Why you need to let go of your childhood cr*p, Now!

When I was young(er) – from my late teens through to early 30’s, I did a lot of soul searching and personal healing from a somewhat challenging childhood.

I thought that as you get older and head into adulthood, you go down one of two paths.

Path number one is where you ‘get your shit together’ as you become an adult, and of course, by 30, 40 and above, you know yourself so well, have sorted things out, and all is good in your world.

Path number two is where you just don’t get that stuff sorted out, and if this is the path you took, you’d have BIG, obvious problems in your life. Essentially I thought that if you were traumatised and hadn’t sorted out the emotions that came with that, you were likely to ‘fail’ at life.

As I thought about this some more, I realised that my preconceived ideas around these two paths weren’t as straightforward as I thought. Many, if not all of us, have hurts and scars that are not obvious, and very well hidden, and at a lot of levels they don’t hold us back in our lives… not consciously at least.

Did you think that you would have it all together by the time you were an adult? Has that been true for you now that you are older?

We can feel almost like we’ve somehow failed at adulthood if we don’t have it all together, but the reality is that many people are still struggling to make sense of things that happened in their past. Now, these things could be traumatic events, such as abuse of some kind, parental separation or abandonment, illness or injury, or they could be an event that is not often viewed as traumatic but nonetheless still has a lasting effect. Examples of this type of experience include emotional/verbal abuse, constantly being told that you are not good enough, or events that lead you to believe something about yourself that isn’t actually true. It’s surprising how persistent the beliefs that are developed as a child can be, and if you look deep within yourself, you’ll likely find a few hiding out there somewhere.

Have you heard people talk about their ‘inner child’? At heart, we all still are a child in some ways. We all still hurt from things that affected us as a child. And often, our little inner child is still traumatised, sad, and needing love, even when we are well into our 40’s or older.

These past experiences can hold you back from achieving your fullest potential in life.

That’s a strong statement… go back and read that again.

But how, you might ask me? How does what happened all those years ago still affect me?

How we respond to stress is partly from learned experience. If you felt constantly scared, worried, unheard or unsafe when you were growing and developing, this creates a stress response in the body, and under these circumstances you start to live in the fight/flight/freeze mode that I wrote about in my previous blog.

You’ve probably learnt how to push through it, how to push it back deep down within you and keep going. You may have even been taught to ‘get on with it’. Even so, from a physical perspective, your body is now trained to react in this way and you have a tendency to have a more heightened stress response – meaning when the pressure is on you more easily jump into the fight, flight or freeze mode.

Regardless of whether you experienced a one off significant stressful event, or smaller events that were ongoing over a long period of time, living in this state more than you should results in this state becoming your ‘new normal’. Even now, years or even decades later, your body still responds in this way to any perceived threat.

Experiencing this response repeatedly in life results in physical health issues due to the effect of the stress hormones on your body. Your emotional health also suffers. Often people in this situation end up getting totally burnt out – physically and emotionally exhausted. The ‘just push through it’ strategy used to work, but by the time you reach middle age, if things haven’t already caught up with you, they do now!

Developing strategies to heal that inner child, finally resolve the emotions attached to those childhood experiences, and be able to move forward will be healing to both your physical and mental health.

If you’ve felt like you have been successful in life, but there is something that is holding you back, something that is stopping you from reaching your fullest potential… this could be why.

It’s not just me saying this… there is research that validates that adverse childhood events do correlate with more health issues in adulthood. The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE) describes this phenomenon as one where childhood experiences can affect your health right throughout your lifetime.

Having said that, it’s not all doom and gloom… we do need to consider that positive experiences in childhood helps to build resilience and offers some protection against the effects of trauma. Remember that loving grandparent, a teacher who understands and believes in you, or a trusted friend you can confide in? All these positive experiences can mitigate the long-term effects of early trauma. And, no matter what age you are now, you can still make changes, build resilience and self love, and find our inner strength. I see this often with the clients I work with.

I recently worked with Ben. He had anxiety and depression that stemmed from his childhood. He had so many skills to offer the world but this anxiety was crippling his ability to get out there and do the work he was meant to do.

We worked together to explore how his past experiences were still affecting him, and in doing so, changed his mindset. He was ready for this… he was frustrated and sick of feeling this way, so he was open to the possibility of change and excited to get the aha moments that came out of our work together.

I almost don’t recognise Ben now. He’s a different person in so many good ways. Leaving behind the old experiences has allowed him to become the person he was meant to be… and he’s only just started! I can’t wait to see what he goes on to achieve next.

These types of successes are available to everyone. All you have to do is decide to take the opportunity to create the change you crave. Stress, poor sleep, low motivation and anxiety all lead to burnout, and quite frankly it’s about time we changed that! Does that sound like you? If you’re experiencing constant fatigue, a busy, distracted mind and you’re ready to change, then I want to help you.

Here’s how you can do that. Book a strategy call with me right now because for every day you delay is another day of stress, anxiety and fatigue you don’t need. I will show you how to make lasting changes so you can feel energised, calm and full of vitality. Now is the right time to act!