Why Your Childhood Matters to Your Mental Health as an Adult
You can use lessons from your childhood to improve your mental health.
We all hear that our childhood experiences impact our lives as adults — to varying degrees based on who you speak to and what you believe. But wherever you fall on the “nature vs. nurture” spectrum, one thing is undeniable: we all have childhood experiences that creep into our memories as adults, whether good or bad.
If you grew up with a physically abusive or emotionally abusive parent, for example, that tends to stick with you into your adult years and affect your mental health. That’s not to say that people who were abused as children can’t or don’t grow up to be perfectly functioning human beings — they do. It just means that they may have different baggage than other people. Let’s face it, we all carry around baggage of some sort. What it looks like and how heavy it is will change, that’s all. Regardless, no matter what the circumstances of your upbringing were, you were affected.
So what do you do about it?
There are a few things you can to support your mental health. And I am not a trained mental health professional, so I’m just speaking from experience.
- Acknowledge it: if you pretend it isn’t there…
