Childhood trauma can initiate from anything that makes the child helpless and disrupts the sense of safety and security including sexual, physical or verbal abuse, unstable or unsafe environment, separation from parents, neglect, bullying or serious illnesses. Anyone of the mentioned emotional trauma or wound can have a devastating effect on the child future life in adulthood and can impact a young person’s sense of self (false self) and the world around him. An individual undergoing trauma during childhood may not be aware how it is impacting their life but any specific childhood events is buried somewhere in the subconscious and it will show its bad effect later in life.
Stress, assault and tension especially if it gets chronic during childhood cause the stress hormone such as cortisone and nor-epinephrine to flood the body in order to defend itself. This is when the body automatically tenses up itself. Childhood trauma can result to social anxiety disorder. Parental abuse like insulting , disrespect, swearing, denigrating and emotional neglect (not feeling cared for, or loved) relate directly to social anxiety disorder and social withdrawal and intense persistent feeling of fear to be judged by others. It is human nature to circumvent the things we fear but childhood trauma takes this avoidance to the extreme. Like you may have an innate fear of going to dentist but you will probably still go because the benefit of taking action overrule the fear response but far too often adult with history of stress trauma in childhood allow fear to dictate their action and they may avoid the dentist allowing fear to cripple their intention and on occasion can seriously impede the quality of life.
There is a link of childhood traumatic stress to poor life outcomes, social economic status, academic under achievement often leading to deviant behavior and difficulty in earning living. People who come from disadvantage background are 65% more likely to have experience trauma as a child than someone from middle class background.
Trauma disrupts your natural equilibrium, freezing you in a state of hyper arousal and fear. In essence your nervous system gets stuck. Children who have experienced complex trauma often have difficulty identifying, expressing and managing emotions and may have limited language or feeling states. They often internalize and /or externalize stress reaction and as a result may experience significant depression, anxiety and anger.
