If You Experienced Emotional Abuse As A Child, You Probably Do These Things As An Adult
13. Overall Poor Health: A study conducted by Greenfield and Marks in 2009 found that
children who reported psychological or physical abuse had worse health as an adult than those who
did not experience these traumatic events. Over a 10 year period, ‘those who reported childhood
psychological or physical victimization had worse health than those who did not and also
experienced significantly more decline in health over a 10-year period in adulthood.’
Keep watching for some even more interesting things
adults who have suffered childhood trauma may do.
12. Lower Education: In 2010, a study was conducted by Currie and Spatz Widom that
highlighted a correlation between child abuse and neglect and their future economic well being as
an adult. The authors of the study found that those who experienced trauma as a child had
‘lower educational and occupational attainment’ which then put them at a lower income level.
11. Future Poverty: In a 2009 study which looked at child maltreatment
and their social and economic well being, it was derived that those who experienced
‘more than one type of childhood maltreatment are more likely to be unemployed in adulthood
or to have had a job loss in their family that resulted in financial hardship.’
10. Weight Gain or Obesity: A study which was conducted by the CDC (Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention) found that people who were able to successfully lose weight and
keep it off were those individuals who did NOT experience trauma as a child. Vincent Felitti,
one of the main authors of the study, found a correlation between those obese people who were
able to successfully keep the weight off and who also did not experience childhood trauma.
9. Risk Assessment: In a study done by University of Wisconsin-Madison
psychology professor Seth Pollak, he found that kids who have experienced trauma and
extreme stress as a child were unable to make good decisions later on in life. ‘Childhood
trauma—due to circumstances like neglect or exposure to violence—created young adults
fundamentally unable to correctly consider risk and make healthy life decisions—and no
threat of punishment was likely to be effective in changing this deficit.’
8. Don’t stand up for yourself: Those who have been emotionally abused as children have
a difficult time standing up for themselves as adults. They are afraid to take action and often
avoid conflict at all costs. Stress expert Bessel van der Kolk said: ‘if you’re in an orphanage for
example, and you’re not touched or seen, whole parts of your brain barely develop; and so you
become an adult who is out of it, who cannot connect with other people, who cannot feel a
sense of self, a sense of pleasure.’ This may then lead to adults who either make poor decisions such
as drug abuse, addictions, etc. or adults who are unable to find their own identity and preserve it.
Some adults turn to drugs and other destructive behavior to cope with the trauma they experienced
as children. Without the right coping mechanisms or support system, children who
suffer emotional abuse often become vulnerable to things like addiction as they become older.
7. People pleaser: If you were raised to be terrified that you may anger someone,
you may grow up doing everything in your power to please everyone even at
the expense of sacrificing your own needs or desires. According to stress expert,
Bessel van der Kolk, he said: ‘in a healthy developmental environment, your brain gets
to feel a sense of pleasure, engagement, and exploration. Your brain opens up to learn,
to see things, to accumulate information, to form friendships,’ but in an unhealthy environment,
those individuals will either fight for attention or continue to neglect their social lives.
These types of people tend to try to make everyone happy,
and sometimes even dismiss their own interests because of this.
6. Overly shy: Because people who’ve experienced this kind of abuse are used to silencing their
voice so as to not displease authority, they often grow up finding it difficult to reach out
to others and have trouble speaking to new people and forming new relationships. Childhood trauma,
as mentioned earlier, has been linked to anxiety and behavioral disorders in
adults and as a result, it is more likely that these adults will grow up without the ability
to build meaningful relationships and will thus remain shy and timid.
5. Self-blame: Even when they are not at fault, those who have been through emotional abuse will
constantly find themselves at fault and will always be afraid of making mistakes. This may
prevent them from taking any risks or going after what they actually want. Kathleen Young,
who is a doctor, wrote on her blog: ‘abuse begets shame, the felt sense that one is innately bad.
It can take the form of believing that you are defective, broken, unlovable, unworthy, stupid,
ugly, worthless. In the case of trauma survivors, it can also be expressed as blaming yourself
for the abuse. In reality, it is exactly the reverse! Abuse creates this sense of being bad.’
4. Bully yourself: If you have experienced emotional abuse, you may find yourself using the
same disparaging language that your abuser used against you. This means that even if they are no
longer in your life, you pick up where they left off. Similar to the above point, some people who
have been abused place the blame upon themselves and continue to make poor decisions whether it be
in their education, career or social lives. Dr. Kathleen Young wrote: ‘many children are told
directly and repeatedly that they are to blame. This may happen during the abuse and also at the
time of reaching out to others for help. This then gets internalized. Some may replay those
messages over and over in their minds as adults, without even recognizing the original source.’
3. Need for validation: If you have been abused, you constantly need to be told that you’re doing
a good job. You can’t provide validation for yourself because you feel as if nothing you do
is ever good enough, so you look for validation externally. According to Psych Central.com
and Karyn Hall who has a Ph.D. in psychology: ‘validating yourself is like glue for fragmented
parts of your identity. Validating yourself will help you accept and better understand yourself,
which leads to a stronger identity and better skills at managing intense emotions.’
2. Bottled up anger: People who have experienced emotional abuse often don’t know how to cope
with feelings of anger or sadness. They don’t know how to manage or release their emotions
in a healthy way so they bottle them up until they overflow. A 2009 study that was published
on PubMed found that child maltreatment ‘increases the risk of behavior problems,
including internalizing (anxiety, depression) and externalizing (aggression, acting out) behavior.’
Adults who were mistreated as children usually end up bottling their anger. When
the anger does come out, it results in an angry outburst that can sometimes even turn violent.
1. Suffer from anxiety or depression: In at least four separate studies which have
been published on PubMed, the studies found a correlation between childhood trauma and later
psychological distress such as depression and anxiety. Because of all the bottled up emotions,
people who have dealt with emotional abuse often suffer from anxiety and depression,
sometimes without knowing the source. It is very common for people who have suffered
childhood trauma to experience these types of feelings, yet many people go untreated
or refuse to seek professional help because they may be ashamed of their past or their condition.
The way you are treated as a child can have lasting effects on you even in adulthood.
That is why they say when you raise a child, you are raising the person that
they will become. The experiences that you form in your childhood become the building blocks of
your outlook on life and the perception you have of yourself. According to the United
States National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health, ‘experiences of traumatic
events in childhood have been shown to have long-term consequences for health in adulthood.’
A traumatic event is defined by the American Psychiatric Association as an experience that
threatens death or injury to themselves or other people and creates a feeling of fear,
helplessness or horror. Some examples of traumatic events are physical abuse,
sexual abuse witnessing violence or disaster and the sudden death of a loved one.
If you have experienced emotional abuse as a child, it is likely that you will relate to
some of the following symptoms or behaviors in this video. Often we suppress painful memories
so we may not realize that we are acting out when it is caused by our repressed childhood trauma.
Did you experience any of the things in this video when you
were a child? Tell us about it in the comments section below!
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