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Adverse Childhood Experiences
How to Find Your Voice
The skills we learned to block difficult emotions can cost us our health.
Posted June 27, 2024 Reviewed by Jessica Schrader
Key points
- There is a connection between adverse childhood experiences and health problems.
- How we learn to manage difficult thoughts and emotions comes with a cost.
- We can unlearn our habits and regain our emotional health.
We often have more skills focused on shutting down what we think and feel than we do on effectively managing our thoughts and emotions. Our automatic coping strategies reduce our distress in the short term but can cost us in the long term. Recognizing our hidden coping strategies can help us find our voice again and break free from emotional and physical distress.
Imagine a woman suffering for years from headaches, fibromyalgia, and intestinal problems who is finally encouraged to meet with a psychologist to learn coping strategies. Interestingly, there is no mention of PTSD, childhood trauma, depression, or anxiety in her medical record. That is not because there is no history of these problems—it is because no one had taken the time to ask about her history or viewed her emotional health as relevant despite the strong evidence that adverse childhood events impact physical health.
It is bittersweet to come alongside and help such individuals. Within a short period, a person can be provided with tools to address their distressing thoughts and emotions and experience marked improvements in their physical health.
At some point in the conversation, a patient will inevitably ask, “Why did I suffer so long? Couldn’t someone have helped me before now?” Good questions—yes, they could have been helped sooner.
Unlearning Old Habits
Learning new strategies is often interfered with by our automatic habits. We are not always aware of the skills we use to survive disappointment, hurt, rejection, loss, threats, abuse, and betrayal. Any 6-year-old living in an unstable home learns how to wake up, get dressed, clean up, put a smile on their face, and head off to school and look like any other happy 6-year-old. Ask them how they do it and they would have no idea.
The skills we use to push thoughts and emotions away are automatic and operate out of awareness. Our task as adults is to notice what happens when distressing thoughts and emotions show up so that we can shift from reacting to experiences to being receptive, even if this is uncomfortable.
Here are five skills we learn early in life that help us feel less distressed.
- Don’t Feel. Suppression of emotion is a core defense against distress. Picture suppression as taking an experience with all its related thoughts, memories, emotions, and urges and placing it in a black box that is then locked—out of sight, out of mind. The drawback of this method is that the body will eventually betray us—a child may develop stomach pains, a flat, emotionless expression, headaches, anxiety, or disturbed sleep.
- Don’t Trust. Rather than viewing safety as having good people in our lives on whom we can rely for comfort, protection, and support, we view safety as guarding ourselves from harm, hiding our thoughts and feelings, and withdrawing from close relationships. We withhold our true thoughts and desires so that this information cannot be used against us.
- Don’t Talk. The events that disrupt safety, belonging, and stability in the family are never discussed. Picture a big family gathering; once again, a key family member is intoxicated, obnoxious, and inappropriate. No one addresses the problem or intervenes during the event, and no one processes this event after it occurs.
- Don’t Think. Distressing events are not only not discussed when they occur, but people learn not to think about them afterward. Statements like, “You need to learn to forgive and forget,” fit this mindset of blocking thoughts and memories.
- Don’t Be. We have a highly tuned brain to detect the social rules of belonging. We want to be included and fear being excluded. In unhealthy families, there are hidden rules against being open, honest, and authentic. This message appears as an injunction, which may sound like the following: don’t be too talented, don’t be needy, don’t be too nice, don’t grow up, don’t take risks, don’t stand out, don’t leave, don’t be close, or don’t ask for what you want.
Moving From Reactive to Receptive
A key aspect of emotional health is linking the different aspects of brain function, including sensory input, physical sensations, emotions, memory, and cognitive processes. When we learn not to feel, trust, talk, think, and be, we disrupt the normal integrative process of our brain and become emotionally unbalanced.
Learning to harness the power of our mind to focus our attention on what is happening in and around us is central to regaining emotional balance. We are too often on autopilot and do not notice how our memories, emotions, physical sensations, and thoughts interact. Focusing our attention on each aspect of our experience breaks this habit.
Practice paying attention with these three qualities to shift from being reactive to receptive:
- Curiosity. We can view our memories, thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and associated physical sensations with curiosity, almost as if we are seeing them for the first time or looking at interesting items in a museum.
- Openness. Approach whatever you notice with the spotlight of attention with an attitude of acceptance and willingness. Be willing to have what you experience rather than wishing things to be different.
- Compassion and Kindness. By developing an attitude of kindness and compassion, we can approach our difficult memories, thoughts, and emotions as we would listen to the heartache of someone we love.
Read here to learn more about harnessing your attention to develop emotional health.
To find a therapist, please visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.
