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Childhood events can have a significant impact on our behavior, even if they seem ordinary. Scars on the psyche are not only caused by extraordinary events, such as the loss of a loved one. Rather, everyday experiences can also have a lasting impact, especially if they occurred during childhood.
During childhood, a person’s psyche is still developing, and their resources are limited, making them vulnerable to events that an adult might not experience with pain or lasting damage. Additionally, a child’s brain is still developing and tends to absorb any new experience like a sponge, making it the default setting, whether it is beneficial or harmful.
Several common childhood situations can negatively impact mental health and relationships with oneself and others in adulthood. These traumas can include:
Poverty
Childhood cannot be carefree simply because of wealth, while poverty can spoil it even without any other issues in the family. Furthermore, poverty can continue to affect a person’s life and psyche, even after they have grown up and improved their financial situation.
Chronic stress during pregnancy, which is essentially poverty, can cause the body of a woman to produce the hormone cortisol constantly. This hormonal exposure can affect the child even before they are born and can lead to the child experiencing hyperactivity, aggression, anxiety, and depression, according to scientists.
Parents who constantly worry about the lack of money can unconsciously transfer their anxiety to their child through their words and behavior. For instance, they may count every penny, choose the cheapest toys, and emphasize the importance of saving for a rainy day, as prosperity can be lost in an instant. Such behavior and language can inadvertently cause the child to develop anxiety and an unhealthy relationship with money.
As a result, the child becomes accustomed to worrying about their means of survival, leading to potential financial anxiety in adulthood. Even if there is no reason to worry, they may develop a habit of saving on everything, including necessary expenses.
The family’s income has an impact on the child’s self-esteem. If the child comes from a poor family while their peers do not, it can make them an easy target for bullying.
The child observes that they are living in poverty compared to others, which can impact their self-esteem and cause feelings of inferiority to those around them. This feeling may persist into adulthood and not always disappear as they grow older.
Divorce
While some children may successfully adapt to their parents’ divorce or even feel better than before as tension and quarrels at home disappear, others may find the experience extremely difficult.
Parents’ divorce can lead to a loss of a child’s sense of security. Often, the child may think that if their parents stop loving each other, they may stop loving the child as well. In childhood, parental love is a basic psychological need, and its loss can be as destructive for the psyche as hunger and thirst for the body.
An adult who experienced the pain of their parents’ divorce in childhood may internalize the belief that love is an illusion and separation is inevitable. Whether consciously or unconsciously, they may avoid creating a family or constantly feel anxious in relationships, not trusting their partner and expecting a break-up sooner or later.
Children often have the tendency to think that their parents’ divorce is because of them, believing that they behaved badly. This is a consequence of childhood egocentrism, which is a normal age-related phenomenon where a child evaluates everything that happens as directly related to them.
The psyche can experience a heavy feeling of guilt that may lead to parentification, where the child takes on a parental role for their mother or father. The parent, struggling to cope with the breakup, places the burden of decision-making on the child. They may even coerce the child into taking their side and manipulate them by saying things like “I won’t be able to do it without you.
This can lead to problems when creating one’s own family in the future. For instance, a person may persist in taking responsibility for their parent and sacrificing their own relationships. Alternatively, they may unconsciously select partners who resemble their parent, and consequently find themselves in circumstances where they feel the need to consistently save and protect their loved one.
Alcoholism
Children whose parents suffer from alcohol and other addictions experience constant worry about their parents while simultaneously feeling shame in the presence of others. This is in addition to the absence of attention and care and, in the worst cases, violence. These feelings often persist into adulthood, leading psychologists to coin the term “adult children of alcoholics.”
Adult children of alcoholics internalize certain rules early on.
- Do not talk to anyone about family problems. People can change their opinion of the child for the worse upon learning that their parent is dependent. It could also lead to the loss of parental rights and separation from the father or mother, which can seem more painful and scary to most children than neglect. In addition, other family members may also be ashamed of the situation, hide it, and force the child to do the same.
- Do not be selfish and take care of others. A drunk parent needs care, and sometimes demands it. They must be protected from anxiety so as not to trigger a relapse. The child’s own needs and desires are considered insignificant compared to the problems of the parent. This is how the child often feels.
- Do not express your feelings openly and avoid conflicts. A drunk person is unpredictable, sometimes aggressive, and dangerous. Moreover, they may use a fight as an excuse to drink and blame the child for it. Therefore, the child gets used to silently enduring – their feelings will not be understood and will not change anything.
Many adult children of alcoholics exhibit certain common characteristics as a result of the rules they had to follow. They often find it challenging to express their emotions and discuss their lives. Their self-esteem is usually low. They struggle with self-care but tend to take on numerous responsibilities, rescue others, and engage in relationships with individuals with dependencies. They find it difficult to refuse requests because they fear a hostile reaction and feel guilty when defending their personal boundaries.
In addition, an adult child of alcoholics may find themselves in dangerous situations, including unhealthy relationships, as they poorly recognize dangerous situations. This effect is demonstrated by neurobiological research.
For example, in one experiment, scientists showed 17 volunteers photographs of people with different facial expressions and asked them to identify emotions. At the same time, using fMRI, they observed how the amygdala, the area of the brain that monitors the environment for danger, was activated when viewing a scary photo. Thus, scientists found that the amygdala of adult children of alcoholics, unlike the amygdala of people without a history of alcoholism in the family, almost does not react to potential danger – that is, the person simply does not notice it.
Slaps and Backhand Slaps
Using “disciplinary measures” is, in reality, a form of physical violence. According to a study conducted by psychologists at Harvard, the brains of children who have experienced slapping are more anxious compared to those who have not. When confronted with potential threats in their surroundings, the regions in their medial and lateral prefrontal cortex that respond to fear are more strongly stimulated.
The same characteristic is typical of children who were slaped, so there is no doubt among scientists that it is violence.
Although childhood experiences of slaps and belts are in the past, the hyperactivity of specific brain areas persists in individuals who have undergone such experiences. According to the study, the brains of people with such a history display a stronger reaction to a frightened expression on another person’s face, triggering a stress response compared to those who have not experienced physical violence.
Experiencing physical violence in childhood not only leads to anxiety but also increases the likelihood of suffering from depression and other mental disorders, alcohol abuse, and an increased tendency to be violent.
Diets and Feeding
Sometimes, parents overly concern themselves with their child’s eating habits, believing that the child needs to consume certain foods, such as boiled carrots and fish, or take supplements to be healthy. They may even force the child to eat something that makes them nauseous, using statements like “You won’t go anywhere until you eat it.” On the other hand, some parents attempt to restrict their child’s food intake, believing they are at risk of becoming overweight. Psychologists refer to these tactics as “authoritarian feeding” and view them as damaging to the child’s overall wellbeing.
Feeding pressure can cause a child to lose touch with their body’s signals and no longer recognize their own hunger and fullness cues. Rather than eating what they desire and in the quantity that would satisfy them, they become accustomed to eating for reasons other than appetite and satiety.
As a consequence, the child may grow up to become an adult who is unable to recognize their body’s hunger and satiety signals. This can result in overeating and make them more susceptible to developing eating disorders.
This was demonstrated in a study conducted by American researchers, who observed the eating habits and weight of two hundred girls over a period of four years. The study also considered the mothers’ behavior and how much they restricted their daughters’ food intake.
At the start of the study, the children were five years old, and by the end, they were nine years old. At this stage, the distinction between those who were restricted in their diet and those who ate based on their own preferences became evident.
The results showed that the more constraints the mother placed on her child’s diet, the more probable it was for the child to eat even when not hungry. As the children grew older, this inclination became more pronounced: nine-year-old girls who were compelled to follow a strict diet were even less capable of identifying their body’s signals of fullness than they were at the age of five.
Punishment by silence
Demonstrative indifference, even from outsiders, strongly affects a person. Psychologists consider punishment by silence, which parents often use for educational purposes, as emotional abuse.
Naomi Eisenberger, a social psychologist, discovered that the brain responds to being ignored in the same manner as physical pain.
Participants in her experiment played a computer game in which they, along with two virtual players, threw a ball back and forth. The game was designed so that, eventually, the virtual players stopped giving attention to the real person and started solely throwing the ball to each other.
During these “exclusion” moments, functional MRI scans recorded that the anterior cingulate cortex, responsible for pain perception, was activated in the participants’ brains.
In another study, 40 individuals who experienced an involuntary breakup with a partner participated to observe the brain’s response to rejection. The participants first viewed photos of their ex and recalled the breakup, then they touched a very hot object that caused pain. The study found that the brain activity was the same in both situations.
A child’s pain from being ignored is much stronger since their psyche is less resistant to stress and their need for a mother and father is greater than an adult’s need for a lover. If a parent punishes a child by silence or is generally cold, neglectful, or cruel, it can lead to the development of an insecure attachment style.
Attachment style, as defined by psychologists, refers to an individual’s style in relationships, which encompasses their feelings, thoughts, and behavior strategies displayed in a romantic context. When a person has a secure attachment style, they can calmly endure loneliness and have confidence in both their partner and their own feelings when in a relationship. Typically, individuals with attentive and caring parents display a secure attachment style.
Conversely, an unsafe attachment style makes a person afraid of being hurt, causing them to avoid love by limiting relationships to sex or losing interest in a partner as an emotional connection develops. Alternatively, they may demand too much intimacy, such as expecting instant responses to dozens of messages. Both options are more likely to push away a partner than help create healthy relationships.
Criticism
Excessive criticism is also a form of emotional violence.
Constructive criticism aims to correct a child’s behavior, causing less harm and more benefit to both others and themselves. It involves specifically indicating the action that needs to be changed. Conversely, excessive and non-constructive criticism focuses on personal characteristics rather than actions. Using phrases such as “you always” or “you never” and listing character flaws is a typical example of such a slightly disguised insult.
Some adults do not understand the difference between adequate and toxic criticism. Additionally, until a certain age, a child is completely incapable of realizing that a parent’s words can be insulting and violent. This is because their brain is formed under the influence of a parent’s behavior and words, and remembers it as normal.
As a result, individuals who have experienced unjustified and excessive criticism from their parents may perceive such treatment as normal from others. They often have difficulty identifying their own emotions and may not recognize when they are being insulted or humiliated in situations where others would feel anger or offense. This can cause them to remain in blatantly poor relationships.
On the other hand, a person who grew up with critical parents may be unable to respond adequately to constructive criticism and perceive it as a personal attack. In some cases, they may even consider random words as criticism and become upset about them. Such reactions can poison their relationships with friends and partners and hinder their career growth.
An adult child of critical parents often becomes extremely demanding of themselves, striving to do everything perfectly, fearing mistakes, and trying to please others. They live with an inner critic – a voice that constantly reminds them of their mistakes and shortcomings, instilling feelings of guilt, shame, and inadequacy. Interestingly, the words and intonations of this voice are often similar to those of a parent.
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