Developmental trauma is more common than many people realise. It can shape how you see yourself and the world – but it doesn't have to define your future. With the right understanding, care, and therapeutic support, people can learn new ways to feel safe, connected, and at peace.
Childhood trauma can shape adult identity, relationships, and emotional health. If you grew up in an unsafe, neglectful, or emotionally unpredictable environment, those early adaptations may still be with you. This is not because you're broken, but because you found ways to survive.
Anxiety and Depression: Adults who experienced childhood trauma are at a higher risk of developing anxiety disorders and depression. The constant state of alertness and fear can create a pervasive sense of unease. Emotional Regulation Issues: Trauma can make it challenging for adults to manage their emotions.
Healing from childhood trauma is a personal journey of courage and perseverance. Acknowledging past experiences is the first step toward healing. This path requires dedication and an open heart. Along the way, cultivating patience and self-compassion plays a vital role.
But for people who have experienced trauma, triggers cause thoughts, memories, and feelings that generate an unexpected and often intense emotional or physical response. Triggers can make a person feel as though they are in danger or are reliving their past trauma.
The belief is emotions and traumatic experiences can become trapped in the body, and somatic therapy helps release this pent-up tension and emotions. Somatic therapy uses body awareness, breathwork and movement exercises to be more aware of bodily sensations and release stored emotions.
The 'fight or flight' response is how people sometimes refer to our body's automatic reactions to fear. There are actually 5 of these common responses, including 'freeze', 'flop' and 'friend', as well as 'fight' or 'flight'.
7 Clear Signs Your Body Is Releasing Stored Trauma
Unhealed trauma often appears as chronic people-pleasing, relationship struggles, anxiety, self-destructive coping, or persistent shame and emptiness. Trauma rewires the hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex, affecting memory, emotion regulation, decision-making, and social interactions.
There is a range of traumatic events or trauma types to which children and adolescents can be exposed.
What is a traumatic event?
5 Childhood Trauma Personalities
Leanne Johnson has developed the 3 Cs Model of Trauma Informed Practice – Connect, Co-Regulate and Co-Reflect. It is a comprehensive approach based on the current evidence base, emphasising the importance of relationships that young people require in trauma recovery.
To protect themselves from the pain of past trauma, some individuals may develop defensive personality traits. These traits, such as emotional detachment, perfectionism, or aggression, act as protective shields to cope with the vulnerability they experienced during their traumatic past.
Changed Self-Image and Identity
Your face is intimately connected to your sense of self. When trauma alters your appearance—even temporarily—it can trigger profound questions about identity and self-worth. Even minor changes can feel significant when they affect how you see yourself in the mirror each day.
“For trauma survivors, especially those who've experienced neglect or emotional invalidation, oversharing can feel like a fast-track to safety or intimacy — even if it bypasses healthy relationship pacing.” Figueroa adds that you might also overshare intimate details to avoid feeling rejected or unseen.
Jonice Webb, (reference at end) describes a range of symptoms of childhood emotional neglect in adulthood:
Some of the signs of unhealed trauma may include:
In univariate analyses, all 5 forms of childhood trauma in this study (ie, witnessing violence, physical neglect, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse) demonstrated statistically significant relationships with the number of different aggressive behaviors reported in adulthood.
Smiling or laughing when disclosing trauma can be an indicator of shame. Some trauma survivors hold deeply entrenched feelings of self-blame and other distorted and inaccurate thoughts about the role they believe they played in their abuse.
The Trauma-Healing Diet
But in my experience, emotional healing happens in seven stages: awareness, acceptance, processing, release, growth, integration, and transformation. We don't move through these seven stages in a straight line, but we do pass through them all eventually on the path to healing.
Shutdown Response
Heart rate, blood pressure, and metabolism decrease significantly. Digestion slows or stops. The person may feel heavy, exhausted, or numb. A sense of disconnection from the environment emerges.
Symptoms of complex PTSD