36 - HOW YOUR CHILDHOOD TRAUMAS ARE AFFECTING YOUR ADULT RELATIONSHIPS

Hi, I'm Dr. Carol Darca, author, psychologist, and founder of Reconnect Trauma Treatment center in Los Angeles. Do you know the signs that your childhood is affecting your current relationship? That's what we're going to talk about today. You might think that you had a healthy childhood, or maybe you're aware that you had a very traumatic childhood. But you may still not see the connection of how your childhood is actually affecting not only your life in general, but your relationship. So this could be a relationships at work, relationships with friends. But I'm going to talk about today, especially intimate relationships, because actually the most feelings show up to come to the surface. I always smile when I say that. Unfortunately, in the most intimate relationships. In other words, the more you care about someone, the more you are prone to get hurt or more prone to get angry, or the more you will be basically triggered and duplicate some things that are happening from your past. If you think you don't have a specific trauma, I want to introduce you the idea of relational trauma. Relational trauma doesn't necessarily mean you were hit or abused or raped, but that you got less than nurturing parenting. Because children are supposed to be in an ideal scene, if there is such a thing, met emotionally and physically as much as possible by the parents. The children's job is only to show up as a kid to have fun, to go to school, to play, and maybe to clean their rooms. But everything else is really on the shoulders of the parents. So when a child is not able to feel heard, understood, validated, or cared for, this will show up eventually in relationships. So let's look at some signs. The very first one is how much closeness or separateness you can tolerate. So some people actually would like to feel very, very close when they're in relationship. So some people may judge that as sort of needy. Right. Is a sense of like, I, I'm not getting enough love. I really want to be close to you. I want to be with you. And there's sort of the flip side of that is that I can't feel that close with you. I need some separateness. I need to be really on my own. Otherwise I feel like I'm suffocating. So often you find people that are the opposite side coming together as a match because there's actually some learning inside there that has to happen. So this tolerance issue that I'm talking about comes from your role model of your parents. So your first relationships, first of all, how they were with each other, right between your parents and how they were with you gives you a lot of information about how you may be when you are adult in your intimate relationship. So if you really closely look to the family dynamic of your childhood, you might see that it's really replicating here, especially again, if there's some dysfunction. So avoidance people, for instance, people who really can't tolerate that much closeness, may say things like, I'm actually better when I'm alone. I don't have to deal with somebody else. I feel, know, free. I'm suffocating next to someone. And the flip side of it is the person might say, oh my God, I'm going to get hurt, I'm going to get rejected, I'm going to get abandoned. You don't love me enough. And so these are the signs. If you're feeling one of those sort of the opposite end to this spectrum, you might want to look at how your childhood is affecting you. Here's the second item. You're scared to speak up or you're afraid to really tell your truth. This also might be another sign that when you were a child, maybe you were not allowed to speak the truth. We can take this even into a further example of when you were a child. You might have been actually hurt if you spoke the truth. You wouldn't even dare to be honest or to even express your needs. So children learn well when they're first born, of course they know that they have needs to eat, play, and be held. And then as they grow, they have other needs that come up. But if each time a child is asking for a need and it's not met by a parent, after a while, they are not going to ask because the message that they get is, well, why bother? I'm not getting. And in fact, each time I get, and I'm not, each time I'm asking and I'm not receiving what I need, I'm feeling even worse. So I might as well learn how not to need anything. So in some other words, I don't want to be a burden to people. I don't want to bother anybody. You know, those kind of things. And then I know other people who unfortunately, when they were asking for what they need, they were severely hurt and abused, and they learned to really just be quiet and afraid of the confrontation or of really being able to speak their truth. The third in my list is you don't experience yourself as a worthy person, so you just think that your value is less than what actually is. And again, this might have been because of some messages you received as a child. It could be direct messages. Maybe you've heard parents telling you you're stupid, you're ugly, you're useless piece of. You know, or it would, it might be indirect messages so they won't say anything to you, but it'll be things like I won't do anything for you. Basically I'm busy. Yeah, yeah, you need me, but I'm on my phone or I'm just going to be ignoring you or I'm going to drink alcohol and not pay attention to you. Which then gives you the direct messages. I don't have a worth, I'm not worthy. I am probably taking out too much time. So this will show up in the intimate relationship when you actually needing something, but because you don't realize that you have a right for it, you may just not ask and maybe inside just feel always less than who you are or how you are. The other one is you're doing defensive and maybe you're reactive and you can't really contain your emotions. And you, you can't talk with a calm or reasonable way to resolve conflicts. There's always going to be a conflict in any sort of relationship. Make it intimate relationship or even work relationship or with your children. So that's not the problem. The problem is how we resolve the conflict actually. And so sometimes when we talk about certain things if the emotions are so big. And again that's because it's coming from a lot of childhood stuff. You may not even talk from an adult perspective without realizing a lot of the times when people get upset and an hour later or two hours later or 24 hours later when they come, you'll see them say oh my God, I can't believe I talked like that. I didn't mean any of that. I was so angry, I was out of my mind. Those are also signs that your childhood might be really affecting you. So you might think you are angry at your partner and which you probably are, but maybe the anger is this much. But if you're reacting this big, you might not realize that the rest of that is actually a piled up set of emotions from the past, most likely from your childhood, but it could be also from other relationships. That's just there when you don't have a chance to resolve the past hurt, then it'll come out on your current partner. And that's why often people will say you are overreacting. Well, and to you, you're not overreacting. To you it feels very legitimate, very tangible feeling emotion and your partner may have really a hard time to understand. So it's not necessarily that it's unconscious, but it's important to have the awareness of the root of where it's coming from and kind of see a pattern. So one of the things that you could pay attention to, for instance, if you're highly reacting, is when your partner says a sentence. Maybe he says, oh, hey, you didn't help me today. See what messages you hear. As soon as you hear a statement, does it remind you of how your father used to talk? Or does it make you feel like useless person, just like you felt as a child? Find the connection of how your current emotions are coming from earlier experiences. You will be surprised how frequently that actually happens. And last but not least, you think that you're always right and that your partner is always wrong and you're unwilling to make compromises. You think it should be just your way. Well, adult relationships, unfortunately, or fortunately, again, don't work like that, right? We are talking about getting along with another human being. So we are already very complicated people, okay? Even if we live alone, it's hard to get along with ourselves, right? But when you put another human being into that equation, then you are dealing with their problem, your problem. And again, as a reminder, so. So if I am carrying my childhood stuff, maybe my parents issues, so I'm not even alone. Like I have that weight, and then my partner has that weight on the other side. So it's not even two people who are in the relationship. It's really a history of, of people, of issues, of everything that's really coming up there. So you are, if you think that you have to just go with your way and that you're not going to find a middle ground with another person, that it just is not going to work. So I hope I didn't discourage you because this doesn't mean that you can't be in a relationship if you have childhood issues. In fact, I don't know anyone who doesn't have childhood issues. Let's be honest here. What can you do? Of course, as a therapist, my first choice is always, please go to therapy. Have a third person who's objective, who can help you. But if you're not able to do that, or if you're not interested in doing that, actually, my most important suggestion is to read a book together as a couple. There are great authors. I'm going to give you some names for relationship, you know, relationship experts, but not only relationship experts, but those are people who understand really the childhood trauma, because it's not just about how you communicate with each other, which is also important, but it's about how the childhood stuff is coming to the surface and it feels as if it's happening now. So if you are able to track that down, you will have so much more awareness and so much more adult type of conversation and resolution of conflict. So my favorite people are Guttman. Gutman is the last name. Guttman Institute, actually. You'll. If you Google them, you'll have a lot of information. Kathleen and Gay Hendricks, we'll write them all down. You can see them, definitely. And Stan Tatkin. Again, they all talk about attachment and childhood relationships. But please do yourself as a couple a favor. Do not read, do not be only the only one reading a book. Read it as a couple. You can read it separately if you want, but then come together like a book club and talk about it. You'll find a lot of fascinating information, but it's also important. Please don't pinpoint, you know, to your partner, go, oh, yeah, yeah. You see, I see you right in here in this page. It's not about that. It's about where do you see yourself when you read. How is it that you are contributing to the conflict to. To this issue and then let your partner decide for themselves. But awareness is definitely a key thing. And if still this doesn't get resolved, I hope you don't quit so fast and then you just employ somebody else's support in that. If you want to learn more about yourself and you want to resolve some of these childhood traumas that I'm mentioning to you about, our doors are open at Reconnect center in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles. We have trauma specialists, we have specialists in working with couples. So that's one option for you. I also would like to mention my book, the Trauma Map, so you can understand how you can heal your trauma and find ways to deal with your emotions. Also ReconnectCenter.com the website of the clinic, is a great resource where you can find more information about our program. Of course. Also follow me on different YouTube videos and Facebook and Instagram. Thank you again for joining me today. And if you have comments and questions or you want me to cover different topics, please write your comments below. And remember, trauma equals disconnect. Healing equals reconnect. Stay connected.