How to Remember Joy When You Had a Traumatic Childhood
I recently heard a self-help expert say: “You must start creating as you once did when you were a child…when all you wanted to do was learn, grow, evolve, and create through your infinite imagination.”
Advice to remember childhood in order to connect with creativity or joy is common in the self-help space. It ignores the fact that many of us come from traumatic childhoods which contained little joy or self-expression.
Many mainstream experts continue to promote the assumption that childhood equates with joy. If you’re a complex PTSD survivor, your childhood was one of fear and hypervigilance, not growth and expansion.
Read on to find out why this mainstream self-help is not made for you…and what to do instead.
impact of equating joy with childhood
When renowned teachers promote the assumption that childhood is a joyful time, there are consequences. Those with unhealed childhood trauma will rarely question the expert, and question themselves instead.
So, instead of the truth that this person is speaking to a certain audience that doesn’t include you…You turn on yourself and assume there is something wrong with you because the advice doesn’t apply.
isolation
Abandoning yourself through the belief that something must be wrong with you if you have a different experience, creates isolation.
You feel separate from the target audience because something so familiar to them is foreign to you. Rather than taking that separateness as a neutral sign to look elsewhere for help, you make yourself the problem.
You might feel unfixable because if you can’t remember joy from childhood, how will you find happiness? It leads to you cutting off from hope instead of simply finding another path to the healing you need.
Shame
Recognizing that mainstream advice that works for so many does not work for you can evoke shame. You feel like your difficult childhood means there’s something wrong with you, instead of something that was not your fault.
Worst of all, this shame can lead you to deny that you’ve had a bad childhood at all. You try to fit into the advice instead of seeking more suitable self-help.
This perpetuates the false self at the root of much of your pain. Instead of acknowledging the truth about your past, you minimize the abuse and pretend things were better than they were.
Without a cohesive and honest narrative about what happened to you, true healing and an authentic life will escape you. That’s why mainstream self-help often does more harm than good.
How to remember joy when you had a traumatic childhood
Determine your inciting incident
The concept of the “inciting incident” comes from a book I read by Mastin Kipp called Claim Your Power. It refers to an event, usually early in childhood, that changes your view of the world so much that it results in the formation of a false self that you inhabit throughout your life.
For example, my inciting incident occurred when I was about 2 years old. I was clamoring for my mother’s attention as she talked on the phone when, without warning, she smacked me hard across the face.
When I remembered this moment as an adult, seeing myself seeking attention seemed impossible. Having become a quiet and unassuming woman who sought to disappear instead of be seen, that 2-year-old self was the opposite of who I’d become.
In fact, that attention-seeking toddler who jumped up and down asking for what she wanted, was the real me (in a more mature sense, obviously). My job became sloughing off the false self I’d developed with its hiding and people pleasing and overgiving to inhabit my true self.
heal the inner child
Once you’ve determined your inciting incident (or even if you haven’t yet), you can tune into the child inside you. This is the part of you that should have been allowed to be joyful and imaginative and creative, but was instead tasked with keeping you safe from harm.
Without reliable caregivers, you felt as though you had to take care of yourself. So, you developed a set of skills that were incredibly immature but that ensured your survival as a child.
These included pleasing your parents so they wouldn’t abandon you, keeping quiet about your needs so you wouldn’t upset anyone or be disappointed when they weren’t fulfilled…and so on.
As an adult, however, these coping mechanisms keep you stuck and prevent you from moving closer to your authentic self. They keep you small and unhappy and can even make you sick.
When your inner child protects you as an adult it looks like self-sabotage. When you don’t set a boundary, for example, that’s your inner child stepping in.
Rather than thanking this part of you for protecting you, you hate it for holding you back. Pushing away any part of you will never result in growth or integration.
Try thanking your inner child for keeping you safe. Then connect with that part and find out what it wants and needs and see if you can deliver that.
This is the essence of self-parenting and will help you form a deeper connection with yourself.
conclusion
These are the first steps to accessing joy when you had a traumatic childhood. Remember there is nothing wrong with you if the advice of popular self-help experts do not resonate with you.
Having a unique childhood does not mean you’re unfixable. Some things happened to you that were not your fault, but that impacted you in negative ways.
By accepting all the parts of you—even the ones that seem to hold you back as they try to protect you—you’ll move closer to your authentic self and the life you were meant to live.
Watch the free masterclass on my proven “4-Step Process for Healing Your Childhood Trauma” here.
