Is emotional trauma from childhood causing your pain?
Often, as we get older, we get more aches and pains. We think it is just the way life is supposed to be and we expect more things to hurt and our health to decline. I am here to tell you that I do not subscribe to that belief system and know there are many aspects to pain. Yes, pain is physical in many cases, but the emotional trauma from childhood often is a contributing factor to the pain.
I was binge watching the Microbiome Summit a few weekends back and was just fascinated with Niki gratrix’s work on ACE’s – Adverse Childhood Experiences. I refer to these as childhood emotional trauma which typically occur between ages 0-3 years old – our pre-cognitive years when we are seeking love and approval from our parents. Based on the ACE’s study with Nadine Burke, these issues can be experienced trauma up until the age of 18.
The problem is that you may forget in your mind about the trauma, but your body doesn’t forget these emotions. They get buried in the tissues of the body and appear later in life as behavior issues, addictions, pain or other health issues.
As a child, you often do not know how to ask for a different way. Your parents learned to be authoritarian let’s say, because they learned it from their parents, or they were raised in a military family with many rules.
There was no time to express what or how you were feeling. You had to just get on with it and stop your crying or whining.
You may have grown up with a family where a parent was abusive, or had their own addiction issues, where you were emotionally abused, or forced to live in conditions that may have caused you to feel unsafe.
I have witnessed many clients who have these issues occur, and when I ask about if they had acute stress or a long period of stress in their life, they often mention their physical symptoms started shortly after these traumas.
To me, it is not surprising that these issues are causing us pain later on in life as I too have experienced childhood trauma in the form of constant criticism which resulted in my adrenal exhaustion, hip replacement, several eye styes and most recently, my good hip hurting years after injury.
What kind of pain?
- physical pain – joints, back, shoulders (like the weight of the World is on them!), etc.
- emotional – self sabotage, inability to be close with others, trust issues, fear of commitment (which is more the fear of re-experiencing abandonment as it had occurred in childhood like a divorce, neglect, etc)
- mental – anxiety, depression, fear, phobias usually related to relationships and love.
Many of my clients have had these issues. Not that they asked for it, or their parents were intentionally unkind. But at those early years, the emotional wounds can happen. Most don’t know their current symptoms are a result of that childhood trauma and the unresolved emotion.
Today I had a client who was told by their father “Don’t trust anyone including me”. And now they are experiencing self-sabotage and inability to have a fulfilling loving supportive relationship as they don’t trust themselves, let alone others, not to hurt them.
I am working with a client who is severely overweight. In his first session, I recall picking an oracle card with the word Friendship as the heading.
His immediate response was “Oh, I am my own worst friend!” It took me over 8 sessions to help him reveal his past with me and share his ‘horrible’ childhood with me. Although he says he is over it, his body and his outbursts confirm that his body has not fully healed from this trauma in childhood.
A client who is battling pain, said after their Be Whole session, the physical pain lowered from a 6-7 down to 3. Yes, just from identifying and clearing the emotional issues.
Another client has used food for comfort especially when angry. After some of the Path To Heal sessions, they have broken that cycle, and are actually able to sit with the emotion and work thru it, rather than use food to self-medicate. Which would inevitably lead to self loathing, self-denigrating thoughts and trigger more emotional eating and resulting weight gain.
Another had their mother insult them for wearing thick glasses saying ‘Noone will love you for wearing those glasses.” So the ability to love oneself has been diminished as a result.
I was an emotional child, so I was always triggered and sad. My mother would add insult to my situation by saying “Smile! You look better when you smile!” and all I really wanted was for her to ask me what was the matter, let me tell her, then give me a kiss and a hug saying “It will all be fine!” Instead, I learned to be my own best critic and hid my emotions in my hips.
I have a client now with psoriatic arthritis who indicated when we started that his psoriasis started shortly after a highly stressful period in his teen years. We are working through the microbiome imbalances with an anti-inflammatory protocol (part of the Be Whole plan) so the anger of the skin condition can lessen. So far, his skin is “the best it has ever been that I can remember!”. Next we will be working through that trauma so the skin no longer erupts and he is free to just be with healthy skin from inside out.
Is your emotional pain causing your pain?
I created this handout with 5 Steps to Ease Emotional Triggers which may assist you in releasing some of the stress which is contributing to your symptom and pain. When you are stressed, you tend to stress eat which include inflammatory foods. So we can address two things at once 🙂
You can also schedule a time so we can review your situation and see if working together would be the right choice.
Or schedule your Be Whole session to get started!