How to Heal From Childhood Trauma

Understanding the Effects of Childhood Trauma

We are all products of our environment, and therefore, childhood trauma often has a deep impact on a person’s adult life. It often leads to mental health issues like depression, anxiety, PTSD, and substance abuse. Additionally, it can cause individuals to struggle with emotional regulation and self-esteem. Childhood trauma can also make developing and maintaining close relationships with others difficult due to trust issues.

Effects of childhood trauma may include:

• Mental health issues: Childhood trauma often leads to an increased risk of mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD. These can show up as irritability, emotional numbness, or decreased interest in activities. Additionally, some individuals may turn to drugs or alcohol to cope.¹
• Behavioral problems: Individuals who experience childhood trauma may have behavioral issues such as aggression, impulsivity, substance abuse, and risky behaviors. These behaviors can serve as unhealthy coping mechanisms or ways to manage overwhelming emotions coming from unresolved trauma.²
• Physical health: Childhood trauma is linked to more health problems like heart disease, autoimmune disorders, and stomach issues. The ongoing stress response can weaken your immune system and contribute to long-term health problems.³
• Low self-esteem: Children who go through trauma often end up believing negative things about themselves, which lowers their self-esteem as adults. This can make them feel shame, guilt, and like they’re not good enough.
• Relationship problems: People who have gone through childhood trauma often have trust issues and trouble forming close bonds. They may struggle with sexual or emotional intimacy, have a fear of abandonment, or have a lot of conflict in relationships due to unresolved emotional pain.
• Emotional dysregulation: Childhood trauma can make it hard to learn how to control emotions properly, leading to trouble handling and showing emotions in the right way. Common signs of emotional dysregulation include frequent mood swings, outbursts of anger, or emotional numbness.
• Cognitive impairments: Chronic stress from childhood trauma can impact brain development, particularly areas involved in memory, attention, and executive function.³ These challenges may show up in your life as difficulty concentrating, learning new information, or making decisions.

How to Heal From Childhood Trauma

There is no one-size-fits-all approach or set timeline for recovering from childhood trauma. Each person’s journey is unique and can be influenced by various factors, such as whether the individuals who caused the trauma are still present in their lives, the structure and dynamics of their family, and their current life circumstances.  However, healing childhood trauma often focuses on accepting what occurred, acknowledging the impact it has had, and taking tangible steps to grow from the traumatic experiences.

The hardest part about beginning to heal from childhood trauma is that it can be temporarily disruptive. Diving into the impact childhood trauma had on you can affect your current relationships, challenge how you view past events, and cause you to rethink aspects of your life.

Here are twelve tips and some worksheets for healing from childhood trauma:

1. Accept What Occurred

Healing from childhood trauma means accepting that certain people, including primary caregivers, may have intentionally or unintentionally failed to provide for your needs or protect you from all harmful situations. Accepting this reality is particularly difficult, as you might experience guilt for putting down your caregivers or the situation in which you grew up.

However, you can accept both the good and bad experiences. You can be honest about the happy parts of your childhood alongside the wounding aspects, events, or individuals. Learning to acknowledge both the good and bad can make acceptance easier.

2. Acknowledge the Impact of the Trauma

A common starting point when healing from childhood trauma is recognizing how childhood experiences may impact your current life. Childhood trauma can affect your physical health and ability to maintain healthy relationships and manage emotions. Trauma can also be the primary source or trigger for mental health conditions like anxiety and depression.

Childhood trauma can also significantly affect how you value yourself, self-advocate, and trust others. Recovering from childhood trauma requires you to be honest about how certain events, specific people, or unmet needs influence functioning in various professional and personal areas of your life.

3. Reach Out for Help

Overcoming childhood trauma is one of the toughest things a person can do. Although trauma can make a person hyper-independent, it is important to learn how to rely on our support system. Asking for help from others will empower you to heal a lot quicker.

There are two types of support you should look for: personal and professional. When reaching out for help from loved ones, first make a list of people you trust. Then, make a list of requests. The requests can be as simple as “Can you hold me accountable for moving my body every day?” to  “Can I read you this journal entry I wrote on what occurred?”. Equally important is finding professional support. There are many different mental health professionals who specialize in trauma-informed care.

4. Learn Your Trauma Triggers

Understanding your trauma triggers involves identifying specific situations, events, people, or interactions that remind you of past traumatic experiences. These triggers can cause strong emotional or physical reactions, often without you even realizing it. By becoming aware of these triggers, either through therapy, self-reflection, or journaling, you can develop strategies to manage and cope with them effectively. Being more aware helps you handle tough situations better and lowers the chance of getting re-traumatized.

How to Identify Your Trauma Triggers - Free Worksheet

Identifying your trauma triggers can help you to both avoid them and learn to cope with them in healthy ways.

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5. Practice Staying Present in the Moment

Mindfulness and grounding techniques can help you reconnect with your body and emotions, which is important for healing from childhood trauma. Trauma often causes dissociation, where individuals disconnect from their physical sensations and emotions as a coping mechanism. Mindfulness practices, such as deep breathing or body scans, help bring attention back to the present moment, creating a sense of safety and reducing anxiety and dissociative tendencies.

6. Distance Yourself From Toxic People

Toxic relationships from childhood can cause feelings of not being good enough and emotional turmoil. Recognizing toxic behaviors, such as manipulation, emotional abuse, or constant criticism, is the first step. Setting boundaries and limiting contact with toxic individuals while seeking support from healthier relationships promotes emotional healing and stability. If a relationship is particularly harmful, you may want to consider going no-contact. Therapy can also provide guidance on identifying and managing toxic dynamics well.

Setting Boundaries Worksheet

Setting boundaries allows you to communicate more effectively, protect your well-being, and build stronger relationships.

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7. Reduce Your Day-to-Day Stress

Childhood trauma often causes hypervigilance, which makes your body extra alert and sensitive to potential threats, making everyday stress feel overwhelming. By taking care of your body and practicing mindfulness or relaxation exercises for anxiety, you can lower your overall stress levels. This reduction in stress promotes emotional regulation and resilience, creating a more stable foundation for healing and growth.

8. Try Stream-of-Consciousness Journaling

Stream-of-consciousness journaling involves writing without holding back or editing your thoughts, allowing for a free flow of emotions and memories related to childhood trauma. This writing process can help with emotional processing and insight into underlying feelings and beliefs. Starting with journaling prompts for trauma like “Today I feel…” or “I remember…” can help begin the process and, over time, deepen self-awareness and healing.

9. Focus on Your Physical Health

Childhood trauma can impact physical health through chronic stress and unhealthy coping mechanisms like substance abuse or neglecting health needs. Prioritizing physical health as an adult, including regular exercise, balanced nutrition, and good sleep hygiene, promotes overall well-being and resilience. Taking care of physical health supports emotional regulation and reduces the physical effects of past trauma.

10. Identify and Challenge Negative Beliefs

Identifying and challenging negative beliefs formed during childhood trauma is important for healing. These beliefs often include feelings of worthlessness, guilt, or a sense of being fundamentally flawed. Cognitive restructuring can help you begin to recognize and reframe these beliefs. By replacing them with healthier, more accurate perspectives, you can rebuild your self-esteem and develop a more positive self-concept.

Free Cognitive Restructuring Worksheet

You can recognize unhealthy thought patterns that are causing you increased self-hatred by practicing cognitive restructuring.

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11. Engage in Activities That Bring You Joy

Participating in activities that bring you fulfillment can offset the negative impacts of childhood trauma. Engaging in hobbies, creative outlets, or community activities can create a sense of accomplishment and connection. These experiences help build resilience and create new, positive memories that contribute to overall well-being.

12. Practice Self-Compassion

Self-compassion involves treating yourself with kindness, understanding, and acceptance, especially when facing difficult emotions or setbacks related to childhood trauma. It means validating your own feelings and experiences without self-judgment. Mindfulness-based practices can help cultivate self-compassion by teaching you to observe your thoughts and emotions non-judgmentally.

Self-Care Inventory Worksheet

Take an inventory of self-care activities you do well, explore new self-care activities and find potential opportunities to feel better.

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Benefits of Healing From Childhood Trauma

Taking the challenging steps to heal from childhood trauma can lead to deep personal growth and transformation. By confronting past wounds, you can experience a sense of empowerment and freedom from the grip of past pain. Additionally, engaging in healing processes can facilitate post-traumatic growth, where you not only recover from trauma but also experience positive changes in your outlook, relationships, and life goals. Post-traumatic growth includes increased resilience, a renewed sense of purpose, strengthened relationships, and a deeper appreciation for life’s possibilities.

Therapy for Healing From Childhood Trauma

There are many different effective therapy options for trauma. It is important to find a type of therapy that feels right for you. It may take some trial and error, so be patient with the process.

Effective therapy options for healing from childhood trauma include:

Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR)

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is one of the most recommended treatments for trauma recovery. It helps individuals overcome childhood trauma by desensitizing them to traumatic memories, intense feelings, or negative body sensations. After desensitization, the therapist and client work together to reprocess the trauma in a healthier manner. Reprocessing childhood trauma helps individuals to no longer hold negative self-beliefs, react to triggers, or experience intrusive images from past trauma.

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)

CPT for PTSD is an evidence-based intervention for recovering from childhood trauma. CPT is a short-term therapy where a client focuses on identifying distorted thoughts and beliefs related to the trauma and how those experiences impact current feelings and behaviors. The client learns to challenge and modify unhelpful beliefs to improve their lives. CPT can benefit those who like an action-oriented focus on psychoeducation alongside practical tools for addressing unhelpful thinking.

Exposure Therapies

Exposure therapies are proven to be effective in treating childhood trauma. The focus of exposure work is to help the client confront their fears, resulting in systematic desensitization and a reduced need to avoid trauma triggers.

There are two types of exposure therapies that are used for trauma. Prolonged exposure (PE) teaches the client that trauma-related memories and triggers are no longer dangerous and that the event has passed. PE can help those dealing with childhood trauma in adulthood through imaginal exposure and in vivo exposure between sessions. Narrative exposure therapy (NET) focuses on developing a life narrative that adds context to our traumatic experiences. This context includes incorporating parallel positive elements to help the mind move beyond the trauma to see life outside the event.

Somatic Therapy

Somatic therapy focuses on the connection between the mind and body to heal trauma. It acknowledges that trauma is not only present in thoughts and emotions but is also stored physically in the body. Somatic therapy uses techniques like body awareness, movement, and breathwork to help people release stored trauma from the body, regulate their nervous system, and feel safe and grounded. By directly working with bodily experiences, somatic therapy offers a unique healing approach that complements traditional talk therapy.

Art Therapy

Art therapy helps individuals heal from childhood trauma by using artistic mediums as self-expression. When individuals experience trauma as children, they often don’t have words to describe the trauma. Art can be an effective way to work through what occurs when words fail. It can add images, textures, or colors to our experiences and expand into the expressive arts. With a trained and qualified therapist, the client does not need to be an artist to experience significant benefits.

How to Find Professional Support

Trauma has become a buzzword in our society, with many claiming to have tools for trauma-focused work, from coaching services to self-help programs. However, working with qualified licensed or board-certified individuals specializing in trauma-informed care is best.

Grow Therapy is an online therapist directory that offers many detailed filters, making it easy to find a trauma-informed therapist who takes your insurance. If you prefer to see a therapist remotely, BetterHelp or Talkspace provide therapists who specialize in trauma-informed care.

If you are struggling with more severe trauma symptoms, such as depression, panic attacks, or self-harm, you may want to explore medication options. Online psychiatry services such as Talkiatry or Cerebral provide comprehensive care for individuals who are suffering from childhood trauma.