The Link Between Relationships and Childhood Trauma

Childhood trauma has a connection to how people interact with people, affecting how they manage their relationships.

Childhood trauma is one of the principal reasons for psychological, mental, and physical issues. This trauma is caused by any distressing event that happened to a person during their earlier years, which results in more distressing behavioral patterns in adulthood. And one of these patterns is in line with how they form and navigate around their adult relationships.
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More people have had traumatic childhoods than you’d think. In fact, in the United States alone, it’s been found that more than two-thirds of children are reported to have encountered some form of trauma. While this is a shared experience, it doesn’t mean it should remain unresolved. Hence, if you’re having trouble forming deeper relationships with others, you might want to be introspective and look back on your possibly rough past.

Childhood Trauma on Relationships
Prolonged exposure to adverse and traumatic experiences can affect how people perceive themselves and the world. Additionally, these childhood experiences may haunt the victim, reinforcing the belief that such events may happen to them at any time. This may end up preventing them from genuinely connecting to someone emotionally.

Reciprocation to Affection
One factor that’s significantly affected by childhood trauma is the person’s ability to reciprocate someone’s emotions. Most children develop trauma due to neglect and abandonment from their parents, the primary people they would have expected to receive love and protection from. This pain may influence their capabilities to trust and positively react to anyone’s affections.

Besides, if their parents hurt them, why would they have to believe that others won’t? Childhood trauma can teach children, now adults, not to trust anyone due to their previous experiences. Thus, they may prefer to stay away from forming relationships than risk letting someone in and possibly getting hurt in the future.

Avoidant Attachment Style
Childhood is when people receive and learn the very essence of security. They have their parents guiding them on how to be reliable and secure. With this aspect absent from their memories, people with traumatic childhood navigate relationships unknowing how to provide affection to the people they like correctly. They end up treading water around relationships due to their lack of experience with intimacy and security. Rather than letting someone get to know them, they may end up putting a wall around them.

Anxious Attachment Style
Contrary to the previous point, childhood trauma can also bring out a person’s fear of abandonment. Rather than keeping themselves away from people, they may experience the opposite. The nagging feeling that their partner can leave them anytime may lead to their readiness to do anything to make them stay, even if this means setting aside their interests. This attachment style, however martyr or heroic it may appear, can lead to a toxic relationship.

Communication Style
Children with troubled pasts may model what routine they lived with. For instance, if their parents constantly yelled and were aggressive with each other throughout their childhood, they may reflect this in their relationships. And with modeling, people repeatedly exposed to it will find it hard to change the behavior and have trouble realizing fault with it. This leads to two things. They might experience trouble expressing and relaying their emotions appropriately or develop toxic tendencies and hurt others.

Lastly, regarding childhood trauma affecting relationships, this doesn’t only include the romantic or platonic ones. It can also negatively influence one’s relationship with their religious beliefs.

Spirituality Severed by Trauma
In most instances, trauma can sever people’s belief and connection to God or any divine figure they believe in. This is due to the thought that if these figures were real, they wouldn’t have allowed such an event to happen to them. This likewise leads to a grudge against their belief, forcing them to stray away from their spirituality. This influence leads one to develop a grudge against and stray away from their spiritual belief. It can also impede their journey in healing from the trauma since one’s religion and beliefs are essential to work through it.

For a better reference, you can learn more about the significance of the ultimate love of God in Lisare’s book. With her narrative, you will follow and understand how childhood trauma does impact one’s life and how religious belief can help in facing this trauma.