The Lasting Impact of Childhood Experiences
Situations Where We Disconnect From Our Authentic Selves To Stay Connected To Other And Why
More often than not, I hear adults discounting painful memories from their childhood as “not so bad,” and I also find myself falling into this thinking trap occasionally. What we forget when we discount painful childhood experiences is that we look back at those memories from the point of view of an adult. What may now as an adult seem like “not such a big deal” could have had a lasting impact on you as a child. It’s important to understand this because dismissing painful experiences does us more harm than good and keeps us stuck in our dysfunctional patterns, keeping us from healing and moving on. Let’s discuss why things in our childhood have a bigger impact on us and look at some examples so that we can move on and heal.
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I am not here to give you a biological lecture about how children are developmentally different than adults. Nor do I think I need to. We all know that children are not developmentally the same as adults. However, we sometimes forget that children are much less self-sufficient due to developmental differences. We know children can’t fulfill their physical needs (food, shelter, etc), but they also have emotional and mental needs that they need assistance with. Children depend on their caregivers to survive and feel a psychological sense of safety, to explore and grow. While adults can create safety for themselves, a child’s sense of safety is almost completely derived from their relationship with their primary caregivers. A child’s need for a safe attachment is huge; it’s what their survival and well-being hinge on. This level of dependency on a caregiver is why what happens in our relationships as children is so impactful.
Not only are children more dependent on their caregivers, but they also don’t have the same power or skills as adults. Adults can self-regulate their nervous system, something children can’t do. They need another person to co-regulate. When something bad happens to a child, it’s much more likely to impact them than adults because they have a much smaller ability to cope (mentally and emotionally). Besides being more vulnerable to negative experiences, children have a harder time protecting themselves from bad events in the first place. It’s much more likely for a child to experience a bad event than an adult because children don’t have the same control adults have over their environment and relationships. As an adult, you can leave relationships that hurt you or people that treat you poorly; children don’t. So, children are more affected by bad events, more likely to experience them, and have a smaller capability to cope with them than adults.
Here is an example: Let’s say you visit your parents for dinner, and they get into another one of their screaming matches. This deeply affects you, so you excuse yourself and leave the situation. Maybe you call a friend and tell them about it, or you decide to go on a walk and distract yourself with a podcast. Moving forward, you might decide not to spend as much time with your parents because of this. As a child, you don’t have the same options. If you’re 5 years old and your parents get into a screaming match, you don’t have the power to remove yourself from the situation, nor do you have the skills to cope with it. You can’t just leave the house or call a friend; you’re powerless in your environment. Not only that, but your parents and their well-being are your main source of safety; seeing them fight frequently or intensely without attempts of repair causes a deep sense of unsafety in children. This doesn’t mean every fight you witness between your parents deeply affects you, but if it’s a common theme in your family unit and you’re not emotionally taken care of after they fight, it will.
The main point I want to drive home here is this: Unlike adults, children are not self-sufficient! They are, much like houseplants, totally depend on their caregivers for their survival. While houseplants need water, sunlight, and such, children need a sense of safety, which they mainly achieve through their connection to their primary caregivers.
Ideally, we feel safely connected to our parents and get our other needs met without our need for attachment conflicting with other needs of ours. Yet, many of us who struggle with people-pleasing had parents who didn’t have the skills or capacity to allow us to be authentic and feel safely connected to them at the same time. In some way, our parents directly or indirectly send us the message that we can’t stay safely connected to them if we are authentically ourselves. So we had to choose between the two, and in childhood, our need for attachment will always trump our need for authenticity because attachment equals survival and safety.
While we are most impressionable and dependent on others during childhood, some situations we can get into as adults put us in the same spot. Whenever our sense of safety or survival is tied to other people, we may choose attachment over authenticity. Ideally, as adults, we can choose who we connect with and find people who accept our authentic selves. But that’s not always the case. There are situations where we are more dependent on others because of an imbalance of power. Maybe we’re financially dependent on someone and can’t afford to leave. Or maybe we are discriminated against and are forced to show up inauthentically to survive and feel safe. Or maybe we have a toxic boss that we have to survive until we find a new job. There are many situations in which our need to be attached to others trumps our need to be connected to our authentic selves, forcing us to abandon ourselves. Sometimes, it’s a true concern for our survival; sometimes, it’s our way of creating a sense of safety for ourselves.
It felt important to share this with you, and I hope I could validate some of your childhood experiences and help you see that there is nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to abandoning our authentic selves. It’s a survival mechanism that says nothing bad about your authentic self.
Now, I invite you to take a moment and reflect on the following: When and where in your life do you now realize you were forced to disconnect from your true self to stay connected to others and create a sense of safety? Take a moment to sit with this, or note it down somewhere so you can return to it.
With that, thank you for your time, and I hope to see you back next Tuesday!
Take care, Klara
P.S. If my newsletter articles help you recover from people-pleasing, you will be a great match for my private coaching. I am looking for 9 wonderful people ready to take their recovery from people-pleasing seriously and learn to set boundaries and create a safe relationship with themselves. I know I won’t be able to work with everyone who applies, but if you enjoy my newsletter articles, chances are we’d be a great fit. Applications close on July 15th, payment plans are available, and I can’t wait to join your support system.