How Childhood Traumas Destroy Relationships and Hurt Others

Introduction 

Listen, this is going to be one of the most honest and vulnerable blogs I’ve written in some time.

I finally found the courage to talk about how I let my childhood traumas wreck my adult relationships and hurt good people who truly loved me through thick and thin.

Gotta admit it feels scary to dish out my dirt so publicly as a cautionary tale but it’s the right thing to do. 

Let’s go.

My Own Story 

I will briefly talk about my childhood traumas to provide some context, not a sob story.

My parents had me when they were broke and working crazy hours, and they were also raised in toxic and abusive households themselves. 

As a result of that, my childhood was filled with neglect, abuse, and pain.

I used to hold so much resentment and hatred in my heart about what happened. I felt like my parents never wanted me, never accepted me, and never unconditionally loved me.

Of course, as I get older and gain newer perspectives. I can see that they were also flawed human beings doing the best they could in a fucked up situation. 

And generational trauma is no joke.

I began to forgive them for not fully understanding the damage they were doing. 

But regardless, what’s done was done and I even developed Borderline Personality Disorder which went undiagnosed for 29 years. 

This made it very difficult for me to cultivate healthy relationships as an adult 

Here are the biggest obstacles I faced/still facing 

1. Deep-rooted fear and Inability to trust people, always assuming people will lie, hurt, and cheat. 

2. Desperate for relationships/connections because I can feel like I am not good enough on my own. Which makes me seem needy and desperate at times

3. Extremely fearful of being abandoned and make frantic efforts to control, manipulate, and spy on my partners to make sure they stay. Which pushes people away even further 

4. Afraid of expressing my needs and my boundaries because of low self-esteem 

5. Lashing out and becoming abusive when feeling hurt by a partner. Even when they had done nothing wrong objectively

6. Self-harming, additive personality, trouble with authority figures, deep-rooted insecurities

Yeah, I know I sound like a real piece of work. And you are not wrong. I did put people through hell because of my unresolved issues. 

Hurt people hurt people. And how I wish I could go back in time…

I used to loathe myself so much after realizing how much I damaged good women who just wanted to make me feel safe and loved. 

I lived with so much shame and regret it sent me into a dark place. I felt like a terrible person, I isolated myself socially because I was feeling toxic and didn’t want to drag anyone else onto that hellish rollercoaster ride again. 

However, I’ve slowly come full circle on this. I know in my heart I’m a good person. But I still need to heal my pain first so I can be a healthy and loving partner to others.

Like someone once told me: “It is not your fault, but it is still your responsibility to clean up the mess”

That’s why I’m sharing my story with you. I want to burn off my dead wood, I want to spread awareness, and I want to make sure I don’t repeat these painful mistakes ever again.

How Childhood Traumas Impact Your Adult Life

Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor and I don’t know everything about this topic. 

But, I have read a lot of psychology books and worked with highly competent therapists over the years to heal myself.

I will share what I know here.

Childhood Traumas will usually impact you negatively in the following ways

1. Insecure attachment styles - traumatic childhood experiences can result in unhealthy attachments in adults. Instead of feeling secure and safe in healthy relationships. You may avoid emotional closeness out of fear of being hurt, be excessively clingy and anxious in relationships out of fear of abandonment, or have a combination of both

2. Trust issues - You may become paranoid and suspicious of everyone even after someone has given you tons of evidence that they are safe and has only good intentions

3. Difficulty regulating emotions/impulses - Childhood trauma can cause physical damage during brain development and you may find it difficult to manage emotions and impulses as an adult. 

4. Rejection sensitivity and low self-esteem - if your parents were verbally abusive to you during childhood, you may grow up with compromised self-esteem and find it very difficult to cope with perceived and real rejections. You may also take less initiative in social and romantic situations out of fear of being rejected. I personally also struggled with asserting boundaries and expressing my needs because I didn’t think I deserved to have my needs met.

All these things are detrimental to building and maintaining a healthy relationship. Not just romantic relationships. They will also bleed into your platonic and professional relationships. 

And the saddest part is, sometimes BOTH people in a toxic relationship will suffer tremendously. 

How to Heal from Traumas and Create Healthy Relationships

I still got triggered a lot in my last relationship, I still have a lot of work left to do to become healthier as I’m writing this blog. But I have made a shit ton of progress compared to how I was in my early 20s.

So please believe me I’m not lecturing anyone here. I only aim to share what I have learned and tried so far.

1. Gaining Self-awareness - the first step to change is awareness. For example, until I got my BPD diagnosis, I had no freaking idea what exactly I was dealing with. I just assumed I was very traumatized from childhood abuse and had maladaptive tendencies, but having a mental disorder? Me? No way!!! Before the diagnosis, I tried a bunch of things to heal myself and they helped a bit. But it was only after I found out about the disorder I could start working on the core issue and make faster progress. 

2. Therapy, therapy, therapy - and this is coming from someone who got angry at anyone who ever suggested this to me for the longest time. I know there is stigma around getting mental health care still, but this is indeed very beneficial for recovery and understanding your unconscious beliefs and patterns. If you can not afford this you can also start with therapy workbooks. 

3. Meditation - my mentor is helping me with this and I’m just relaying what he has taught me so far. But daily meditation focusing on loving kindness will help. Traumas keep you living in fear. But fear can not exist where there is love and compassion.

4. Learn to forgive - this is a key part of recovering from childhood abuse. Until I started seeing my parents as flawed human beings, I resented them so much for fucking me up. Not only did it prevent me from building a better relationship with my parents, but I also hated myself the most. If my parents could do no wrong, then it must mean I was not worthy of being loved then. I must be bad. Because I had a hard time forgiving others, it also killed me inside whenever I recalled how much I hurt people I was supposed to love, care for, and respect.

5. Self-love - listen, I probably still struggle with loving myself on my worst days. But what I do know is I genuinely like myself as a person and I will never let myself sink into the dark place I was in again. It’s not easy to live with BPD. But I can see the great progress I’ve made and I know I will fully recover from it by this rate. If you are on a similar journey, keep fighting for yourself even when it’s difficult and seemingly impossible because you deserve real love and inner peace. 

If there’s a will, there’s a way. I’ve been fighting for my own inner peace and happiness since I was an awkward and scared teen. While doing everything in my power to unconsciously self-sabotage over and over again. And until last year, I was in major denial about my personality disorder.

It only hurt myself and others who liked/loved me.

Now, some of you reading this blog may have it easier than me, some of you may have it even harder.

But for your own sake, for the sake of others who will genuinely love you until you push them to the edge so far they can’t come back. Do the work.

Conclusions 

If you are struggling with maintaining healthy relationships because of past traumas and childhood abuse. Please know that you are not broken and it wasn’t your fault. But you must do the work and clean up your shit because hurt people will hurt people. And do not ever give up on the healing journey. EVERYONE deserves love and happiness and that means you, too. You got this.