To think trauma from childhood can take years to show up?

[Unabletocatchup]

I just think it's interesting that there tends to be an assumption if somebody is "ok" with difficult or frightening life events as a child or teen, that they're completely fine and have moved on.

But really, the extent of damage from trauma can gradually become apparent as the person tries to make their way through adult life.

This is what happened for me and I've seen it in others. Does this resonate with anyone else?

Completely insensitive

I lost a very close friend suddenly in the autumn in horrible circumstances and I think this is what triggered it, but it had to come out sooner or later.

I think there is a huge cultural narrative that kids are resilient and as long as they're doing well at school and not going off the rails as teens, they have adjusted well to whatever happened.

It didn't hit my DH until he was 50.

Then it hit him like a steam train poor bloke.

I was traumatised by my mother leaving at age 12 but was 18/19 until I started to experience it and get help.

I'm 52 now and I've never properly got over it, though I'm on less medication these days. It was in my first (and only) good relationship that I started to process it and we're now married for 28 years.

Also I would like to add -

I thought I had done plenty of work on my trauma in my twenties. So I thought I understood myself and was in a good place.

Now I have had a parental bereavement years later and fucking hell has it reopened SO MANY old wounds, that I thought were healed.

Some days I feel like I'm back at square one. Which is frustrating and makes me feel like I'll never be healed.

I'm in my late 50s and only just coming to terms and getting intense therapy for what happened to me.
I 'hid' it for many years- badly, it turns out - alcoholism and mental illness isn't really hiding it apparently, but actually realising that what happened helped cause my shit adulthood is quite eye opening.

YANBU

I spent my childhood being told me I hadn’t been affected by the trauma I had experienced as a young child, so I believed that. Inside I was trying to keep it all together and being a quiet, people pleaser just hid myself away and ran away from any friendships/relationships. I had children quite young so it wasn’t until they left home that I completely fell apart and went to therapy. It helped a lot but will never get over the trauma or the fact nobody spoke to me about it at the time or throughout my childhood. It affects me every single day.

Yes. Stay quiet, be good and deal with it. Not the best plan!

A few years ago my son broke his arm doing a flip off some crash mats (bit daft but there you go). I could barely believe it was broken even though I could see it was wrong, but he wasn’t reacting. He said it hardly hurt. I’ve heard of other cases like that too, where a child or somebody sustains a bad injury but they don’t feel it or register it in the moment due to shock so their brain protects them in a way.

Maybe it’s a similar thing and some pains are too much to deal with in the moment, so we save it up till we know we can look at it and cope.

Also I think (not always of course) for kids going through traumatic experiences sometimes they have other issues like family problems and stuff. I know when I was young I probably did show obvious signs of trauma but because my family was so chaotic and I had no stable carer it just wasn’t picked up on so I got on with it.

What makes it really hard is that I genuinely do not know anyone else who went through what I did. I can't explain it properly and that is really difficult

I had a very traumatic childhood but the breakdown came when i had my daughter. I had muddled along fairly well until then but having her made me see how vulnerable I was as a child and how I wasn't protected. Over a decade later and I'm still very much feeling the consequences.

Several things from our past didn’t really hit DH and I until our children reached that age. For him, it was a 9 month acute depression, for me, memories I’d buried rushed back.

Yep.
Being adopted didn't seem to affect me until I was in my mid 30's.

And totally untrue. Of course children display signs of trauma. That’s why many children who are fostered or adopted having gone through abuse display unusual or challenging behaviours or need extra support. If the ‘vast majority’ of people only displayed trauma in adulthood surely there would be no such thing as child therapists or similar, because they’d be totally unnecessary.

I think it's a case of those wounds being opened when we go through certain life events.

I have always known that my childhood has impacted me, but there are situations that have really triggered me and have taken me by surprise.

My Grandson being born was one of them. I'm not really sure why. The vulnerability of him and thinking about how I would do anything to make sure he never came to harm, opened up wounds that weren't opened when my own children were born.

I worry a lot about how I will feel when my dad dies. I dread the onslaught of different emotions and pain that will be coming my way.

An enormous amount of attachment theory (which is largely based on how you interact with adults, mostly in ac romantic setting but also ties into substance abuse etc) is based on very early childhood interactions with your primary carers. Not just abuse/death either. But inconsistent parenting/engulfment. It's interesting.

@TastesLikeStrawberriesOnASummerEvening I'm interested in this and I hope you don't mind me intruding. Does it impact you even if you're adopted as a baby to a family who love you? No obligation to answer.

Yes, your attachment style influences all relationships - your friendships, your interpersonal dynamics in the workplace, everything.

We learn a template for relationships and that becomes our 'normal'.

I'm having attachment-focused EMDR. It's very interesting.

It has helped, but there is still a lot to work on, but when I am discharged I will hopefully be able to build on what I have learned.

I think it can show up differently in different people and it's possibly always there, brewing in the background.

I've alway been really shy. In my 20s I definitely had an alcohol problem because drinking made me feel confident. I didn't bring it down to being sexually assaulted as a child, until I got into another difficult situation with a man in my 40s. I realised my "shyness" was actually a product of the assault and not wanting to be seen or drawing attention to myself. I had EMDR therapy and at a certain point, it was like a switch going on.

It's weird because I spent a year walking around afterwards asking myself, "Why can't I stop talking?" In the past 2 years I've been re-learning who the real me is.

Yes.
Absolutely 100% yes.
Do not under estimate not knowing where you came from, who carried you, who you look like, and I absolutely think being taken from your mother does things to you that can never be repaired.
It's one of the reasons I am so anti surrogacy.

My son reaching the age of 14.5 - 15 triggered me badly. I realised how badly I’d been let down by my parents. I also started to face the fact I’d been groomed and sexually abused by a family ’friend.’ I was let down by so many people. I held that anger and pain for so many years until it fully resurfaced.

YANBU. For some people becoming parents unlocks all the old stuff in there. Trauma is complicated.

Becoming a parent yourself can be a bit of an eye opener.
I thought I'd dealt with and moved on from all that I needed to, but once I was in the same position my own parents had been (a parent), it really brought home how unloved, unsupported and just how wrong it had all been, how I had actually been completely innocent in it all.
Was not, and never had been, my fault.
Working through the realisations currently.