What is Childhood Trauma?

By Rose Winkler

5/7/25

Defining trauma

What is trauma?

Before we talk about childhood trauma, let’s define trauma. When I say trauma, I refer to experiences that overwhelm our brain & body and leave a negative psychological impact on us over time. Traumatic events occur when we feel a threat to our physical or emotional wellbeing, which can lead us to feeling fear and emotional flooding. Everyone experiences trauma at some point in their lives. However, the type and severity of trauma, the way it impacts you, and how long it stays with you can vary greatly. 

What is childhood trauma?

Building on this definition of trauma, childhood trauma are experiences that occurred to us as children that overwhelmed our brains and bodies and left a negative psychological impact. Childhood trauma is an umbrella term that includes many different types of negative experiences someone could go through as a young person. 

Trauma that occurs to a child can be particularly detrimental, because their brain is still developing and the person cannot always understand or make sense of their experiences in the way an adult can. Children often make negative experiences that occur to them about their own worth, lovability, or sense of good-ness. 

Children do not have the development capacity to see themselves as a good person in a bad situation, so when trauma occurs they often see themselves as bad. The degree of this can vary depending on the age that the trauma occurs and the support a child receives after. The younger someone is and the less support they have, the more likely they will internalize the traumatic experience to be about themselves, rather than the person or event that caused harm.

Children are dependent on adults in their lives to help meet many of their needs, which leaves them vulnerable. They do not always have autonomy to get away from unsafe, scary, or overwhelming experiences. Children are often at the whim of their caretakers to protect them, or not, from traumatic situations. This becomes even more challenging if the people who care for the child are the ones causing them harm. 

Childhood trauma can impact someone throughout their life, especially if never processed and healed. Early life traumas can impact your sense of self-esteem and self-worth, your ability to manage your emotions, your mental health, your feelings of safety in the world, your behaviors, your relationships with others, and your relationship with yourself. 

Different types of childhood trauma

There are many different ways people experience childhood trauma. Let’s go through some of the most common experiences:

• Abuse – this could be physical, sexual, emotional, or verbal

• Neglect – could show up as physical, emotional or verbal

• Misattunement – having caretakers that you don’t feel seen by, understood by, or feel like you belong with, maybe they just don’t get you- or don’t try to. Misattunement is not a one-time experience, but a repeated and ongoing experience over years. 

• Medical – having an illness, sickness, or having to undergo medical procedure(s) at a young age

• Having caretakers struggling with substance use or mental illness

• Loss of a parent, sibling, or other close family member or friend

• Bullying

• Discrimination and hate based on identities you hold (race, ethnicity, culture, religion, sexuality, gender, abilities, neurotype, etc.) this might happen in one’s home, school, communities, or greater culture and society, etc.

• Growing up in poverty 

• Growing up somewhere that was unsafe due to violence, war, natural disasters, environmental pollution, etc.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of ways people experience childhood trauma, there certainly are more. If you don’t see your experience captured in the list above, that doesn’t make what happened to you any less valid. 

Some experiences of childhood trauma may occur once, such as a single terrifying medical procedure. Other experiences of childhood trauma may be a daily or continuous experience such as growing up in poverty, or in a home with a parent who is verbally abusive to you. It’s important to mention that people’s experiences of childhood trauma can be complex, and there may be multiple experiences and types of trauma occurring over time for an individual.  

How does childhood trauma impact people as adults?

In some ways it’s hard to say exactly how childhood trauma impacts people because it can vary so much for each person and situation. What I can say is that these early experiences can lead people to feel all sorts of things from pain, sadness, fear, anger, grief, anxiety, overwhelm, rage, to disgust and much more. 

Childhood trauma can impact people’s sense of themselves from knowing who they are, what they feel and need, as well as a general sense of feeling safe in the world. It can lead to people feeling self-critical, having low self-esteem, or just living with a feeling of being on edge.

Childhood trauma can impact people’s relationships with others. Perhaps their relationships with friends and partners have been highly conflictual and feel like an emotional roller coaster. It might be hard to trust people, or alternatively their inner compass of who is safe and who is not can be off. Romantic relationships may feel scary, overwhelming, or be an escape. They might have a string of failed friendships or romantic partners. If their childhood traumatic experiences happened in their own home they may have complicated or nonexistent relationships with some or all members of the family. 

Childhood trauma can be the root of many mental illnesses too. Not all, but many experiences of anxiety and depression come from unresolved early life traumas. It’s also common for people who experienced childhood trauma to have Complex-PTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) or PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). 

Did I experience childhood trauma? 

If you resonate with some of the things listed in this article, it’s possible you experienced childhood trauma. It’s common among people who went through childhood trauma to feel confused about their experience, second guess if they remember it correctly, or question if it was really as bad as they remember. For some people, they can have a hard time remembering anything from their early life experiences, but just have an ‘off feeling’ about it. If you find yourself asking if your experience was childhood trauma, it could be worth talking to a mental health professional about this, as they can help you unpack and explore your experience. Whether you have explicit memories, murky feelings lingering from the past, or confusing present day behaviors, it could be helpful to talk to someone about this. 

Was my childhood trauma ‘bad enough’ for me to go to counseling?

Whatever your experience of childhood trauma is, it’s valid. There are many types of traumas people experience and none are too small or too big to receive support around. If your trauma is impacting you, you deserve help and support. I find many people who experienced childhood trauma downplay their experiences, because this is often the message they’ve received in life from others. Whatever happened to you matters and you matter. 

If you are curious about how counseling could help you, please feel free to keep reading through this website or reach out to me for a free consultation to see how I could support you on your healing journey.