Childhood trauma can have extreme effects on how a person lives through adulthood. While some may develop resilience and empathy, many others suffer from esteem issues and personality disorders. Here are 19 traits that say you or someone had a difficult childhood.
Hyper-Independence
Independence may be a good trait that some may develop, but hyper-independence takes it to the extreme. People who had to face problems alone as children due to abandonment or constant rejection never seek help from others, even when they have to. They avoid situations that require dependence and even avoid building collaborative relationships with people.
Hypervigilance
Adults who faced constant aggression as children, maybe from living with abusive parents, being bullied, or living in a war zone, are also typically hypervigilant. Hypervigilance denotes a constant state of panic or expectation that something bad will happen, typically involving exaggerated threats.
Hypersensitivity
This person may also be a highly sensitive person (HSP). HSPs blow their reactions to both negative and positive social and physiological events out of proportion. For instance, you may take offense to a mere joke and get unnecessarily aggressive about it. Or you may be irritable to many ordinary smells, foods, and clothes.
Perfectionism
Verywell Mind shares that people who have overly controlling parents or have to face constant criticism from guardians have a tendency for perfectionism. You experience a constant fear of making mistakes and the judgment that comes with them, and hence, you become obsessive about eliminating flaws.
Trust Issues
When someone has had to deal with abandonment, deceit, or maltreatment from people they loved during their childhood, they may develop trust issues. This person avoids intimacy or mutual commitments, may find it hard to open up, or may even have a total fear of strangers (xenophobia).
Low Self-Esteem
Due to constant criticism from guardians or constant jeers from childhood friends, this person may also have low self-esteem. You may have faced verbal abuse that created or amplified your insecurities, and even if they don’t exist in adulthood, you still feel inadequate in some way. This may manifest in you having trouble taking compliments, for instance.
Emotional Dysregulation
As CSUF shares, “trauma causes children to experience impairment in their cognitive and emotional needs as they have a challenging time regulating their emotions.” A childhood plagued with emotional instability and emotional manipulation could cause difficulty controlling reactions and regulating moods in adulthood. It’s hard to snap out of anger, or you get sad without cause, for instance.
Emotional Unavailability
Due to being abused or neglected, you may also have a tendency to ignore the emotional needs of others. You believe that emotions don’t have meaning in the grand scheme of things and, hence, develop apathy toward how others may feel about your actions.
Introversion
It’s also easy for this person to be an introvert who enjoys being alone more than spending time in large social circles. This may be a response to trauma from verbal or physical abuse or from having difficulty fitting into social gatherings as a child. You find the most solace in your thoughts and solitude.
Impulsion
Childhood trauma may cause a person to be extremely impulsive in making decisions or acting out. This person feels a rush to always take action without thinking things through, probably because he or she was under a lot of pressure as a child. Impulsivity may also be amplified in specific scenarios.
Difficulty Managing Conflict
Your ability to de-escalate or resolve conflicts is also found to be lacking. Having had to deal with parents who were extremely controlling and dismissive of your counterarguments, you have learned to keep your reservations to yourself. You avoid conflict, as it makes you feel very uncomfortable.
Lack of Self-Awareness and Identity
Childhood environments that don’t support individualism create adults who are confused about who they are. Sometimes, in the more extreme cases, this person may suffer from dissociative identity disorders (DID), where he or she has multiple personalities or identities. A study by Aurégane Raison and Soubelet Andrea published on ScienceDirect reveals that DID is more associated with childhood traumas than many other disorders.
Lack of Boundaries
One trait you develop from invasive, controlling parents is the inability to set boundaries for yourself and others. You find it hard to dictate the things you like and don’t like because, more often than not, these preferences have been disrespected.
Unforgiving
A learned trait from childhood can be the inability to forgive others for their mistakes, no matter how little or insignificant they are. You may constantly look for faults in others and use these faults to judge their characters days, months, or even years later. Since you didn’t enjoy it as a child, you don’t know how to extend its grace as an adult.
Extreme Empathy
On the flip side, this person may show extensive empathy towards others because he or she understands how it feels to be there. You are lenient when dealing with or judging people, and you always have a desire to relieve others of the pain they suffer. Sometimes, it’s like you almost feel as much pain as they do and get overinvested in other people’s feelings.
Resilience
One other positive trait developed from having to face difficult situations as a child is your resilience in times of difficulty. You have developed thick skin from all the terrible circumstances you have found yourself in, and you have more capacity and will to come out on top.
People Pleasing
There may also be a need to please others, even to the detriment of one’s self. It goes deeper than just being selfless and involves unnecessarily apologizing or seeking validation from others. This may develop from a fear of being abandoned or a lack of acknowledgment or praise as a child.
Anxiety
You may also exhibit symptoms of anxiety disorders, where there’s a constant fear of the unknown. It stems from environments where you had to always remain on your toes because there was always something bad going to happen. Sometimes, this may manifest in the form of separation anxiety, where you feel uneasiness when not close to or cared for by your partner.
Substance Dependence
The use of drugs to the point of addiction is another trait common among people who have had difficult childhoods. Weber K., Rockstroh B., and Borgelt J. conducted a study on how childhood stress loads affect psychopathology. On it, Verywell Mind shares that the more traumas a person has experienced (and the earlier they experience them), the more likely they are to develop issues with substances.
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