So that pic of me in the thumbnail is from when I was about 11 years old, and on the inside I was already pretty much a highly anxious kid and I, I feel like I hid it, but I probably wouldn't even have known that I was anxious at the time. And I'll talk about that picture towards the end of the video.
As a former therapist, I've never fully believed that anxiety just exists in a vacuum. I've never thought that people were anxious just because. And if you struggle with anxiety, here are some common childhood trauma issues that could be helpful to you in figuring out why you might struggle with anxiety in your present life.
Sometimes we can lessen the impact of our anxiety in the present by knowing where it comes from if we do resonate with having childhood trauma. And it's okay if you may or may not know that. Yet, I'll give this list and then I'm gonna discuss my thoughts about the list after. So let's just dive in. FYI, these can be intense because they're rooted in things like neglect and abuse, and I'm gonna talk about two things.
I'm gonna talk about the root anxiety, childhood trauma issue, which is our past, which is our history. The other thing I'm gonna talk about is how that history can affect our anxiety in the present. Many of these issues will overlap and be relevant to each other, but it doesn't really mean anything more than that, that we're just talking about many issues at the same time.
So I'm gonna give my thoughts about anxiety and therapy after, as well as trauma versus like just general anxiety. So the first one I'm gonna talk about is something I call never cherished and forgotten about not being seen. The big root childhood trauma issue here is not being seen as from parents not feeling lovable and treated like an invisible child.
This is important. Children are painfully aware that they're not cared for or loved the way that they might see other children receive love in their homes. So how not being cherished in your childhood can affect your present life in terms of anxiety can look like things like. Social anxiety, not knowing how to be social or feeling greatly uncomfortable due to a belief or a barrier about belonging.
And incidentally, anything on this list is I'm giving sort of a neurotypical version of child to trauma on this. If you identify as being neurodivergent, it might look like different things for you. Another issue on this list is being highly anxious around feedback. Like the hypervigilance around abandonment can be something.
We're always looking to confirm that people are either not that into us or they're leaving us. Another example is. Putting oneself out there in a creative way or simply wearing a new outfit, and that can make us highly anxious because being seen never really worked in childhood. Another issue is anxiety about intimacy being close to someone or the invisible inner child can feel really exposing when we're in intimate relationships.
The next one on the list is a big one. It's having a narcissistic parent. The big root childhood trauma issue here is experiencing multiple issues with a parent like this. Emotional abuse, neglect, maybe even physical abuse, abandonment, interpersonal trauma, high stress, some poor self-esteem, poor sense of self, and here's how having a narcissistic parent and childhood can affect our present life in terms of anxiety.
That can look like being overly focused on what. People might think about you being hypervigilant about your performance in life, people's intentions, anxiety about good things, not lasting in relationships, which is a big one. Another example is being uncomfortable when things are going well, like waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Another source of anxiety from having a narcissistic parent can be navigating people like you had to navigate that parent. Another one on the list is what I'm just simply calling Family secrets. The root issue with family secrets is hard to nail because as children we may or may not have been aware that a parent was say, having an affair or there was something shameful or taboo going on in the family with the adults or even with a sibling that may have been a perpetrator to us.
So think hard secrets that we can be terrified of. And I often feel this from a client when I think about them. If they had secrets as a child and I reflect upon. What were they carrying as a child or what were they sitting on in terms of secrets in their family? So here's how family secrets can affect our present life in terms of anxiety.
That can look like we can have a lot of unconscious shame based anxiety just floating around in our psyches. We might step into a class, we might step into a coffee shop, feeling kind of icky. Or feeling overly transparent but not know why. Related to that, a while back I did a video, uh, called 11 oddly specific Childhood Trauma Issues, where I talk about one of those issues being something called Transparent Frog.
Is that feeling of being totally transparent, like everyone knows and we can be kind of conscious about it or kind of not that really displays that issue. And I'll link that video in the description so we can be highly anxious around intimacy with this. One worried that people might find out a family member is actually a perpetrator.
Or that we were involved or wrapped up in it by proxy in some way. A lot of this stuff around family secrets is that we can feel like we're an accomplice to something bigger and kind of gross in the family when we had actually nothing to do about it 'cause we were kids. Another example is we can be highly anxious for other family members.
If a family protects a perpetrator and others are unsafe or there's still effect. So that's that one about family issues. Another one is crossed boundaries. The root issue with crossed boundaries in childhood centers on trust and autonomy In an abusive family, children might experience casual betrayal in like a daily experience.
A parent can make fun of their child in public. They can tell extended family embarrassing things said to that parent In private by the child. They can read their child's diary. They can be taken advantage of by the parent, be lied to or abused around perception. A big symptom of childhood trauma is our damage to our perception, or they can also be asked or being thrown into.
Adult issues as a child, like, don't tell your father that I saw this person today. Here's how cross boundaries can affect your present life in terms of anxiety, what that can look like. We can be anxious around being outed or thrown under the bus or worry about what we tell people because it can be maybe used against us because it was used against us in childhood.
We can be highly anxious when people tell us something in confidence, like there's a charge to secrets that might freak us out, or we might confuse something said in confidence as a secret, and we can be highly anxious around other people talking about us or just simply our name coming out in conversation.
We can be highly anxious around things like gossip. We might hate being involved and overly get worried about someone being portrayed a certain way. The next one on the list is family strife, chaos and violence. So I'm covering a lot with this one, but the root issue with family strife, chaos, and violence range from shame due to being raised in dysfunction and chaos.
Like the shame of a child being singled out because maybe they don't have weather appropriate clothes. Because of the neglect, they're experience at home to children being hypervigilant about volatile parents, their moods, and due to verbal abuse or physical violence from those moods. Even not being believed as relevant here in terms of anxiety in childhood.
Whether a child's parents are involved in say, domestic violence or like a daily miserable. Fighting between parents. It's highly anxious for any human being to be living through that while going through development. And in addition, just growing up in a high conflict or high drama family due to adult immaturity.
In terms of poor mental health or substance abuse or simple, like emotional immaturity is really a lot on a child. This can be really overwhelming and resulting in a lot of anxiety, both in the past and the present here is how family strife. Chaos and violence can affect your present life in terms of your anxiety, what that can look like.
We can be really anxious and intensely shame-based around things like finances, appearances, and mistakes. Is your anxiety based on like being exposed as say like sort of like feeling trashy because you grew up in this trashy experience or something? Not everyone does, but some kids are highly aware of how their family is.
Different in terms of functioning and chaos. We can be highly anxious around loud people, or people with big personalities, or they feel like they're anxious because other people around them feel like loose cannons real or imagined. We can be highly anxious around conflict of any kind. A big one here is we can be incredibly anxious without having concrete.
Details and plans about things. Ambiguity can feel extremely unsafe. I talk about that in six Signs of childhood trauma. I'll also link that in the video. Ambiguity can feel extremely unsafe when it doesn't have to be in our present lives. We can be highly anxious about how your partner or your children behave.
We can sometimes confuse messy human things as. Ugly and unsafe things. Another source of anxiety. Now the last one here is revolving neglect, what I'm calling having simply to raise oneself. This final one runs deep and the root issue with having to raise oneself can be about experiencing lack of guidance.
On basic help that children have to really be preoccupied about how simple, like how is this field trip gonna work if they're getting no help at home? A simple school field trip can feel overwhelming. Like, where's the money, the timing, how's this gonna work? You know, neglected children can be highly anxious about seeming normal at school.
They also have to shoot in the dark a lot about when they're not being helped at home. Picture a third grader not being prepared for a school event because they had no engaged parent as a go-between. The school and the child due to embarrassing situations, the child starts to believe they're a failure.
They have to figure out so much on their own due to neglect, but they don't know they're being neglected. They just think that they're a dumb kid. Two super important issues here, and these are big. The child isn't helped around basic things, how basic things work, and the child is gonna most likely become hypervigilant around failure.
That becomes their focus and that becomes maybe their sense of self, that I'm a failure as they age. They can get good at performing at an adult level because it's too painful to not, and they hide that they're not getting any basic help at home. But that becomes a needed coverup with lots of anxiety.
You know, kids being neglected, spend a lot of time worried about how the cards are gonna fall and how they're gonna look. So they do a good job at kind of like looking good or keeping it together. Let me know in the comments if you identify with that. Here's how having to raise oneself can affect your present life in terms of anxiety, what that can look like.
We can be highly anxious around imposter syndrome since we had to fake it. So much in childhood. A lot of that is gonna feel like we are disingenuous, that we don't have really a lot of good integrity. We can feel like we're inherently fake and not get how capable we actually are. Or that people aren't really looking for the holes like we assumed they would in childhood.
Another example is we can be highly anxious around mistakes and performance, like the stakes are too high for neglected kids about being acceptable in childhood. A big one here is that we can be incredibly anxious around receiving help that it feels like failure. If we need help or it's too foreign or too exposing or too, we could even spark off a lot of anxiety based grief.
We can be highly anxious around nailing an experience like a vacation or a party instead of being present for it. And those are the six examples. Those are just some big ones to get you to start to think and reflect on how your childhood might be relevant to your present base anxiety. But here are some other issues I didn't flush out in this video and how they're relevant to the issue of our anxiety.
Having a perpetrating stepparent and a non protective biological parent, like things like safety and not being cared for. Having a shutdown parent in childhood, which is like overwhelming for a child, and we're usually parentified in that. Another example is trying to make the impossible work, which can lead us to perfectionism and possibly codependency, like making the impossible work.
It's like fixing a high conflict marriage when you're a little kid. You just want your parents to be happy. Another example is getting it. Perfect for love, magical thinking. If I perform this amazing thing or make this thing or get this right, then I'll be lovable by my parents. We can have a lot of anxiety about outcomes.
Another example is adults with volatile emotions, like with that narcissistic one. I mentioned anxiety around the simple moods of others. We're not simple, but we're, you know, we're really hypervigilant around other people's moods even when we're not even looking for it. We're aware of it. The mental health of the client's parents growing up, which is.
A lot. Another example is exposure to off sexual behaviors or, or sexually perpetrating behaviors by parent. That can, that can lead us to a lot of shame and anxiety. So here are my thoughts on anxiety and therapy treatment. Nearly every client I've had who had prior therapy before seeing me as a child of trauma specialist stated they were never asked about these things with their prior therapist.
And most of my comments on social media surprise me in that people are just learning about. This now through videos and through this discussion or content, but not through therapy sessions. This is a problem I think, in just about every mental health clinical setting I've worked in before, private practice, when I was practicing a client's anxiety was usually attributed to their current stress.
Not their past or that their anxiety was just simply that's who they are in internships, jobs, acute psych settings, conversations with therapists or coworkers, and from what I would later hear from my clients in private practice, many therapists tend to not ask about childhood or childhood trauma in conversations about anxiety or about many other issues.
Despite all that, I'm not saying here that all anxiety is rooted in childhood trauma. I wanna be clear there, but I'm also not saying it's all present based stress or issues or someone's disposition in my opinion. I'm also not stating that every single therapist out there doesn't talk about childhood trauma.
Some do. Some don't for various reasons. Another factor is sometimes asking about childhood trauma is not the place or time or helpful to the client to explore that. However, here are some categories that I'll give in terms of present based anxiety that one's childhood trauma can exacerbate. You might have what I call just simply free floating anxiety.
You might feel anxious and you might not know why you might experience that as a baseline emotion. But haven't connected it yet to childhood to trauma. If you grew up in it, you might or most likely have state of the world anxiety. This is another category like fear of financial and ec, our economic future, global warming, marginalization, the lack of safety and confidence in society.
This is a huge thing that we're all struggling with, I believe, and that we consume media about this issue, about sort of the present world on. Every hour on the hour when we're looking at our phone. And lastly, the third category is you might have impending doom based feelings related to the first two free floating anxiety and the state of the world.
And like with most childhood trauma issues, baseline emotions get amplified. Like going on a date or a job interview can make us nervous or even excited, but childhood trauma can amp that up, that baseline emotion from nervousness to a much higher intensity if like panic if you're wired that way because of the trauma.
And sometimes the opposite is true, where shutting down is a tendency that gets amped up. Meaning we even go further. Down in certain situations. Neither of those things are great. So what I am saying is, let's say your anxiety hits a tipping point and you want to go see a therapist about it or a psychiatrist without the discussion of childhood trauma, you might go to a therapist and you're most likely gonna have some conversations about the present based trauma.
That can be helpful, very helpful. You might go see a psychiatrist and they might suggest you to try some anxiety based medications that can be helpful in your short term. Um, but if it's just medications that's not touching the child to trauma, be aware of that. You might do some top down. Cerebral brace therapies, things like CBT or DBT or some mindfulness work, which are, they're great therapies in and of itself, but not exactly for childhood trauma.
However, they can feel minimizing when the issue is actually childhood trauma and like how someone described to me in a comment a. On childhood trauma based anxiety, they said it feels like there's something deep down, like in the roots, that we never touched in therapy that needs to be addressed. In addition, it needs to be noted that there could be damaging conversations about anxiety from some therapist where the client is blamed for their anxiety.
Or blame for their childhood trauma, and I'm not trying to demonize therapists here, but this happens. It happens way more often than we think it does. Here's how to work on the information with this video, so if it's available to you, always, my first suggestion is to try to find a trained trauma therapist that works around childhood trauma, if you relate to that.
That's really always my first recommendation, but I know that that's complicated. Due to the lack of availability, the trust in therapists, as well as finances. I'll have some links in the description of therapists. We've trained in our model. These folks are not employees, they just happen to have trained with us.
That's gonna be in the description of this video. If you're not sure about childhood trauma and you want to explore that more. I'll also link my toxic family test and the description as well, the nature of the questions in that. Test are often more important than the score that you get in terms of thinking about where anxiety comes from, even your depression.
So here's how to work with this. Take some time to reflect on your relationship with anxiety. What has that looked like over the course of your lifetime? What does the anxiety look like for you? Better example is reflect on your daily micro feelings of anxiety. So let's say you have a pattern of feeling in every job that you're gonna lose.
That job you're gonna get fired might be related to neglect or not being seen or imposter syndrome. Pay attention to the micro feelings like getting an email and you're looking in that email you're looking for. We need to talk, you need to step into my office. And we're where it's like we get a jolt of anxiety from that.
Or even if you see a new hire at your job, do you maybe quickly assume that you're being replaced or something? Do you get a bad feeling from these things? If you focus on the smaller examples, you can explore how those might be related to childhood trauma. It's like a clue about a form of hypervigilance or our hypervigilance, like that example of having to raise yourself.
Are you hypervigilant in small daily ways about people finding out that you're actually winging it and feeling like an imposter, just FYI? Most people in this world are winging it, including feeling like myself. It feels that way just to normalize. That kind of feeling. So that could be telling your child a trauma story of neglect in terms of imposter syndrome or even a parent's legacy or their imposter syndrome or shame.
And not that you're just an anxious and not confident person. There's definitely probably more to it. Lastly, spend some time thinking about a child. Say five years old, eight, maybe 12 as a thought exercise. Imagine that a child had the same exact childhood that you had. Would they be anxious about people knowing what their home life was like?
Would that child be anxious about the moods of the adults or the parents? And what happens to them when the parent is in a bad mood? Would that child be overly anxious? About receiving love outside the family, like getting attention from a teacher since they're not being loved inside the family. I often say the stakes are too high for neglected kids.
Would that child be anxious about a parent's problems, like their substance abuse, their relationships, or the stress around money? Or what the parent is anxious about and would that child we're imagining who had your childhood be anxious about general safety, if any of that resonates. A helpful thing to start saying with our inner child is, of course we're anxious.
Of course that child would be anxious. Anybody would be, that's a very different feeling than being ashamed of our anxiety or being baffled about where it comes from along with the state of the world right now. I think we always have to include that into things 'cause it's just. Bananas. So here's the best way to explain this video.
Do you remember the picture of me in the thumbnail from Boy Scouts? Me as a Boy Scout? So yes, it can make any kid kind of nervous to be on stage during a ceremony like that. It usually does. But when I look at that pic and there was normal nerves from being on stage, but it also could have been anxiety that my parents weren't there at that ceremony when other parents were.
I was always keyed into. The more involved families as opposed to mine. I could have been anxious that my parents actually were there, but that they were intoxicated in making a scene at a Boy Scout ceremony. I could have been anxious about the inconsistency of not being picked up from that ceremony, and I could have been anxious that like there was even a physical fight in my home the day of or the night before.
I could have been anxious about feeling like everyone knew what my home life was like. 'cause I often worried about that. And if I had been put into therapy around that time, would a therapist have asked me about any of that or just labeled me as kind of a worried, scared, keyed up kid? I don't actually know around that time in my life if I would've been able to open up with the around those things.
But I was never really asked about those things. I wasn't in therapy during that time, but nobody was asking me about those things, which is kind of the point. So I hope that this was helpful to you, and I'll have the following links in the description. I'll have a link tree of the therapists that we've trained.
Again, they're non-employees, they've just people that we've trained. I'll have a link to the Toxic Family Test, reflect on the questions if you're not sure about some childhood trauma. I'll also have a link to my monthly healing
So as always, may you be filled with loving kindness. May you be well, may you be peaceful and at ease, and may you be joyous and I will see you next time.
