Difficult childhood: Effects and ways to deal with it

Everyone has been young, but not everyone has had a difficult childhood. Having a difficult childhood can have both advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages are mainly related to health. People who had a difficult childhood are more likely to smoke, suffer from sleep problems, exercise less, and have lower levels of education[1].

In addition, women who have suffered from a difficult childhood may struggle with a number of mental problems, namely:

1. PTSD
2. Low self-confidence
3. Quickly blaming yourself when things go wrong
4. Hopelessness
5. Separation anxiety (expecting your partner to leave/reject you)
6. Interested in dangerous things
7. Fears
8. Depressive symptoms
9. Somatic complaints (especially if a woman was sexually abused in childhood)
10. Confusion about self-image and personal goals
11. Difficulty trusting other people
12. Difficulty dealing with negative emotions in a healthy way
13. Greater chance of being victimized later in life[2].

What is a nice effect of a difficult childhood is that it can cause you to be more entrepreneurial and more likely to start your own business. A difficult childhood has taught you to be able to rely on yourself, which means you also have enough confidence in your own abilities to start your own business[3].

So it has a very slight benefit, but above all, a lot of drawbacks. These drawbacks can also affect you for a long time. This is because it is precisely during your childhood that you form beliefs about how the world works and how you can best function within it. Unfortunately, you’re particularly likely to develop unhelpful beliefs if you form them while going through a difficult childhood—for example, because your parents neglect you or abuse you in some other way.

This is what I also call junk-learning, and as a result, you get beliefs that are not at all true and do not help you move forward in your life very well.

This can make everything in your life more difficult, such as relationships, finding work (or long-term clients), and having a socially fulfilling life in general.

Help with regulating emotions

If you've had a difficult childhood, chances are you regulate negative emotions by turning to the bottle or narcotics. This is not helpful at all. Especially if you have developed PTSD due to a difficult childhood, this can make it more difficult to regulate emotions[4].

Fortunately, everything can be learned and so can dealing with negative emotions without having to numb them immediately.

Cognitive hypnotherapy, for example, is a way to regulate your emotions if you suffer from anxiety. This form of hypnotherapy addresses your thoughts, behavior, mindfulness, and hypnotic suggestions to help you manage your emotions[5].

For example, a hypnotherapist first helps you identify the beliefs that make it difficult for you to regulate your emotions. For example, if you know which thought or belief can trigger a panic attack , you can address it so that it loses its power and you no longer panic.

For example, if you believe that you will lose clients (or your job) immediately if you make mistakes, then you are working very stressfully, and at the end of the day, everyone makes a mistake sometimes. So that's not a helpful belief at all.

A hypnotherapist can help you change those beliefs. For example, by helping you change the source of the belief. With regression, for example, you can go back in your mind to the moment when you subconsciously decided that making mistakes is a totally bad thing to do.

Changing moments from your childhood

These are often moments from your childhood. For example, maybe your day was made more difficult by one of your parents when you made mistakes and so now you get into trouble with your emotions when you make a mistake.

Not at all convenient, since you no longer live at home, nor are you now a small child who cannot stand up for himself.

In your mind, you can then work through that moment. The hypnotherapist helps you with this, and if you had a difficult childhood, there’s a good chance you’ll end up having a conversation with your inner child.

In this conversation, you can show your inner child that certain survival strategies are no longer necessary. You show that your inner child is now getting what it needs, but now from yourself instead of adults in your life.

Changing behavior

Just this conversation with your inner child can do much to change your behavior. But sometimes you need more than that. In that case, visualizing how you would like to react to certain situations - such as when you get a bad feeling about something - can already help get your subconscious ready to do things differently in the future.

So a post-hypnotic suggestion, a suggestion about your behavior after the hypnosis session, can do much to ensure that you remain calm in difficult situations.

Improve Mindfulness

Many emotions you have are reactions to your thoughts. For example, those thoughts may be about something happening in the future or something you did wrong in the past. One way to stay calm is to be in the here-and-now with your thoughts. This is also called mindfulness.

You are then aware of your thoughts and how thoughts affect you. If you find yourself preoccupied with a particular fear about something that might happen in the future, mindfulness helps you refocus on the now. For example, by focusing on your breathing and relaxing your body for a moment.

Improve self-confidence

A difficult childhood can also cause lower self-confidence, but fortunately hypnotic suggestions can do a lot to boost your self-confidence. Hypnotic suggestions can be used for your behavior, as well as for your self-esteem.

In the case of improving your self-confidence, it's also about improving your ego.

This can be done by repeating hypnotic suggestions such as:

"I can do anything."

"I'm good enough."

"I am loved."

"I'm allowed to make mistakes."

"I get to enjoy."

These are just examples. Depending on your issues with your difficult childhood, a hypnotherapist may come up with other suggestions to improve your self-confidence.

Reducing separation anxiety

Another problem you may have if you had a difficult childhood is separation anxiety. You then find it difficult to trust that your romantic partner will stay with you and that they will not cheat or simply leave you.

In this case, building up the ego and having a conversation with your inner child often helps quite a bit as well.

Another technique that can then also be used is the social panorama. For example, where do you subconsciously put your partner? Does this one look at you? Are you standing next to each other or are you standing a bit away from each other and looking in a different direction?

In your mind, you can put your partner another place. Which will already lessen your fear of him/her leaving you and allow you to grant your partner just a little space or the intimacy he/she needs to truly connect with you.

How cool is that?

Overcoming Victimization

In addition, there’s a chance that a difficult childhood could lead you to adopt a sort of “victim role ,” which could also make you a victim of other people. That’s not helpful at all.

Instead, it is better to see at least your adult self as a kind of perpetrator. As someone who influences his/her behavior and life. With red flags, for example, you take action instead of letting something get to you that still makes you a victim of something.

Reframing your role in the world can help you avoid becoming a victim and see yourself as a powerful person. Someone who was able to grow precisely through a difficult childhood and who can experience post-traumatic growth instead of PTSD.

That's a much more pleasant picture.

Would you like to learn more about hypnosis and how you can use it to help yourself and others? Then join us for the free online masterclass.

Or sign up right away for one of our courses. The courses are available in a classroom setting or live online. Choose the course format that suits you best.

Just need help coping with a difficult childhood? Then go to bestetherapeut.co.uk

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