Healing Childhood Wounds

Let’s get this clear right up front; this is not an essay that will provide you with: “The 10 steps to heal your childhood wounds.” I don’t believe in offering pablum to resolve real human experiences that have developed and impacted people for decades.

My hope is that you will come away from this reading with a greater ability to understand yourself.

The truth is that we often mistake functioning for healing.

We grow up. We get jobs. We build friendships. We fall in love. We become parents. We become accomplished. We stop thinking about whatever happened. If anyone asks, you say “I'm fine.” You tell yourself that whatever happened doesn’t bother you anymore, or “I let that go.” Really?

Or is it possible that you’ve suppressed those events and your feelings about them?

I’m not accusing anyone, because if you have done the work to heal, you already know the difference. Healing asks the harder question of Why did it bother me, and what did I learn about myself because of it?

The healing process provides an opening to explore how suppression often looks deceptively healthy.

You’ve developed a sense of independence. You maintain emotional control. You can point to achievements. You still have a sense of humor. You can be a caretaker. You are self-reliant. You have even forgiven those you perceived have wronged you.

These are all health traits. The distinction I’m suggesting isn't whether you remember the pain. It's whether your old experiences are still quietly regulating your present behavior.

The Wounds We Learned to Live With

There is often a misconception that most childhood wounds are loudly and dramatically painful. Also, that there was an event or a series of events that create a trauma response. While that is true in many cases, and may require professional help to address, I believe that the bulk of the childhood experiences that create some type of psychological imbalance can be connected less to what did happen, and more a product of what repeatedly didn’t happen.

In my own experience, I wasn’t abused, I wasn’t mistreated. I was fed. I had a home to come to. I was educated in academics and social norms. I was loved—and yet I learned:

• to mute my feelings

• I must earn approval

• conflict means love is in peril

• I needed to keep everyone happy

• I would be disappointed if I asked for what I need

• I was safest when I needed nothing from others

Only later in life did I come to understand that acknowledging a wound is not the same as condemning my childhood or my parents. At the end of the day, they were humans living through their own experiences and trauma, and trying to give their children a better life than the one they themselves grew up in. There were moments of pain, but also moments of healing.

“People can love us and still leave us with things we later have to heal.”

Not every childhood wound was inflicted intentionally. But every wound we carry eventually becomes ours to understand.

The Child Who Learned to Survive

There is the child who sought solace from emotional pain, but that soothing came inconsistently or not at all. That child learned that they only had themselves to rely on. They taught themselves that they shouldn’t need anyone else, because that need became associated with the pain they already felt.

There is the child who sought attention, but being noticed only came when they did something that others deemed worthy; never for just existing. That child learned that only achievement or disruption earned interest from others. So they taught themselves that they should only trust attention that was earned through the things they did.

There is the child who was surrounded by inconsistent emotional behaviors and conflicts. That child learned that they had to read the subtle cues from others before words were ever spoken. So they taught themselves that their safety required anticipating the moods of others.

Then there is the child who sought affection, but love did not come automatically or easily. Sometimes they felt it—sometimes they didn’t. That child learned that love was fleeting and impossible to hold. So they taught themselves that they needed constant reassurance, and if they did not receive that validation, it was safer for them to leave before love did.

There are many more examples—some more extreme and obvious than others. But the point is that all of us develop coping mechanisms as children to protect ourselves and it is important to understand that it is not only a natural response; it is a necessary one.

But we do not remain children. So it is equally necessary to discover whether the safeguards we put in place as children are still valid for our interactions as adults.

Do not waste a moment believing that you were or are defective. You are a survivor who adapted solutions to fit your environment. The problem isn’t that you needed to develop those solutions. The problem may be that you are using childhood solutions to solve adult problems.

When Old Wounds Enter New Relationships

In my past scenarios involving Kim and Teddy, what our fictional characters were demonstrating was that they kept ending up arguing with each other’s histories without realizing it.

Some examples in my life show; when a delayed text becomes abandonment. When a criticism felt like rejection. When a request for space was interpreted as, “You don't love me.” When a disagreement becomes, “I'm not safe.” Or when a partner forgets something, it becomes “I don't matter.”

The present event is real, but it is the emotional meaning we all attach to an event may come from a place much older and deeper.

To be clear, understanding where a reaction comes from does not excuse harmful behaviors coming from ourselves or others.

The clarity you develop from healing gives you context; it does not eliminate the need for accountability, or excuse our failure to hold ourselves accountable.

Childhood wounds don't only influence how we love other people. They influence who we believe ourselves to be. Our ego. Our self-worth.

The person who learned I am difficult may spend decades making themselves smaller.

The person who learned I must perform to be valued may never see accomplishment as enough.

The person who learned people leave may interpret intimacy through anticipation of loss.

Eventually the wound becomes confused with identity.

What happens when the safe space that once protected us becomes the cage that suffocates us?

Doing the Work of Healing is Not Erasing Your Past

I almost hate the use of the term “healing” when it comes to the process of self-discovery. The truth is it rarely feels like healing; it is often painful, deeply emotional, and the most difficult part is realizing that the pain and memories will never go away completely.

You learn that the erasing of the emotions and behaviors that developed through past experiences was never the point. If that were possible, the self-help industry would collapse. Therapists would need entirely different training.

You should never expect that healing involves denying you were ever hurt in the past. Nor will healing turn you into someone who was never hurt.

Healing does not require you:

• to forget

• to forgive

• to confront your parents

• to endlessly analyze your childhood

And it certainly doesn’t mean that you will reach some mythical state of being where nothing ever triggers you again.

At its most basic level, healing might instead mean developing the ability to recognize that while your feelings are real, the story you are attaching to them may be an old one. Not only old, but completely irrelevant to what is happening in the moment.

It’s not delusion. You’re not lying to yourself. You are learning to see your triggers in the appropriate context.

For me, the best way to do that when I’m triggered is to ask myself, “What is really triggering me here?”

There are no do-overs. You cannot go back and relitigate the past. What you can do is try and understand that the safety you needed as a child may not need to be enforced today.

Please, please, please don’t beat yourself up or give up when things don’t go as smoothly as it sounds in this writing. You will fail at times. I’ve failed more times than I can count.

Healing is a practice—not a cure.

In the same way love is not an achievement. It is a choice one makes—every day. In the same way that being in a relationship is not a goal—it is a dedication.

I don’t use mantras; they don’t work for me. But if you are someone that finds them helpful, then try this one: “I will dedicate myself to this relationship, and do so with love every day.”

This does not mean forgetting your past, losing yourself, denying your needs, or remaining in unhealthy situations. It means you stop allowing the needs of a child to become the filters of your relationships today.

As you practice, there are other questions you can ask yourself to focus your thoughts. If you are anything like me, you rehearse conversations before they start, and then exhaustively replay them after. Instead of obsessing randomly, try these questions:

What did I learn I had to do to receive love?

What emotions were acceptable in my childhood—and which weren't?

What happened when I made mistakes?

What did conflict look like in my home?

What did I learn about asking for help?

What am I still trying to prove—and to whom?

Which of my current reactions feel larger than the moment I'm actually in?

And perhaps the most difficult one to wrap your head around:

What am I still protecting myself from that is no longer happening?

Adult Healing

As I mentioned before, we cannot go back and renegotiate our childhoods. We cannot give our younger selves different parents, live different circumstances, hear different words, or give ourselves different experiences.

The good news is that as adults, we can give ourselves something our childhood didn’t:

Choice.

We can learn to recognize the frightened child without allowing that child to make every adult decision.

We can learn that boundaries don't mean abandonment. Conflict doesn't necessarily mean danger. Love doesn't have to be earned. Vulnerability doesn't automatically lead to rejection.

Perhaps healing isn't finally getting rid of the wounded parts of ourselves.

Perhaps it is learning how to stop asking those wounded parts to protect us from everything.

Healing is not suppression.

Suppression asks us to stop feeling the wound. Healing asks us to understand what the wound taught us. I am not asking anyone to become people without histories. No one should ever ask that of you. And you certainly should not be imposing that on yourself.

Your history is not who you are.

Together we are learning how to keep our histories from unconsciously deciding who we become.

It’s not enough to ignore something because we tell ourselves "That's in the past."

That’s suppression.

But when we can earnestly say, "Yes, it is. But I want to understand how much of my present is still living there."

That is healing.