TL;DR –Many people struggle to recognize their experiences as childhood trauma because traditional definitions—like the ACEs framework and WHO's maltreatment criteria—often miss subtle yet damaging patterns that don't fit obvious abuse categories. Common reasons include the subtlety of experiences (like being raised by a depressed parent), mothers as abusers (overlooked in traditional frameworks), non-parental perpetrators (siblings, teachers, religious communities), privilege serving as a "neutralizer" ("we had vacations so it couldn't be trauma"), family gaslighting that dismisses experiences, and preconceived notions about what trauma "should" look like. These limitations explain why the term "relational trauma" has emerged as more inclusive and validating.
The ACEs study, while groundbreaking in establishing connections between childhood experiences and adult health outcomes, only captures ten specific categories and misses nuanced experiences that can be equally damaging. This narrow lens leaves many trauma survivors unable to validate their experiences or access appropriate healing resources because they don't see themselves in the traditional definitions. Understanding that trauma is subjective—defined by how overwhelmed you felt, not whether your experience checks specific boxes—allows for recognition and healing of wounds that have long been minimized or dismissed.
First, let me begin by saying that the terms developmental trauma, complex trauma, childhood trauma and relational trauma can be used interchangeably.
Relational Trauma
Relational trauma is the psychological injury that results from repeated experiences of feeling unsafe, unseen, or unvalued in significant relationships — particularly early ones. It doesn’t require a single catastrophic event; it accumulates through patterns of emotional neglect, inconsistency, or control in the relationships that were supposed to teach you what love looks like.
Summary
The words ‘childhood trauma’ carry a lot of weight—and a lot of reasons to push them away. This post identifies six specific reasons why driven, intelligent adults often resist applying that term to their own history, and examines what’s actually underneath each one. If you’ve found yourself arguing with the idea that your childhood might have been traumatic, at least one of these reasons is probably familiar.
But throughout my writing over the last nine years, I’ve predominantly used the term relational trauma versus childhood trauma and this largely centers on the fact that it’s been a struggle for many people to see their lived experience as “counting” as a childhood trauma experience.
Childhood Trauma
Childhood trauma refers to experiences during childhood that overwhelm a child’s capacity to cope and leave lasting effects on the developing nervous system, attachment patterns, and sense of self. It encompasses a broad spectrum—from overt abuse and neglect to chronic emotional unavailability, conditional love, family instability, and relational misattunement. The impact of childhood trauma is determined less by the objective severity of events than by the child’s available resources for processing those experiences at the time.
Nervous System Dysregulation
Your nervous system is the body’s threat-detection apparatus. When it’s been shaped by relational trauma, it can get stuck in patterns of hypervigilance (always scanning for danger) or hypoarousal (shutting down to cope). Nervous system dysregulation means your body’s alarm system fires too easily, too often, or not at all — regardless of what your conscious mind knows to be true.
Attachment Style
Your attachment style is the relational blueprint your nervous system built in childhood based on how your caregivers responded to your needs. It shapes how you pursue closeness, handle conflict, and tolerate vulnerability in adult relationships — often without your conscious awareness.
I talked about that in my last essay but today, I want to provide more psychoeducation and share six reasons why you might struggle with the term.
But first, let’s ground ourselves in what used to be considered a childhood trauma experience.
Table of Contents
What counts as childhood trauma?
Historically, my field has used the concept of ACEs, or Adverse Childhood Experiences, to diagnose and understand it.
This framework was established by the landmark CDC-Kaiser study in the late 1990s, which aimed to identify and categorize experiences that could be classified as trauma leading to long-term health issues.
The study identified ten types of ACEs: emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, physical neglect, mother treated violently, substance abuse in the household, mental illness in the household, parental separation or divorce, and having an incarcerated household member.
Childhood Emotional Neglect
Childhood emotional neglect is the absence of adequate emotional attunement, validation, and responsiveness from caregivers. Unlike abuse, it’s defined by what didn’t happen — the comfort that wasn’t offered, the feelings that weren’t mirrored, the needs that went unnoticed. Its invisibility is what makes it so insidious and so hard to name in adulthood.
Surveying over 17,000 adults, the study found a strong correlation between the number of ACEs and negative health outcomes. This includes heart disease, diabetes, depression, and substance abuse.
It was an incredible contribution to the field of traumatology.
However, while the ACEs framework was and is invaluable in terms of concretizing childhood abuse experiences and elevating conversation about this in the field of mental health, the study still has its limitations.
I’ll talk more about those limitations in a minute. But first let me talk about the one other dominant way most people historically diagnosed childhood maltreatment experiences. This was through the definition provided by the World Health Organization:
“Child maltreatment is the abuse and neglect that occurs to children under 18 years of age. It includes all types of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect, negligence and commercial or other exploitation, which results in actual or potential harm to the child’s health, survival, development or dignity in the context of a relationship of responsibility, trust or power. Exposure to intimate partner violence is also sometimes included as a form of child maltreatment.”
Signs You May Be Carrying Relational Trauma
Take this 5-minute, 25-question quiz to find out — and learn what to do next if you do.
I think that the WHO’s definition of childhood trauma provides a more expansive lens than that of the Kaiser ACE’s study but still, even with the Kaiser ACE’s checklist of experiences and the WHO definition, many people – and my clients – still wouldn’t find themselves in the definition of childhood trauma/relational trauma.
Why? Let’s discuss that more.
Six reasons why you might struggle with the term “childhood trauma.”
In my clinical experience, I’ve found a range of reasons why people wouldn’t and couldn’t see themselves in the more “classic” definitions of childhood trauma.
And frankly, I include myself in this group. Because until my mid-twenties and I began my healing work at Esalen, no one has talked to me about how my own set of experiences “counted” as childhood trauma.
So, again, going back to the reasons why people wouldn’t see themselves in the definition of childhood trauma. This list includes:
The subtlety of certain experiences.
Like being raised by a well-meaning but suicidally depressed mother may not be seen as “neglect” by someone. The gaslighting endured by someone raised by a sociopathic father may be hard to spot as “abuse” or something that created “harm to the survival” of the individual (inside such strong words in the WHO definition and Kaiser ACE’s checklist, many people are quick to write off their experience as “not counting”).
Gaslighting
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation where one person causes another to question their own perception, memory, or sanity. In relational trauma, it erodes your ability to trust your own experience — which makes it one of the most damaging forms of emotional abuse because it attacks the very instrument you need to recognize what’s happening.
Another reason? Because mother was the abuser.
And this isn’t really accounted for in the Kaiser checklist at least. It frames mother as the recipient of DV vs the abuser towards partner or children.
Because the abusers may not have been guardians/parents.
But instead siblings or organizations and communities (think boarding schools, cult or extremist religious groups) and the parents didn’t actively harm but they didn’t actively stand up for the child, either, leading to harm.
And piggy backing on that comment, another reason I found people couldn’t or wouldn’t see their experience “counting” as childhood trauma was because they viewed the privilege they had also experienced as some kind of neutralizer of the experience. Comments like, “Sure, dad was always in a rage when he came home, but we had food to eat and vacations every summer, so it couldn’t have counted as trauma, right?”
And beyond the personal gaslighting people would do to themselves, we can’t not acknowledge the gaslighting – the diminishing or dismissing of their lived experience – that they might experience from their family which would lead them to doubt their experience. “Dad’s just being dad. It’s no big deal.” “What are you talking about? That didn’t happen.” “Your sister isn’t upset, it’s not a big deal, Get over it.”
And then, finally, there were the preconceived notions many held about what “counted” as abuse or trauma, largely informed by those historical perceptions but also informed by lack of “palatability” as seeing someone who was abused/came from trauma.
Finding Validation Through Professional Support
When your childhood experiences don’t match traditional trauma definitions, working with a therapist who understands the broader spectrum of relational wounds becomes essential for healing.
A trauma-informed therapist won’t require your story to fit the ACEs checklist or meet specific abuse criteria—they understand that being raised by a suicidally depressed mother, enduring sibling cruelty dismissed as rivalry, or navigating religious shame can be as damaging as more recognized forms of trauma. In therapy, you can finally stop wrestling with whether your experience was “bad enough” and instead focus on how it affected you, exploring the subtle yet profound ways these experiences shaped your nervous system, relationships, and sense of self.
This validation process is crucial because many people have spent decades minimizing their pain, believing that because they had food and shelter, or because no one hit them, their suffering doesn’t count.
For those grappling with this internal debate, exploring whether your childhood was actually harmful to your development can help validate experiences that have been dismissed or minimized. The therapeutic relationship itself becomes a corrective experience—finally having someone who believes your subjective reality matters more than whether your story fits predetermined boxes.
Wrapping up.
Again, while I certainly have a high ACE score (and found that out later in grad school when I was introduced to the concept of ACE’s) but still didn’t see an appropriate, expansive definition of trauma that reflected and/or could capture what I personally experienced, I started using the term relational trauma in my online writing, defining it in a particular way, and, as far as I understand it and as far as the internet tells me, was one of the first to really use the term back in the early days of expanding the conversation online (Spring, 2015).
In my next essay, I’m going to share my now-evolved definition of relational trauma with you. And vignettes of what clients would express as lived experiences that they didn’t see reflected in more “typical” childhood trauma definitions.
But, for now, hopefully by sharing this high quality psychoeducation with you in today’s essay, you can see yourself and why the term “childhood trauma” might have not always felt palatable for you.
And now I’d love to hear from you in the comments:
Do you relate to struggling with applying the term “childhood trauma” to your own story? Did you see yourself in any of the six reasons I listed?
If you feel so inclined, please leave a message. Our community of 30,000 blog readers can benefit from your share and wisdom.
Here’s to healing relational trauma and creating thriving lives on solid foundations.
Warmly,
Annie
References
- Kaiser Permanente. (n.d.). Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). My Doctor Online. Retrieved June 10, 2024, from https://mydoctor.kaiserpermanente.org/ncal/health-guide/adverse-childhood-experiences-aces
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023, May 18). Preventing adverse childhood experiences. Retrieved June 10, 2024, from https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/about.html
- World Health Organization. (2022, October 6). Child maltreatment. Retrieved June 10, 2024, from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/child-maltreatment
If you’re ready to go deeper, I work one-on-one with driven, ambitious women through relational trauma recovery therapy and trauma-informed executive coaching. And if this essay resonated, there’s more where it came from — my Substack newsletter goes deeper every week on relational trauma, nervous system healing, and the inner lives of ambitious women. Subscribe for free — I can’t wait to be of support to you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do people resist calling their childhood experiences trauma?
Resistance to the term ‘childhood trauma’ is very common and has several sources: comparison to worse cases (‘others had it so much harder’), loyalty to parents (‘they did their best’), the belief that naming it is a form of blame, minimization (‘I should be over it by now’), the absence of dramatic single events, and a nervous system that has worked hard to normalize the past.
What if my parents really did do their best?
Your parents doing their best and your childhood being traumatic are not mutually exclusive. Well-intentioned parents can still produce harm through their own unprocessed trauma, emotional unavailability, or limited capacity for attunement. Acknowledging the impact on you isn’t the same as condemning them. Both things can be true simultaneously.
Does trauma only count if I remember specific events?
No. Much of the impact of relational trauma is carried in the body and in relational patterns rather than in explicit memories. The nervous system can be profoundly shaped by chronic early experiences that don’t produce clear autobiographical memories—particularly from the first several years of life, which are largely pre-verbal.
Is struggling with childhood trauma a sign of weakness?
Quite the opposite. Struggling with the effects of childhood trauma is a sign of carrying a real and significant burden. The courage to look clearly at that and seek support is a sign of intelligence and self-awareness—not weakness. The driven, ambitious women who do this work are often the most rigorous and honest people in the room.
How do I overcome resistance to exploring my own childhood trauma?
Start with curiosity rather than commitment. You don’t have to decide whether your childhood was traumatic before you start exploring. You just need enough openness to ask: ‘Is there something here worth understanding?’ Working with a skilled therapist can create a safe enough container to look at things that feel too loaded to examine alone.
This is part of our comprehensive guide on this topic. For the full picture, read: Childhood Trauma: A Therapist’s Complete Guide.
DISCLAIMER: The content of this post is for psychoeducational and informational purposes only and does not constitute therapy, clinical advice, or a therapist-client relationship. For full details, please read our Medical Disclaimer. If you are in crisis, please call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or text HOME to 741741 (Crisis Text Line).
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