Processing Unsafe Childhood: The path to a peaceful future

An unsafe childhood can have an awful lot of impact on the rest of your life so you can suffer a lot of "drama" one way or another. Processing an unsafe childhood is therefore a good way to achieve a more peaceful future. As you process an unsafe childhood you learn, for example, what normal behavior is, how to use yourself as a resource and how to properly guard your boundaries .

If you had an unsafe childhood speak of a childhood of abuse and neglect. You could not count on your caregivers and if you were not neglected your caregivers have been dangerous to you through mistreatment.

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 just stay far away from criminal activities. Then you can also speak of post-traumatic growth, and this can be achieved even if you only process your unsafe childhood later in life.

The unpleasant thing about an unsafe childhood is that the building blocks on which you build your life were not laid properly. It may have negatively affected your development causing you to have emotional, relationship and functioning problems.

1. For example, you may find it difficult to connect with people.
2. You have aggression problems.
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 the unsafe childhood occurred early, you can often point to other people as causing the problems you have, rather than taking responsibility for this problem yourself and making the effort to solve it. The earlier your childhood became unsafe, the greater 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 is that you can blame yourself for an unsafe childhood. Your memories may be more negatively colored than logical, and you may think that abuse or whatever happened at the time had a big 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 unsafe childhoods may find it difficult to defend themselves because they were never able to develop their internal defender. This involves defense against other people and defense against criticism they have of themselves. Guided visualizations, role-playing and practicing how to handle something then are ways to still develop that internal-defender[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 have the conversation with your inner child . You can support and cherish the child you were then. This can also bring great 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. Like realizing that if you realize you are engaged in a particular pattern that you can stop and go away. This is even something you can practice. For example, you can visualize how you resolve unwanted behavior by actually performing certain 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.

Want to learn more about hypnosis and how you can use it to help yourself and/or others? Then come to the free online master class 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.

Just need help coping with an unsafe childhood? Then visit bestetherapeut.co.uk.

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