The effects of childhood trauma can actually reverberate well into adulthood, leaving their fingerprints on your abilities to cope with stress, on your general behaviors, and on your relationships. As a result, you can start experiencing the signs of childhood trauma’s impact on your life, ranging from addiction to fearing intimate relationships. That’s why it’s important to learn the symptoms of childhood trauma in adults so you can take steps to heal it in yourself or your loved one—before it gets worse.
Understanding Childhood Trauma
Childhood trauma can arise from a traumatic event that happens directly to you (or even a traumatic event associated with your environment) during your formative years of 0 to 18. Typically, these events fall under adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), such as:
- Physical, emotional, or sexual abuse
- Physical or emotional neglect
- Household challenges such as divorce, serious illness, or substance abuse
- Community incidents like natural disasters or violence
ACEs and consequently childhood trauma can happen anywhere to anyone. When they do, children don’t have the ability to understand the complexities of trauma in the moment. As a result, they become vulnerable to traumatic stress. This traumatic stress occurs when a child feels intensely threatened by an event they experience or witness, shares the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
Over time, if this traumatic stress isn’t addressed properly, you as a child may feel instability, guilt ,and shame, as well as distrust others. You may even feel personally responsible for the childhood trauma that happened to you. These feelings can persist as symptoms of childhood trauma in adults, or they can even appear decades after the traumatic event took place.
Identifying the Symptoms of Childhood Trauma in Adults
When trauma happens during your childhood, it can negatively impact your brain development. Eventually, this causes issues later in life. And these issues are often the most common signs of childhood trauma in adults, such as:
Relationship Challenges
Your childhood trauma can hinder your ability to connect well with others. You may struggle with shame or poor self-worth, leading you to seek out relationships in unhealthy ways. Childhood trauma responses in adults can cause some people to form unhealthy attachments with people who aren’t good for them. On the other hand, you may also fear intimacy with others and avoid close relationships in general.
Emotional Dysregulation
Emotional regulation skills—your ability to manage your emotions and apply the appropriate emotional response to a situation—are developed in childhood. When childhood trauma gets in the way, it can become difficult for you to form healthy emotional regulation skills. And as trauma triggers continue into adulthood, you may struggle with emotional dysregulation. Without proper emotional regulation skills in place, you’re more susceptible to anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders.
Memory Loss
When you experience ACES and trauma in childhood, your brain can actually intentionally forget the memory as a way to cope with the debilitating emotional impact. Your childhood memories can become repressed, buried deep within your subconscious. However, even though you don’t remember the experience, the effects of childhood trauma on adults can still linger, causing long-term issues.
Physical Symptoms of Childhood Trauma in Adults
Though you would naturally associate childhood trauma with an emotional and mental impact, it can also physically alter your adult body as well. As this unresolved trauma and heightened stress hormones continue to live inside your body, it puts you at greater risk of chronic health problems, including:
- Obesity
- Diabetes
- Heart disease
- Cancer
- Stroke
Effects of Childhood Trauma on Adults: Substance Abuse and Addiction
Because childhood trauma has hindered your emotional regulation skills and heightened your stress response, you can have a hard time navigating stressful situations and difficult feelings. That means it gets easier to turn to various coping mechanisms as a way to self-medicate. However, because of your strong emotional responses, you may be more inclined to choose drugs and alcohol as your preferred way to cope. Yet the more you use these substances, the more likely you are to abuse them. Eventually, you’re struggling with both addiction and childhood trauma together.
Can Symptoms of Childhood Trauma in Adults Be Healed?
You may have been struggling with childhood trauma for as long as you can remember. In fact, it may feel like your symptoms are dictating your life. Even if the effects of childhood trauma have been a part of you for years, you can overcome them. But how? By getting professional help.
A trauma-informed treatment center can directly address the childhood trauma buried deep within you. Not only can you heal, but you can be empowered to overcome future triggers and learn to develop better coping skills. At Sana at Stowe, we offer trauma-informed dual diagnosis treatment in the heart of the New England countryside. Our programs can help you heal from both your trauma and addiction at the same time. To learn more about your treatment options, contact our team today.
