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Deconstructing Childhood Trauma
Facing childhood trauma is difficult, mainly because its an invisible assassin.
Iman Habel
Childhood Trauma Support Group: Deconstructing Childhood Trauma
Childhood traumas are tricky. The experiences we face when we are children shape us in extremely profound ways that dictate who we are as adults. The things that make us happy, sad, eager, anxious, afraid, ashamed, connected, disconnected, valued, disvalued are all based on the experiences we had as children.
What you are today: the quality of relationships we have, the people who give us joys and fears, the things that make you feel pride or shame, the situations that make you feel like life is worth living or not, steep far deep into our childhood experiences.
Anything that triggers you in one way or another has deep roots in your childhood.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, childhood trauma is defined as: โThe experience of an event by a child that is emotionally painful or distressful, which often results in lasting mental and physical effects.โ
Why is it important to face our childhood traumas?
Because if we donโt, we end up living lives in which we are disconnected from who we really are. We end up living in reaction to our childhood traumas rather than living the meaningful lives we know we truly deserve. Lives filled with joy, ease, gentility, kindness, compassion, care, and bliss.
Children who face challenging circumstances as children learn to adapt themselves in order to cope and survive in their environments. These coping mechanisms become their protective mechanisms. As far as this mind is concerned, the world is as their childhood experience was. Therefore these protective mechanisms continue to sharpen and grow as we continue to grow into adults. Yet as we grow, we continue to encounter experiences that sharpen certain protective mechanisms as they are re-established every time we are affected in the same way we were as children.
We learn not to trust, to be afraid, to overextend ourselves so we may be liked, to people please so we may feel safe, and much much more.
But everything we experience as adults becomes a reaction to our childhood experiences. The things that hurt us, the things that make us feel fear, the things that make us feel insignificant, the things that make us feel angry, dishonored, disrespected all stem from the protective mechanisms we built for ourselves to survive when we were children.
Facing your childhood traumas is important because then you stop living out of a sense of reaction and out of a place of cultivation. You get to create the person you know you are, the life you want and cater to the relationships you know you want. But before you get to live that life, create that life that is yours, and not a reaction to the things that happened to you as a child, you must first face the things that happened to you as a child.
What makes this whole process even more complicated, is that sometimes, these experiences happened way before we could remember anything, but the brain created pathways to protect itself and the being itโs in, you. The brain created pathways for survival and along with those pathways, physical memories.
This is why itโs important to create a relationship with your body because the body remembers. Your active memory might not, your body most certainly does, your emotions most certainly do, and your subconscious memory most certainly does.
As I said in the quote above, childhood traumas are like invisible assassins, if gone unchecked, they may destroy our relationships, make it difficult to have financial stability and freedom, cripple our mental and physical health, and make it difficult to navigate life. This is because our minds continue to function in a state of trauma, in a state of protective reactivity. Even when we are far from the traumas that we experienced as children, we continue to function in that way, until we consciously choose to face ourselves, our childhoods in the present, so that we may change our futures.
Why join this support group?
This group offers you the opportunity to share your journey with people who can understand what it means to go through the physical and psychological effects of the ghosts of the past. Joining this group gives you the opportunity to be heard by people who get what that fear and pain of reliving your childhood traumas in adulthood is like. You get to be in a space where the “abnormal” things you go through are not abnormal, but part of each of our lives. We will get to share how far along we are on our journeys, how we cope with specific effects and perhaps give each other advice on how to survive our own selves.
Who is this support group for?
This group is for women who experienced childhood traumas and have chosen to face their pasts in order to create more meaningful futures.
Online: Zoom: Once you register, you will receive an email with details.
Mondays: 5pm Western (pdt)/8pm Eastern (edt): USA time
How much does it cost?
$120 per month: 4 support group sessions
