Every Childhood Lasts a Lifetime

Barnardos used to have an advertisement that said 'Every childhood lasts a lifetime'.

Every day in my psychotherapy pratice, I witness how a person's childhood forms who they are today. 

Our childhood experiences are the foundation on which the rest of our lives are built.

And if the foundations are not solid for whatever reason, there can be emotional cracks and wounds and these affect the structure of our adult lives.

Every childhood is unique, even within the same family but there are four main broad themes that our childhood experiences slot into.

The first is emotional wounds.

Emotional Wounds are what you particularly learned to be sensitive to growing up.

Typically it involves some or all of the following: Feeling neglected, not feeling heard, feeling dismissed, criticism , not being appreciated. 

The beauty of inner child work in therapy is that you can choose to become the parent you didn't have when you really needed to feel heard or appreciated, for example.

This is something I do often with my clients in my practice as a way of releasing the past feelings of not being good enough or to help people who feel they may overreact to ordinary events in their adult lives.

The second factor having most impact on our childhood experience is birth order meaning where you come in your family of origin.

There is plenty of research showing that the eldest for example will be more likely to grow up to be a good leader, do well in school and be a high achiever because they bear the brunt of parental expectations and emotions.

If you were to ask yourself what role you were expected to take in where you come in the family right now…what was expected of you?

How were you expected to behave ? What would happen if you didn't meet those expectations?

The third factor is family environment.

If you grew up in a house where everyone was always arguing or with an alcoholic parent for example, you may have learned to be hyper vigilant, i.e., always on alert.

Understanding that this kept the child part of you safe, you may see how it was a safety mechanism to be on alert.

But you may not need this hypervigilant part to be so switched on all the time in your adult life.

The fourth factor is how we identify with role models from our childhood.

We develop a black and white reaction to our childhood role models. So we identify with the aggressor e.g. 'I become aggressive like my Dad' or we move to the opposite by deciding we never want to be like Dad so we learn to suppress and repress our anger and hold things in.

The problem here is that the solution was created through the eyes of a child and is too simplistic.

So you may not shout or express anger but you feel depressed and isolated. 

Inner child work can help unlock some of the black and white thinking and the adult part of us can see a solution along a spectrum instead of just black and white.

To book a session with Nicola , click here.

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