Even the best parents in the world will still unintentionally cause their children to have issues in adulthood if they have not worked on their own self-development adequately. So if you’re on a journey of healing, at some point you’ll need to look at your childhood – a time when much of what you believe about, and expect from, the world is shaped. Here are six ways childhood wounding can show up in adulthood. Some of these examples cover relationships with others, but many of them relate to your relationship with yourself.
1. You weren’t taught how to regulate emotions.
(Photo by Elena Merce on Scopio)
I grew up in a household where emotions were avoided at all costs. If I were upset or hurt, my parents would brush it off and tell me to get over it, or would look at each other and say ‘she’s just tired’. That taught me that difficult emotions were not only pointless but dangerous (since they caused a withdrawal of affection) and consequently, whenever I experienced them, I felt deeply unsafe. When I went through challenging experiences in my 20s, I had no skills to process my emotions because my default response was to actively avoid them. Learning to recognise these emotions, sit with them and work out what they are trying to teach me – without going into self-judgment (ie ‘what’s wrong with me?!’) – has been a huge part of my personal development.
2. You had a codependent parent.
Oh boy, this is a big one! Codependency is what happens when one person’s energy overextends into someone else’s energy. In terms of parent-child relationships this can show up as a parent trying to live their life through you, not honouring boundaries (for example, they interfere in your life) and making you feel you can’t make life choices that they might dislike. In adulthood, this can lead you to feel like you’re responsible for other people’s emotions, meaning you could stay in unhealthy friendships or relationships because the idea of hurting the other person feels too heavy a burden to bear. You could hide aspects of your true nature in order to make others more comfortable. And of course, setting boundaries will feel extremely uncomfortable for you. Speaking of which…
(Photo by Torsten Dederichs on Unsplash)
3. You weren’t taught the value of boundaries.
When Russell Brand interviewed Brené Brown for his podcast ‘Under the Skin’, she gave a great example of why holding boundaries with children is so important – even when they’re throwing tantrums because they want that toy/candy/Netflix time. A strategy that helped her enforce boundaries was imagining her daughter in the future. “When [daughter] Ellen would push and say, ‘I really want it, I really want it!’… Fast forward to her in the back of a car: She’s 16, she’s on a date. He’s saying ‘I really want it, I really want it!’... I modelled and taught her to give in when it’s too hard to say no.”
This is such a powerful example of what can happen if you weren’t taught boundaries as a child. It means you grow up to think boundaries don’t matter, and you will end up going along with what other people want from you, even if you don’t want to, and you’ll find it very difficult to be assertive about what you want.
4. Your reality was denied.
My sister had serious health issues when she was a child, which resulted in her being rushed to hospital on several occasions. Once, when I came home from school and found an ambulance in the driveway and my mother in floods of tears, she looked straight at me with a fake smile and told me that nothing was wrong. Even at the age of eight, it was clear to me that everything was very much not fucking alright. I realise my mother meant well; she was trying to protect me from pain, but that wasn’t her job – her job was to help me deal with pain. You cannot deal with something if you’re being told you’re wrong to think it’s even there. This is one of the reasons I grew up struggling to trust my instincts and perceptions. This is a subtle form of gaslighting, even though the intentions were good. It means you might grow up overlooking red flags in relationships because you don’t trust your own perception, for example, or could let others make important decisions for you.
5. You were abandoned.
(Photo by Natalya Letunova on Scopio)
If one of your parents walked out on the family and you never saw them again – or you did see them but they never made you feel like you mattered as much as their work, alcohol or some other issue they were struggling with – the belief you might take on board is ‘I’m not good enough to be loved or cared for.’ That can see you attract partners or friends who don’t take care of you, or you keep people at arm’s length out of a belief they’ll abandon you eventually. Or maybe you constantly pick fights with partners because you’re scared they’re going to leave you, and you’d rather see it coming than be blindsided. Or perhaps you constantly search their phone or make up stories about them leaving you so you can feel ‘prepared’ for this inevitability. It can also result in you abandoning yourself – walking away from great opportunities and sabotaging your self-care, for example.
6. You didn’t get your needs met.
This, right here, is at the heart of a great deal of childhood wounding – and much of what I’ve already mentioned fits into this category. There are so many people I meet who appear to have had unremarkable upbringings, but when they start talking, it becomes clear they didn’t get their emotional needs met in some way. It could be that they were bullied at school and when they asked for help from their parents, they were ignored, blamed or had the situation denied (gaslighting). It could be that they had workaholic parents who might have provided for their children financially and materially, but did not invest in bonding time nor provide emotional space for their children to share their thoughts and feelings. A very common scenario I encounter is where one parent is a narcissist or emotionally/physically abusive, so the entire family’s energy is spent walking on eggshells to avoid upsetting that parent. The result is the child grows up believing their own needs don’t matter. That could see them in relationships with narcissists, addicts, unstable or abusive people, or it could see them abandoning themselves by not giving themselves the care they need.
I know these experiences can be difficult to work through, but remember: when you tackle your childhood wounds, you change your future. You also break the chain, meaning you won’t pass these behaviours down to your own kids or to anyone else in your life. That’s hugely significant for you and for all of us. Above all else, remember: the work you do on yourself is the work you do on the world.
My energy healing work can help clear childhood wounds and limiting beliefs. To learn more, click here, or to book, click here.