When did you realize, as an adult, that you had childhood trauma? And how did it show up for you?

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1. I realized in therapy. It’s mostly control issues and speaking/standing up for myself.

2. Realizing it was “adulting”. Having to be aware of these childhood traumas so that I no longer act out of a place of emotional reaction.

3. I only really confronted it when I was engaged and planning my wedding. I guess I was thinking about family in general, both my own and my relationship to them, as well as the family I wanted to start with my future husband.

   It started with unexplained panic attacks. Then uncontrollable crying triggered by the smallest events. I sought out therapy and that’s when I really faced it. I think for the decade before that I was just ignoring the childhood trauma, pretending I wasn’t affected by it.

4. A year after I went no contact with my parents.i was talking to someone about an incident in my childhood and they started crying while I just started at them with a confused look.

5. I grew up in a home with love, but I didn’t realize the love was conditional until I left my parents culty church in my mid-twenties.

   Because I was an adult I was able to work through the issues easier, so I don’t believe I was traumatized in the way other victims of this same sort of situation were as kids or young teenagers. It certainly was no picnic to adjust to a life where your parents want nothing to do with you, but if I had been shunned and mistreated as a child instead of an adult I would have been way worse off and much more emotionally scarred.

   That being said, i was very very sheltered in a lot of ways and prone to being taken advantage of. I am actually amazed at the amount of people who attempted to target me for their MLM schemes… I don’t get that at ALL anymore, but in my mid twenties when i started to branch out and become more independant I seemed to attract all sorts of people from romantic partners to random strangers who saw me as an easy pushover.

6. I was having emotional reactions to certain situations in romantic relationships (e.g. fears of rejection or abandonment) that went far beyond what would be reasonable/normal for what was actually going on. As I started to read about the effects of trauma, including stuff like hypervigilance and getting triggered, I realized I had experienced many such symptoms for most of my life, and that this probably had to do with what I now realized had been emotional abuse I’d endured as a child.

   I’d also noticed that therapy modalities such as CBT didn’t really work for me, and I’ve since learned that that’s because CBT and its ilk only attempt to treat the symptoms of trauma (and other mental health issues), rather than making any attempt to heal the underlying issues/traumas that are causing those symptoms.

7. My therapist let me know that binging and throwing up 15 times a day is not something that most people do.

8. My partner got really drunk (which is fine, he very rarely drinks more than 2 drinks at a time and this was the first time I had ever seen him drunk) and it triggered a PTSD episode in me. My dad was an alcoholic.

   After that I started thinking about it and realized I’m always slightly triggered around drunk people, but seeing my partner in that state really affected me.

9. It hit me like a but after a few stressful weeks at work for which I went to therapy, only to find out I had a lot of dormant shit from when I was a kid

10. When I would tell ‘funny’ stories about my childhood and people didn’t laugh, they looked shocked and asked if I was ok.

11. My guild leader pointed out, within the first 15 seconds of actually speaking to me, that compulsively apologising (I didn’t get a joke he made) was a big sign of abuse victims.

12. I’ve had mental health issues since I was a child but they only got worse and worse as I got older. I think this is also because I became aware something was wrong with me, well multiple things were wrong with me. I could finally name and explain them. I finally knew what was done to me was wrong, whereas it was normal to me as a child. You grow up and you realize the things that happened to you are not normal and they damaged you and they can’t be undone. It’s so hard to realize that

13. In a self-help book that I got for my husband and I to do our once-a-year marriage ‘check in.’ Then solidified it with a book about Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. My parents were teens when they had me so that tracks but I spent most of my life having it drilled into me that my parents’ divorce happened to my mom. A favorite great aunt with ZERO ill intent told me a few months after it happened, “I don’t know how your mom makes it. You be a good girl, she’s going through so much.” I internalized that hard and always believed that everything Dad did was why I was the way I was. (Anxious, socially awkward, panic attacks as young as 6, being described a ‘sensitive’ in a bad way.) I realized my mom contributed her fair share too and when I broke the cycle of some of the things I didn’t like that ‘bonded’ over, suddenly I felt like I wasn’t worth being in contact with anymore to her. I always gave a wide berth for error because of their age but the more I learn, the more no one ever asked how *I* was doing? (The answer: Not well.)

14. I had already had a child say around 25, when I realized that my step mother abused me. Not physically but mentally. And that I come from a dysfunctional family on all sides. I thought it was great to have divorced parents. You got two of everything. You got two months coming to Dad’s coming to Christmas and two birthdays. But that’s no way to live. As a child, I could get anything almost that I wanted except their time and attention. I never knew how to love somebody. Not a person. Oh I can love dogs and cats and things like that but I can’t love a person. There’s a part of me missing. And I raised myself. And the only comfort I can find is the smoke marijuana. It dulls the rage in me.

15. I am 46 and I realized sometime in the last 5 years. I am currently in therapy and it is actually more prevalent in my life than I thought.

16. I was mildly aware of childhood trauma because of my stunted emotional growth. Then I got into a healthy relationship and realized there were several things that I didn’t understand that were normal for other people but not for me and vice versa. My partner points out the things that I do so I’m aware of the things that show up in my relationship that aren’t “normal,” for most people. Like I’ve never felt safe in my own home and there was a huge element of hoardin and not being able to live in a room that was “mine.” So I live like a bachelor. I have as minimal things as I need to be able to dip as fast as possible. Even if I’ve been there for a long time. I’ve chalked it up to minimalism, but it stems from somewhere entirely different than what the online aesthetic shows.

17. After the birth of my first-born. He was a bad sleeper and I felt the urge to hurt him, just like my father always did when we cried. I didn’t but I abused myself instead, for years, developing an eating disorder.

    After the birth of my third everything went downhill and I wanted to unalive myself because I felt he deserved better (I couldn’t exclusively breastfeed him), I had a terrible case of post partum depression and I realized I have deep (and a lot of) issues, so I started therapy.

18. In therapy for me. I remember mentioning my mom and my therapist jumped on it and said that I “don’t talk about family much”. It popped the can of worms right open. The next sessions were a series of huge realizations.

19. Does it count if I found out in my late teens?

    I was having a lot of issues with anxiety and depression for pretty much my whole preteen and teen years. I had suspicions that something may have happened in my childhood because there are significant portions I didn’t (and still don’t) really remember. My friends were over one afternoon and we were joking around, one put his hands on my shoulders and whispered “hey don’t tell anyone okay?” Tears just flooded out of my eyes and I had my first flashback. I remembered what I had purposely forgotten and buried years before.

20. After having severe emotional breakdowns and always choosing to stay around men that weren’t good for me at the time, I realised I had a fear abandonment, PTSD from being sexually assaulted and raped in my first relationship. I had an alright upbringing, like food on the table, clean clothes, and a roof over my head. But growing up my parents were never really there for me when I needed them, for example I was bullied severely in my childhood for 10 years straight in school, and it kinda started with them shaving me bald back when I was 8 years old, saying how they forgot to do it when I was a baby e.c.t don’t really know the details. But I know it was that incident that led to people treating me differently, and a few other things too which led to them I guess unintentionally neglecting me. After a lot of therapy though I would say I’m in a much better place mentally and despite the questionable things my parents have done, I still do have a lot of love for them.

21. Late 20s when I discovered the concept of emotional neglect. Suddenly a lot of my “quirks” made sense.

    High perfectionism because nothing I did or said could warrant a positive reaction

    Very prone to guilt and shame

    Strong suppression of my outward expression (feelings didn’t receive a response or were considered an annoyance, so why bother expressing them?)

    Not paying attention to/a general detachment from my inner self (not in touch with my feelings, wants, or needs, and I didn’t even recognize my detachment until my mid-20s because of, ya know, the detachment)

    Never even thinking to ask for help with things I guess because the urge to ask for help was conditioned out of me at a young age since no one ever actually helped me with anything

    Strongly feeling like an alien

    Not knowing how to connect or bond with people (you’re supposed to learn this starting in infancy when your parents bond with you)

    Which led to a major lack of socialization (this is also supposed to start with your parents) and problems with fitting in and being rejected a lot because I was/am too odd

    I’m sure there are many more things that are so normal to me that they’re not even coming to mind.

22. I was angry MAJORITY of my teen/early adult years and in a very toxic relationship through both as well. I thought that’s what relationships were for a long time. Someone you loved and were good with being around till you weren’t and then you just fought it out, rinse and repeat.

    Once that relationship ended I did a lot of getting to know myself since I was in that relationship from the time I was 14 till 20. I realized a lot then that there was emotional abuse from both my parents but mainly my dad and I was even more mad about that for a while. Eventually after talking to a therapist and experiencing more of life and what adulthood really entailed I realized they did the best they could with how they were raised and the resources they had in order to raise me and my siblings.

23. It showed up in me picking emotionally unavailable partners. My mother was and still is emotionally immature.

24. In therapy in my 40’s. My hyper-vigilance, my masking intense emotions or fear, self blame for things beyond my control. EMDR has changed my life though.

25. I’m just now realizing it. I over apologize. Think everything is my fault. I had been getting off the phone with a person close to me, and I would replay our conversations and be really put off at some of the comments made. I started thinking that those comments weren’t necessarily needed to have the conversations. It made me really think and observe my past, and helped me identify where the break down was, and turns out this one is NOT my fault. But it showed me that I was being conditioned to be the scapegoat.

26. This January. I’m thirty three.

    In January I had an interaction with my parents that just broke me. So many triggering things happened at once that it just lifted the lid off the box I’d mentally stuffed all that shit into. I came home and sobbed to my husband about how it actually wasn’t ok and it was a damaging childhood. I’d previously sort of joke about the crappy bits of my childhood, I couldn’t acknowledge how much it had effected me.

    I can’t laugh it off like I used to because I am feeling all the feelings of all of it, all the time. I’m the most tearful I’ve ever been, I feel raw. Acknowledging and beginning to sift through it in therapy is painful.

27. Therapy. I was in college when I first saw a therapist, and they told me that what I went through wasn’t normal, that I had been horribly abused. Sad thing is that acceptance for that abuse helped me remember all the sexual abuse I had repressed for most of my life up to that point. Without seeing a therapist, I would never have known I had so much trauma. Repression is a hell of a drug.

28. When I repeatedly dated the same personality type as my mom (the one who’s unhealthy behaviors caused me a great deal of stress/trauma).

29. In my mid 20s I realized I don’t really share my life or my accomplishments with anyone. I had become a hermit. After talking to my sister I realized that the reason I don’t share things with other people is because my mom is a ruiner, any accomplishment, or exciting thing we had going on in our lives she ruined and turned negitive. Great example of this is I bought myself a gaming system I was really excited about and when I brought it over to show them she told me I was wasting money and time playing stupid games and should be out finding a boyfriend.
    I still find it really hard to talk about myself and my accomplishments or things I’m just generally excited about

30. Does it count if I’ve always known? I’m like the walking talking movie stereotype.

31. Being married to my husband, several things over these past years triggered me a lot over and over again. I started seeing an individual therapist last year. Watching TikTok (self-improvement), journaling and listening to podcasts have helped me learned more about where my trauma could stem from.

32. I had two traumatic things happen to me at 11 and 12 – the one that happened at 12 vastly overshadowed everything else that had happened.

    As an adult, I made an offhand joke reference about the trauma to a group of friends. They took me very seriously and were like, wow, we’re sorry that happened to you. I went home that night and thought about it all, and it made me realize the significance of the situation.

    My house burned down.

    My family and I had lived there my entire life and it was the only home I had ever known. I shared a room with my older sister who had just moved out, and my dad remodeled my room. There was a lot of emphasis put on this room being *mine*, and it felt so amazing to have my own space when it previously felt like I was invisible.

    It happened while we were away for the weekend, and we came back to absolutely nothing salvageable. It was a total loss. My parents and I suddenly only had 3 days worth of clothes and whatever was in our car. My dog, Rascal, survived though. We never did figure out how she got out of the house.

    In my adult years, I have a tendency to hold on to processions even when they’re unusable. I’m not a hoarder, but I do have a lot of clutter. I started accessing that behavior and realized that I’m so possessive of things because I lost everything. In combination with the other trauma that I mentioned, it led me to cling to relationships the same way – constantly trying to keep things from disappearing.

33. One time at a family gathering, my cousin recalled babysitting me and made a strange face about what she “would walk into.” It was very odd. Both her and my aunt made faces, but refused to talk about it. A year or so later I had dinner with my estranged half-sister and she said “there are things from our childhood I’ll never tell you.”

    I brought this up in therapy, as I found it all very unsettling and stressful. With my therapists help we talked about some of my childhood memories and then explored how I am as an adult—people pleaser, anxious attachment, fear of people leaving me, uncomfortable around drunk people, etc. She said I undoubtedly had some form of abuse or trauma, but I can’t recall it.

34. WE ALL HAVE CHILDHOOD TRAUMAS … Let’s start there !

35. Remembering a childhood sexual assault and how purity culture affected my inability to even date as an adult with a huge emphasis on remaining a virgin

36. I’ve always known to some degree.

    But every once in a while, even at 30, I’ll be talking about something I considered normal from my childhood and I’ll be met with people being horrified.

37. The therapist at the cancer center punted me to a therapist who specializes in trauma after I told her a funny story about sitting on my dad’s lap and steering the car when he was drunk.

    “You have cancer, you’ve mentioned food insecurity as a child, and now this with your dad; you should see someone who specializes in trauma.”

    “Wait. Being hungry and having an alcoholic parent is trauma? I thought that was just growing up. Both my parents were alcoholics btw. And I spent summers alone while Mom was at work starting from when I was 7. But it all felt like just normal stuff.”

    O_O “Yes. This is bigger than your cancer.”

    Turns out getting a PTSD diagnosis and therapy helped, even if a dangerous and neglectful childhood felt normal.

38. The past few years. Showed up over 20+ years, compounded by issues and smaller traumas. Slowly working it out now…fingers crossed.

39. In my early 30s, I realized that every guy I dated was an AH. I asked myself why, and realized that I equated marriage with being trapped with someone who must be placated at all times. Decades later, I am gloriously single and very happy about it.

40. When moved away to college I lived in the dorms freshmen year. After the first month of the semester alot of people on my floor started going home for the weekend because they missed their family. ….. This sentiment never crossed mind, I was finally free and felt like I needed to emotionally prepare myself whenever I had to go back. I realized this wasn’t the norm

    My mom also used to randomly call me to remind me what a selfish person I was for going to college (I’m a 1st gen, and moved to a college 2 hours away, all on student loans, she didn’t pay a cent) so that was also a fun time. Pretty sure that was the first night I got black out drunk. I spent the next two years drinking way too much and then finally started seeing a counselor and got on antidepressants. The road to recovery was long and slow, it took several years. Happy to report I haven’t had alcohol in 5+ years. For the record I don’t think I ever reached alcoholic status, I only drank on weekends and I never craved it other wise, I just wanted to be as numb as possible. A few years back i decided that I didn’t want or need to numb myself anymore. I wanted to be present and if I was going through hard shit I wanted to prove to myself I didn’t need alcohol. I don’t miss it. I will always be a work in progress, just one that no longer has to deal with hang overs

41. 3 years ago when I was 24, I got my first full-time job/career as an adult. I lived alone and just felt so comfortable and *relatively* unstressed in my home. It hit me that I should’ve felt that as a child a long time ago; not for the first time in my mid 20s.

42. I had always known that I had grown up differently from most people. However when my son was about a year old, my husband, him, and I were all sitting at the table. My son had a big round toddler belly and a giant smile and my husband said, “I can’t wait to make him so much food as he grows up.” I just burst into tears because my father regularly told us “you’re not hungry, drink some water and go for a walk.”

    My husband is a good father and a good man. He’s helped me come to terms with quite a bit.

43. I made friends with a big group of mostly guys majoring in philosophy. They’d always like to debate when we were hanging out and sometimes they would get heated and intense. Whenever they would raise their voices I would shut down, be still, and stop speaking. I started observing myself and realized that was something I was trained to do; make myself smaller so that I wouldn’t become the object of my parents’ frustration when they were raging.

44. 2020 during the pandemic having an existential crisis… locking down with myself made me had a lot of introspection and helped me to grow up a looooot

45. For me, I was started to be embarrassed & ashamed to share my childhood memories with my husband and closest confidants.