The emotional wounds of childhood usually correspond to the so-called "traumas", and constitute the consequence psychological and emotional negative that certain unpleasant experiences of childhood cause in a certain person.
These wounds will condition the subsequent life of the affected people, so their release is a necessary step to recover mental balance and move on with their lives. In the following Psychology-Online article we are going to expose this topic, explaining whatWhat are the emotional wounds of childhood and how to heal them; In addition, we tell you why they occur, what types of emotional wounds exist.
The emotional wounds of childhood are the psycho-emotional imprint that is inserted inside us as a consequence of painful experiences that occurred during our childhood that will negatively condition our lives to a greater or lesser extent.
These wounds function, normally, at the unconscious level mainly due to two reasons:
Occurs in early life
It occurs between gestation and the first two years of life, which
The emotional wounds caused in this period of life are the most difficult to heal due to this same reason that causes the record has occurred only at the sensory-kinesthetic level and, therefore, in a much more visceral way and difficult to reason and remove.
I try to avoid the pain
The experience is so unpleasant that the person who suffers it, to avoid the pain caused by the memory of the negative experience, moves to the unconscious and is lost, at least temporarily, awareness of it. This would be the case, for example, in a situation of child sexual abuse.
However, although they are derived from the unconscious, they condition our lives in the same way and, over the years, depending on the discomfort they generate in our day to day, it will become necessary to bring them to light to work on them and heal them and, in this way, to be able to recover peace lost.
Emotional wounds give rise to a range of dysfunctional behaviors or defense mechanisms that, precisely because they are unconscious, work automatically with the ultimate goal of avoiding experiencing pain again experienced in the original situation that caused us the emotional wound.
The emotional wounds of childhood arise as a result of traumatic experiences occurred during this period of life. Depending on the strength of the emotional wound, the person's unconscious submission to the defense mechanisms created as a consequence of this painful experience will be greater or lesser.
The factors that determine the weight or strength of the emotional wound are the following:
- The intensity of the pain experienced from the concrete experience.
- The frequency of that experience.
- The quality and level of trust in the social network that protects us.
- The personal characteristics of the person experiencing said bad experience.
How to identify childhood wounds?
The greatest deprivation of liberty and subjugation are dysfunctional behaviors that occur in cases of physical, sexual and/or psychological abuse where the innocence of children is totally violated and the terror generated by these experiences, leads to creating a bubble of psychological protection around them that makes it very difficult for them to develop balanced and healthy life projects at a emotional.
You can find out if you have emotional wounds if you do a self-analysis on the following behaviors or feelings that people with childhood trauma experience in their day to day:
- Great self-rejection and an enormous mistrust of others.
- Difficulties in establishing social relationships in any area of your life.
- Complex family life.
- Relational difficulties in the interpersonal, educational, labor.
- Negative thoughts about themselves and seeing their life as a failure.
Expand your knowledge about it with our post on Sequelae of child abuse in adults.
If you wonder what are the emotional wounds of childhood, you should know that, as in most of classifications made in the field of psychology or in any other, the typologies can be very varied.
In this case, we have considered three main types of emotional wounds that would encompass the different concrete manifestations:
- Injuries caused by neglect: In these cases, children are abandoned by their parents or main caregivers. During this vital period, children are totally dependent on their caregivers, so abandonment causes enormous emotional wounds on a physical, psychological and emotional level.
- Injuries caused by abuse or neglect: in this second case, the parents do not abandon the child but provide care that lacks everything the child needs to cover her basic physiological needs, emotionalsocial, psychological, etc. These situations of abuse cause, in the same way, strong and painful emotional wounds in children who will condition their adult lives.
- Injuries caused by traumatic events (accidents or deaths of loved ones): in these cases, there is no mistreatment by the parents but, unexpectedly, a negative event occurs that seriously affects the child's psyche and emotionality and, consequently, his further development.
As with any psychological work of personal healing, the emotional wounds of childhood need a lot of treatment. therapeutic process through which the person will integrate the event that occurred as a fact of her life but will stop feeling governed by fear and the defensive mechanisms created to go on to take back the reins of his life satisfactorily.
This process can be done personally or through psychological support, depending on the spiritual strength that the person possesses, the support network that sustains them, the intensity of the wound, etc. In both cases, the process will go through the following phases:
- The negation.
- personal crisis very strong, which will lead to the necessary conscious recovery from the traumatic experience.
- The acceptation, as the next step.
- empowerment, the crucial final moment in which the "non-useful" is discarded and all the personal potential silenced until now is fed.
In case you want more information on how to heal the emotional wounds of childhood, read our articles about How to heal emotional wounds from the past Y How to overcome psychological trauma.
This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
