HOW TO REPARENT YOURSELF AFTER A TRAUMATIC CHILDHOOD

What does it mean for one to be traumatized without even knowing it, these are signs of childhood trauma you may not know about.

1. Trouble Making Eye Contact: Most people with complex trauma are uncomfortable with people they don’t know and sometimes even with those they know. You prefer to look away or look down instead of making eye contact. This is a sign of social anxiety and is usually common in people who were emotionally abused in early childhood
2. Bad Posture: Do you know that most people who suffered from emotional abuse in childhood hunch or bend over as a way to protect themselves? Yes, it comes from chronic shame. People who experience shame will bow their heads often, hunch their shoulders and lower their eyes. Think about it; these postures are mostly what we associate with shame.
3. Sadness: I am not talking about depression, I am talking about the pessimism view of life. People who suffered childhood trauma often submit to the “I don’t think it can work” view. They are very quick to take a negative approach to relationships… “I don’t like keeping friends, they will betray you”. The sadness is a kind of undercurrent that other areas of your life absorb.
4. Trouble Sleeping: Trauma brings anxiety most time. And many of the time people who are traumatized find it difficult to sleep and relax. When you wake them up they can’t go back to sleep. They are able to keep these under control during the day through the distractions of work and other activities but at night feelings and thoughts from the subconscious take over.
5. Lack of trust and dissatisfaction with relationships: Trust is built early in life and most people who are traumatized need up with an insecure attachment style and will have trouble sustaining a meaningful relationship over time. Childhood abuse causes an internalized negative view of relationships. Many times you go into a relationship where they will be doing a lot of the work – for more than their share. They try to “save” and in some cases, they end up in an abusive relationship oftentimes emotional abuse and control.
6. Perfectionism: This is another sign that you might be suffering from trauma. You overwork yourself, you strive to complete tasks perfectly and when anything goes wrong you blame yourselves for not being able to meet your own impossibly high standards. I have heard people say things like “I haven’t gone on leave in 5 years” and “I don’t have time to do any other thing, I am always working”. I have noticed that many people who drown themselves with work are fighting a trauma battle. They are struggling to prove a point without even knowing it.
7. People Pleasing: People with chronic trauma will often try to be accepted and loved by attempting to please others. They lack boundaries, they find it difficult to say No and most importantly they hate to hear NO also. They easily take too much responsibility.. and say things like “If I don’t do it, nobody will” “I don’t want to ask because I don’t want anyone to tell me, no, I will feel bad” and “I couldn’t say No to him, it would have looked somehow”.

Can you find yourself in any of these ? If Yes, You need to take your healing journey seriously. In healing from childhood trauma, you need to first reckon that you have been traumatized. The idea of re-parenting yourself may be weird but if your inner child is hurting then you need to heal like your life is dependent on it. Part of what we do in the Inner circle is re-parenting, you may think of yourself as a grown-up because you have reached a certain age but the truth is that many of us carry a wounded inner child but we don’t see it.

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What we do is that we cover up trauma by numbing our feelings and saying things like we turned out okay. What we don’t understand is that the inner child holds the key to our joy, freedom, and creativity and a wounded inner child cannot access these things son reparenting yourself is very needed. The truth of the matter is that trauma stops you completely and if you understand how much trauma stops you then you will take your healing process like your life is dependent on it. Personally, I have seen people who were stopped by trauma, a lot of adults are not thriving they are only striving.

Have you ever wondered why we have screwed creativity in this part of the world?

One of the best things that can happen to you is emotional healing. Your inner child will need you to acknowledge and process its painful experiences that is the only time it can come out and play the game of life. Emotional healing is a gift. The degree of childhood trauma differs from person to person, some people are traumatized and with a little help and coaching they heal but for others, they cannot move because trauma literally stops you. The inner child reflects the child we once were in both his and her positive aspects so both our unmet needs, suppressed childhood emotions, innocence creativity, and joy are still waiting within us. The inner child is often activated when you are faced with challenges that remind you of a traumatic memory.

The concept of the inner child is re-parenting, it is reparenting the inner child. It\’s about the rewiring of the neuron, your child self stays with you as part of your subconscious and it represents your childhood qualities and way of being so you can think of it as your sub-personality; one of the multiple dimensions of being human so until you consciously process and integrate the memories your child self will be calling the shots. The work to reparenting yourself isn\’t so much about the work back in time but the work within.

For now, you may think that you didn\’t have a traumatic childhood, your parents loved you, you had all your needs met and you had the best things in life, etc but here is the tricky part about trauma; your parents didn\’t need to do anything significantly wrong for you to be traumatized. Sometimes childhood trauma has roots in the most innocent-looking family dynamics. Trauma is generational.

How Do I Begin Reparenting Myself?
1. Acknowledge That You Need To Reparent Yourself: Reparenting yourself follows three principles: Connect, Communicate and Nurture. This is called childhood work. This is what therapy does.

When you hear the word trauma, it brings horrible things to mind but you don\’t have to through severe childhood abuses to be traumatized. The psyche of the child is so fragile that it can be affected by what seems like a minor event. In a child\’s view of the world, everything looks different and because children are fully dependent on their caregivers to meet their needs they may interpret minor negligence as enormous stress. Children can\’t recognize their limited perspective they believe everything they say, their interpretation of life instantly becomes their reality.

Can you find yourself in any of these ? If Yes, You need to take your healing journey seriously. In a few days, we will start another cohort of the healing from childhood trauma course for this year. This class only holds once a year, we are bringing two other professionals to join me and bring you the healing you deserve.

Dealing with childhood trauma is a complex but necessary process. Through therapy, you can overcome childhood trauma. You can raise happy and healthy families, be productive citizens, and have a fulfilling life.At the Healing From Parenting Hurt session, we will be helping you with the process, so you can take your life back again. We have helped almost 1,000 parents on their healing journey.

Are you hurting? Time doesn’t change anything, it’s what we do with the time that makes a change. Enroll today and start your healing journey. To register for the Healing from Childhood Trauma Course, pay #15,500 to 0509494057 (GT Bank). The Intentional Parent Academy and send proof of payment through WhatsApp chat to 08129687040. You can also register online here: https://selar.co/Healingcourse

https://anchor.fm/wendyologe/episodes/Episode-15–Healing-From-Childhood-Trauma-e1i7loc