8 childhood wounds that surface as adults

When we are young, some habits and bad experiences can leave their mark for a long time.

Childhood is the stage of life when we are most sensitive to the influence of our environment and the way we relate to people. and the way we relate to people.

Not only is it the time when we begin to understand what the world is like and build our perception of reality on the foundations of those learnings, but our brains develop at such a rapid pace that any small alteration in the way our neurons communicate can leave a mark... o emotional wounds that will be reproduced in the years to come..

And the impact the environment has on us as children can be a change for better or worse. We already know the changes for the better: learning to read, move, communicate, perform operations, and everything related to basic education in and out of school. The changes for the bad, however, the changes for the bad, which will emerge in our adult life, are more difficult to identify..

The wounds that our childhood leaves in us

The painful experiences that occur during our early years can become a hazy blur in our memory, so that it is not easy to relate them to the habits and unhealthy behavior patterns of our adulthood..

This list of emotional wounds is a guideline to know how to identify those traces that may have left a mark on us years ago.

1. Defensive attitude

The basic form of painful experience is mistreatment based on physical or verbal aggressions.. People who have been hit or insulted during childhood and/or adolescence tend to be insecure during adulthood, although not necessarily shy. In many cases, a simple hand gesture can startle them and cause them to become defensive with a flinch.

This defensive attitude is not only physically, but also psychologically: these people show a propensity for mistrust, although they do not always show it with hostility, but sometimes with polite reserve.

2. Constant isolation

Children who suffer from lack of care may develop serious disturbances when they reach adulthood, especially if their parents do not provide them with the necessary care. As the studies of psychologists John Bowlby and Harry Harlow began to show, children who suffer from lack of care can develop serious disorders when they reach adulthood, especially if their parents do not provide the necessary care, isolation during childhood is related to serious affective and relational problems in adulthood, as well as to sexual dysfunctions.as well as sexual dysfunction.

3. Anxiety and fear of others

If isolation occurs in a more moderate form, its consequences in adulthood may come in the form of difficulties in social skills and intense anxiety when dealing with strangers or speaking to an audience of many people.

4. Fear of commitment

The fact of having established strong emotional bonds that were then suddenly cut short can lead to a fear of commitment. can lead to a fear of entering into other romantic relationships.. The psychological mechanism that explains this is the strong Pain produced by remembering what it is like to feel a strong affection for someone and to spend a lot of time with this person: one cannot simply evoke those pleasant experiences spent in company without going through the influence of memories about the loss of that bond.

Philophobia, or extreme fear of falling in love, is an example of this phenomenon.

5. Fear of rejection

Neglect, maltreatment or bullying at school can make us feel predisposed to self-exclusion from informal social circles. Being accustomed to rejection from an age when we do not have the tools to understand that the fault is not ours makes us stop fighting to demand dignified treatment, and the fear of rejection makes us not even expose ourselves to receive the appraisals of others. Simply put, we spend too much time alone..

6. Contempt for others

Emotional wounds received during childhood can cause us to incorporate classic sociopathic behaviors into the way we behave. Because there is a sense that others have behaved as predators when we were vulnerable, we incorporate into our thinking the idea that life is a predator, we go on to incorporate into our thought patterns the idea that life is an open war against others.. In this way, others become either potential threats or potential ways to achieve the goals we desire.

7. Dependency

Having been overprotected by parents or guardians makes us accustomed to having everything we want and that, when we come to life and that, when we reach adulthood, we live in an eternal state of frustration. The most negative aspect of this is that, in order to escape from this frustration, we look for a new protective figure, instead of struggling to learn the necessary behaviors to gain autonomy over our own lives.

It is a kind of behavior typical of people who have been accustomed to being capricious and demanding things from others.

8. The syndrome of the satisfied slave

Having been subjected to exploitative situations during childhood, even if this consists of being forced to spend most of the day studying at the request of parents or guardians, makes one predisposed to being exploited in adult life. It is thus understood that the value of oneself as a person who sells one's labor power is very low, and that this must be compensated through long periods of daily work.

In a context of high unemployment, this can lead to professional stagnationIn a context of high unemployment, this can lead to professional stagnation, since there is a tendency to accept all the precarious jobs on offer.

In addition, one tends to feel gratitude for the people who benefit from this exploitation, something that can be called the syndrome of the satisfied slave.