It’s a question that ping pongs as denial ebbs, numbness fades, and the dawning consciousness of reality, of what reality happened and the impact it left wars with conflicting ideas about what childhood trauma is and isn’t, love and loyalty to parents despite their deficits, and contradictory awarenesses of what was and what isn’t.
It is a question that’s central to relational trauma recovery, to childhood trauma recovery.
It’s a question that must be asked, must be confronted, in order to support the healing process.
But it’s a very difficult and almost inevitably painful question to grapple with.
As a trauma therapist, as a relational trauma recovery specialist, here are a few key points I want you to know if you’ve asked the question, “Was my childhood really that bad?” and if you’re still grappling with it.
The answer to whether or not you had a bad childhood is subjective and yours alone.
The answer to “Was my childhood really that bad?” is subjective, meaning, it’s an answer entirely depending on your own feelings, emotions, and opinions.
Not the feelings, emotions, and opinions of your parents or guardians.
Not the feelings, emotions, and opinions of your siblings, community members, church members, or the internet.
No one gets to answer this question besides you and you alone.
That’s the beautiful and also the very hard thing.
Why is this?
The way we each remember and feel about our childhood is deeply personal and unique, much like a tapestry of memories woven with our individual emotions and experiences.
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a renowned trauma expert, beautifully captures this in his book “The Body Keeps the Score.”
In his book, he illustrates how our personal emotional responses and the way we process events internally play a significant role in shaping our childhood memories.
It’s like each of us has a different lens through which we view our past, and it’s these personal lenses that give color and meaning to our childhood experiences.
This understanding is so important because it reminds us that it’s normal and natural if our view of our childhood doesn’t quite match up with someone else’s; it’s a subjective experience.
So when we talk about childhood, it’s not just about what happened; it’s about how we hold those experiences in our heart and mind, subjectively.
And yet, when it comes to what makes a childhood “bad,” the what behind the making has both objective data and subjective nuance.
Let me explain.
