So You Don’t Want to Talk About Your Childhood Trauma?

Ok, Well At Least Do Something

Many people who experience complex childhood trauma grow into the adults we are surrounded by daily. We don’t necessarily notice them on the surface, because some blend in well. Those that fail to fall into the mosaic of society are those that we have stigmatized because of their severe and persistent mental illness, drug dependence, homelessness, and criminal justice involvement, usually a combination of a few of those.

They want so badly to feel a part of something bigger than themselves, to feel loved, trusted, and depended on. They know inside their hearts that they live relatively out control, continually fighting the sensation that something terrible is going to happen. The future is bleak, so what’s the point? They have reinforced this feeling overtime, constantly surveying their lives looking for the negative, while overlooking anything good as a fluke.

We throw this word trauma around sometimes, and it loses its value. Although I do believe it is experienced on a continuum, there is an end of the spectrum type of trauma that I would describe as horrific and unspeakable. People with reasonably intact memory systems, which means that most of their childhood experiences are relatively time-stamped. They can be recalled within the autobiographical explicit memory system in their mind. Such people do not have a clue what it is like to live with the unspeakable.

The Prison of Adaptations

The adaptations that our bodies develop during those times of childhood development are what we feel kept us alive. Survivors find themselves stuck in a manner of engaging the world that is destroying their ability to live a full life. The adaptations that kept us alive can be destructive to our present day. Relying on things rather than people, we engross ourselves in compulsive activities, people we can control, or become people pleasers. All of these are resources that help us cope, but we become dependent on them, essentially, these behavior controls us; we don’t control the behavior. Fear is the driver. We lose self-direction in life. Everything becomes a consequence. This is a hopeless state, which is why depression is so prevalent among complex trauma survivors.

Even a “good enough,” developing person has a hard enough time fully understanding their feelings, intuitions, and motivations. Traumatic events or living in constant states of toxic childhood stressed caused by the environment literally turns off the hippocampus, which is responsible for learning and memory. With a limited functioning hippocampus, I am not able to learn and put things in context. This part of the brain is highly plastic and vulnerable during childhood. These experiences that do not get time-stamped do not get processed fully. They live in the body and emotional brain with no rational explanation to put them in perspective. All the survivor has to blame when they experience a triggering moment is what’s happening now. These somatic/emotional experiences do not feel like a memory. They feel like they are happening in the present moment.

“You Need to Talk About It”

This is the go to advice of conventional wisdom. We wonder why it is so hard, but we fail to realize that the speech production part of the brain, called Broca’s Area, also shuts down under extreme stress. In most cases, survivors know the terrible things that happened and even realize they need to talk about it. But what if it is not that easy, or maybe even possible to just talk about it? I’m not talking about lacking courage either; I’m talking about brain functions that make it virtually impossible to talk about it because the “learned” physiological system has been wired and will get overwhelmed. These survivors know this and have learned adaptations to keep themselves surviving. Indeed, these implicit memories will eventually need to be explained and worked through, but we often rush the “Talk about it part.”

Because trauma, particularity childhood, is inherently relational trauma, it affects our attachment system. We learn that people aren’t safe. When, in fact, people are who we should depend on to cope. All hurt happens in relationships, and all healing happens in relationships. Our relationship patterns reflect our trauma in such a way that our adaptations attract people who tolerate them, at least at first. If I’m a controlling person, I will find a pleaser. If I am a pleaser, I will find a controlling person. Egregiously this will wear out the relationship if I don’t change the dynamic by engaging my need to grow, which is being covered by the adaptive responses that may run very deep into my personality and feel very natural to me.

So what to do?

You should seek therapy, but even that can be overwhelming, and many avoid it. It doesn’t mean we can’t do anything. Trauma recovery follows a tri-phasic system. Talking about it is not what you do first anyways. Acknowledge it? Sure, but we do not dig right into the nitty-gritty. The 3 Phase model that goes back to the 1800s and was brought to life by Judith Herman in her groundbreaking book, Trauma, and Recovery (1992). The three phases are as follows:

Safety and Stabilization — This is a time to figure out what areas of life need stabilizing so that recovery can proceed. It is also a time where we learn to self-regulate our emotions and self-soothe our challenging to manage emotional reactions. People in the complex trauma realm, have significant trouble talking about what happened and may benefit from various mindfulness techniques, or yoga, and other somatic/body-based activities.

Remembrance and Mourning — This is the “Talk about it” phase and may take weeks, months, or even years to get here. This is were we put words to the feelings. Where we learn to understand that what we are feeling is a memory in our body and that when we accept this and quit projecting it onto our life and relationships, we can begin to live more free. We do not do this all at once, as “Dosing” or holding “Dual Awareness” is critical as we go into the feelings, but move out to safety as necessary. The process is best described in the term Pendulation, coined by Peter Levine, Ph.D. It is an act of relating honestly with the emotions and is nicely described below.

Reconnection and Integration — With newly developed skills and understanding, I am now able to engage life on life’s terms and take concrete steps in the direction I want to go. I will have discovered some comfort in my own body and awareness. I am no longer controlled by the traumatic fear and locked in the prison of my adaptations but can relate more fully to the world.

The Time To Do “Something” is Now

So if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. You can begin with a significant effort to develop resources and create safety. You can start to be honest about your triggers and what they mean so that you can prepare for them. Rather than compulsive ways of acting and living that your kids, spouse, work, and family are never going to get in line with, you can find new self-soothing tools and life-giving activities that actually empower and enrich your experience. Things that are fulfilling like hobbies, creative ideas, hiking, sports, household projects, cooking, learning, music, gardening, read, writing. We need to try these things intentionally as a direct means to create safety. These things should be what you find interesting and are not dependent on anyone else coming along, or agreeing with you. You are doing it for yourself, let the empowerment begin. As you do these things intentionally notice, how it affects your mind, body, and emotions.

Before you can talk about it and move entirely through what wasn’t finished in childhood, we need to establish safety anyways. As the old analogy goes, complex childhood trauma is like a soda bottle that has been shaken up. It is full of pressure, and the best way to open it is very slow. As we begin to build reliable resources both within us and around us, we will have the power to own ourselves in the here and now and live full self-directed lives.

If you have read this far, thank you! I would love to hear your feedback, have a discussion, or debate these concepts. Let’s connect at, PsychologyToday, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or shoot me an email at [email protected].