Processing Unsafe Childhood: The path to a peaceful future

An insecure childhood can have a tremendous impact on the rest of your life, causing you to struggle with “drama” in one way or another. Coming to terms with an insecure childhood is therefore a good way to achieve a more peaceful future. By processing an insecure childhood, you learn, for example, what constitutes normal behavior, how to use yourself as a resource, and how to effectively set and maintain your boundaries .

If you had an unsafe childhood, it is described as a childhood marked by abuse and neglect. You could not rely on your caregivers, and even if you were not neglected, your caregivers may have been dangerous to you because of abuse.

This can have far-reaching consequences in your later life. For example, adults who were abused as children are more likely to show criminal behavior, such as when you beat someone up while going out or something similar.

But you can also process or overcome your unsafe childhood and, in fact, stay far away from criminal activities. This can be described as post-traumatic growth, and it can be achieved even if you don’t process your unsafe childhood until later in life.

The unfortunate thing about an insecure childhood is that the building blocks on which you build your life aren’t properly laid. It may have negatively affected your development, leading to emotional, relational, and functional problems.

1. For example, you may find it difficult to connect with people.
2. You have aggression issues.
3. You don't recognize emotions well and can't regulate your emotions well.
4. You find it difficult to think and, as a result, you also have problems with language and learning.

If you suffered from an unsafe childhood only later in life, such as adolescence, this may cause you to abuse drugs or drink. You may also have criminal problems with aggression, drug dealing and theft or destruction of objects.

If your childhood was marked by a lack of security from an early age, you may often blame others for the problems you face, rather than taking responsibility for them yourself and making the effort to resolve them. The earlier in childhood you experienced this lack of security, the more significant these kinds of problems can be. [1].

But if you're reading this blog, you're already more likely to want to do something about your problems yourself and not turn to someone else for this. That's actually great, because that's the first step for post-traumatic growth.

Therapy for coping with an unsafe childhood

What is unfortunate, however, is that you might blame yourself for an unsafe childhood. Your memories may be more negatively colored than is logical, and you might think that abuse—or whatever happened back then—has a major impact on your life.

Fortunately, research shows that therapy focused on your emotions(EFT) can cause you to stop blaming yourself for what happened, allow you to view your memories more neutrally, and make the role of the unsafe childhood smaller for your current life[2].

In this form of therapy, you learn to better manage your emotions and to resolve or release pain and mental suffering[3].

This can also be done with hypnotherapy.

Another thing that can be important to therapy is to get the realization that what your parents or caregivers did was the failure of empathy[4]. It was apparently something those people could not do well. This realization can be important for emotionally processing the trauma.

In addition, people who have had an unsafe childhood may find it difficult to defend themselves because they were never able to develop their inner defender. This involves defending themselves against other people and against the criticism they direct at themselves. Guided visualizations, role-playing, and practicing how to handle such situations are ways to develop that internal defender after all[5].

Another thing that can happen when you go into therapy to process an unsafe childhood is that you may suddenly have memories of events you had "forgotten." This is put in quotes for a moment because it is not always clear whether this is a real memory or a fantasy memory, but it is often something you have to deal with when you are in therapy. In almost 80% of the cases when a memory suddenly reveals itself, it involves sexual abuse[6].

Hypnotherapy for coping with an unsafe childhood

With the hypnosis technique of age regression , you can also correct the first things you learned about attachment - no good things in an unsafe childhood - so that from the moment of therapy, you can bond well again, to your partner, for example.

During that regression, you can imagine how your childhood could have been too. For example, what would have been a normal way for your parent or caregivers to respond to you. You can transform this, making the way you deal with emotions healthier and even your behavior toward your partner, for example, healthier[7].

In addition, during such an age regression, you can engage in a conversation with your inner child . You can support and nurture the child you once were. This can also bring about significant changes[8].

For therapists reading this blog, it is important to remember that the therapeutic relationship can be considered very frightening for people with troubled childhoods because they have never learned that people can be trusted in the first place. This trust must be gained.

It can also be important to strengthen the ego of people who have had unsafe childhoods[9]. This can be done in a variety of ways.

Thus, as a protective mechanism, you may have divided yourself into parts, so to speak. The child at home, the child at school and the child with friends. It can then be difficult to make this one whole again.

A hypnotherapist can connect with all those parts and make sure you become whole again. For example, you may be asked to visualize a safe place and, in that safe place, have all those parts of yourself sitting in a circle. Then the therapist can help you make your ego one beautiful whole.

Breaking unhealthy patterns is important. For example, realizing that when you’re caught in a certain pattern, you can stop and walk away. This is even something you can practice. For example, you can visualize how you can resolve unwanted behavior by actively engaging in specific desired behaviors.

For example, in consultation with the therapist, you can determine what you actually want to do in certain situations that is not happening right now, and then you can visualize and even anchor this so that your subconscious has an alternative to what you normally do.

That's already much more positive and hopeful.

Another fun visualization is a visualization of the best possible version of oneself. In fact, this can give people hope for a better future and it can give people a goal to live toward. This also helps you give yourself a new identity, from a victim to someone who can overcome unpleasant events.

You can also repeat hypnotic suggestions that help you, such as:

"I can do anything."

"I get to choose for myself."

"I am loved."

"I have everything in me to solve my problems."

These are just examples. Depending on the problems created by unsafe childhood, other suggestions can be devised that work better.

Hypnosis for coping with an unsafe childhood

So processing an unsafe childhood can be done with multiple therapy techniques. Hypnosis can be combined with many forms of therapy, and hypnotherapy on its own can also do a lot as an adult to give the unsafe childhood a place so that it no longer has a negative impact on your life, and so that you can even experience post-traumatic growth.

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

Or register directly for one of our seminars or trainings. Trainings are delivered in class or live online from a professional studio. There is plenty of assistance for 1-on-1 attention that allows you to absorb the material well.

Do you need help processing a traumatic childhood? Then visit bestetherapeut.nl.

Sources: