “mature” at a young age and are appreciated for the same. This could sometimes be an ordinary personality trait but when it comes as a form of coping mechanism, this could be very stressful for the child. The child who acts mature is actually walking on eggshells and in survival mode. They are trying their best to stay out of trouble and not do anything out of the ordinary which could trigger adverse reactions from the people around them. Being disciplined and being threatened are two very different qualities and shouldn’t be interrelated.
“When all the doors closed, and I was left standing alone
I learnt to build a home and be my own backbone
It’s not easy but I have no choice
How can I survive without fixing my inner voice”
Healing
Healing from such phases can be difficult and time-consuming but it’s all worth it in the end. To accept and to feel all the emotions that were once turned down can be the first step towards healing. Not knowing what is wrong but sensing that something is wrong is a clear indication of emotional neglect resurfacing and calls for help.
Visiting a psychologist and getting into therapy has been proven to be extremely beneficial to most people. In the case of childhood negligence and trauma too, medical help can be helpful.
Psychotherapy provides safe ways to explore and understand experiences and assistance to make sense of what could be a lifetime of difficulty. It also helps immensely in identifying unhealthy coping mechanisms which are formed to survive each day.
Conclusion
In short, childhood experience shape who we are as an adult and how we deal with our problems. It can be a big burden to be living with an unhealed inner child.
If you are someone who faces difficulty in processing their childhood and have trouble understanding your emotions, you are not alone. It is very much possible to get better and unlearn the things that don’t sit right with you. Blaming yourself is never a healthy option and only leads to more issues. It is best to talk things out with a therapist and start healing at your pace.
