Complex Trauma: How Your Upbringing Can Affect You in Life
Different types of family upbringing can have a significant impact on a person’s psychological growth and maturity. Ideally, this could’ve been the definition of an individual’s childhood experience. However, most people would view their childhood as the period of instilled trauma and a contrast to the ideological perspective of having a “perfect” childhood.
Unresolved complex trauma can leave people with poor mental health episodes and place burdens of high expectations upon themselves. It can take years or even decades to recover from it. Tragically, it can also last for a lifetime, so it’s important to get help.
If the therapy medications or diagnoses fail to work for the client, they may begin to suspect and feel that their trauma is incurable.
As time goes on, a generous amount of people come to believe that they are somehow responsible for how much pain they had to go through. In conclusion, they gradually reflect and understand that the real culprit is inside them, which is complex trauma.
Definition of Complex Trauma
In context, complex trauma refers to onset exposure to the interrelated forms of past traumatic experiences. These result in a person having unhealthy coping mechanisms or adapting to risky habits that will cost their life choices in the future. It can also gradually disguise itself as an adaptable survival tactic that will eventually become detrimental to a person’s whole being.
In most cases, complex trauma typically begins in early childhood. A parental figure can inflict traumatic experiences and since children often see the adults in their respective households as trusted role models. This can bring forth trust issues, among other things. Complex trauma traces back to a family’s generation of abusive patterns.
The aftermath of complex trauma contains a span of therapy diagnoses, misdiagnoses, and problems relating to health, relationships, and a dysfunctional academic background.
The Impact of Complex Trauma on Guilt and Shame
A child’s ability to have a sense of autonomy and self-worth will be at a loss when a traumatic event is present. It often remains in a child’s memory for a lifetime unless there’s an involved therapist.
This traumatic dread may have a throbbing impact on a person’s adulthood stage, which may be filled with rage, shame, existential anxiety, and guilt. These traumatic experiences may also make people feel disconnected from their loved ones, have severe anger issues, and have heightened depression and anxiety.
When a child experiences any form of abuse from their trusted parental figure, it can alter and condition the way the child forms relationships and friendships later in life. They may start seeing their favoured role models through the stages of mistrust. They may also have pent-up resentment and no longer trust people.
Attachment Style Disorders That Stems from Parental Complex Trauma
Dysfunctional adulthood attachment style occurs when a child experiences abuse or neglect from their parental figure, affecting their adulthood stage. These can include:
- Dismissive Avoidant Attachment: This attachment style stems from the caregiver’s neglectful way of taking care of a child or the lack of providing nutritional and basic needs to their minor. When that child reaches adulthood, they may choose to become highly independent to protect themselves from rejection.
- Fearful-Avoidant Attachment: When a child experiences domestic abuse and parental neglect, it will negatively impact forming friendships and intimate relationships. In adulthood, those traumatic events will cause a person to have trust issues, and it would be challenging for them to be emotionally expressive in a relationship.
- Anxious-Preoccupied Attachment: A person with this type of attachment may appear needy and will often require constant reassurances in close relationships. They will never feel a genuine sense of security. It all came from parents who weren’t consistent with their emotional availability during childhood. Inconsistent parental affection and conditional positive regard cause the child to question their self-worth and require repeated reassurances constantly.
The Complex Trauma Framework
This psychological framework recognises that a trauma survivor’s experience cannot be evaluated and confined in pure isolation. Instead, be considered for the client to exert a tremendous effort to adapt to life’s hardships.
In therapy, they provide strength-based and survival methods to re-examine trauma and shift the focal point from “what’s wrong with you?” to “what happened to you?”
A complex trauma re-examination therapy takes many external factors into a session, which includes:
- Re-evaluation of the client’s habits, such as severe aggression, suicidal tendencies, self-harm, or giving up one’s self-worth.
- Social retardation or interpersonal relationship problems include social anxiety, misanthropic tendencies, social withdrawal, and pushing trustworthy people away.
- Self-worth and identity issues, such as self-loathing, identity dissonance, and a fractured sense of self.
- Psychiatric treatment includes eating disorders (e.g. bulimia nervosa, anorexia nervosa, and binge eating disorder) and cognitive neurodiversity, part of the autistic spectrum.
These complex trauma perspectives can be viewed on a case to case situation with adaptive tactics to survive the overwhelming life experiences in this cruel and harsh world.
The Long-lasting Effects of Complex Trauma
Traumatic distress can negatively affect a person’s overall development and maturity for a lifetime. It also depends on the psychiatric treatment involved.
People who experienced abuse and neglect during childhood may develop unhealthy coping mechanisms that allow them to function and survive daily. They may live life walking on the tip of a shard and constantly lashing out to their parental figure. These people learn to adapt that bottling and repressing their emotions is normal to mask their pent-up anger issues and depression.
The National Child Traumatic Stress Network states a strong connotation between childhood trauma and unhealthy habits, such as excessive tobacco intake, compulsive sexual behaviour such as nymphomania in women and satyriasis in men, and experiencing terminal illnesses such as cancer and heart ailments.
In addition, people who have experienced complex trauma are more likely to experience severe anxiety and stress during adulthood. This long-term psychological distress can cause emotional detachment and physical illnesses throughout life.
Conclusion
In summary, childhood trauma is like a ticking bomb that can, later on, cause a damaging impact during adulthood. It stays forever in a person’s identity if left unresolved. A person’s overall maturity depends on their family upbringing, affecting their emotional health during adulthood.
Are you struggling to reflect on your traumatic experiences or talking it out to a trusted professional? Come with us and book an appointment at cookshill@optusnet.com.au or give us a call at 0421 598 486.
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Email:
cookshill@optusnet.com.au
Address: 82 Womboin Rd, Lambton
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