If you notice hyper-vigilance in a child that was once care-free, you should investigate the chance as they could be victims of abuse too. When it is something that others don’t react to with equal energy as you do, it would be an indication that you’re subconsciously only trying to protect yourself through being paranoid.
Being jumpy when there is a loud bang or an unfamiliar noise could point back to an earlier negative experience. If you’re always tense and on edge, constantly looking around and reading people for threats, it could be a sign that you do have repressed childhood trauma. An example is women who went through childhood trauma, always getting into abusive relationships. That means, if you have one bad thing happen to you, there is a chance that more things will keep repeating until you break the cycle. It is why you’ll find female survivors will be more trusting of people around them and misjudge dangerous situations as compared to women who haven’t experienced any form of interpersonal trauma. The risk of revictimization is high among those who have experienced prior abuse because the event leaves their judgment clouded. One such area is in their decision-making process.
It is indeed difficult to understand those how have experienced interpersonal trauma. Data shows that 66 percent of people who experience sexual assault in their childhood end up going through sexual, physical, and psychological abuse in the future. In essence, revictimization happens when survivors of interpersonal violence and subsequent trauma become a victim again. “Re” means again, while victimization refers to becoming a victim. Signs you could have repressed childhood trauma You experience revictimizationĪdults with repressed childhood trauma tend to go through a process known as revictimization. A taste, sight, sound, smell, touch, or even feelings can revers suppressed memories. What triggers the recall is present associations with the sensory memory attributed to the trauma. It is, therefore, possible to have amnesia of both interpersonal and non-interpersonal trauma.Ī lot of people remember these events outside of therapy, but there is still a number who do within a therapeutic context. With that in mind, one can indeed forget their childhood trauma because their young minds, unable to process what is going on, ends up suppressing the traumatic event.
It also carries the connotations of inhibiting, preventing or restraining, as well as suppressing a desire or thought so much so that it remains or becomes unconscious. The Oxford dictionary offers us the definition of subduing something or someone by force. However, we have to look at what it means to repress something. Over the years, the press has shared a wave of stories of people, seemingly out of nowhere, recalling their childhood abuse after “forgetting” about it for years. Non-interpersonal trauma is events that are not necessarily tied to other people, such as fires, natural disasters, and motor vehicle accidents. The former is defined as traumatic events between people, whereby there could have an existing relationship or have a one-time encounter.Įxamples of the same include emotional abuse, physical abuse, emotional neglect, physical neglect, and sexual abuse. There are two types of trauma: interpersonal trauma and non-interpersonal trauma. The bottom line is that a lot of negative things are overwhelming for any child. Therefore, a child can experience trauma either by witnessing an event or going through something themselves. The National Institute of Mental Health (USA) offers the following definition of childhood trauma “The experience of an event by a child that is emotionally painful or distressful, which often results in lasting mental and physical effects.” In this article, we’ll look at what childhood trauma us, signs that you could be repressing it as an adult and what you can do to move forward What is childhood trauma? Given the condition of the world we live in, childhood trauma is one area that affects millions of people around the world. There is increased awareness of the role that our childhood affects our adult life, and that has led people to look back into their pasts for evidence of the same. Signs you could have repressed childhood trauma.