There are times when the effects of our childhood circumstances suddenly show up when we least expect it.
It is possible to overcome traumatic circumstances in our childhood, especially if we don’t “live” in the past.
It probably doesn’t always feel like that, because the effects of our childhood trauma keep popping up in our everyday lives. It will show up when we least expect it, in our relationships with colleagues at work, socially with friends, and in our interactions with our own family.
In my life, my childhood circumstances suddenly showed up when I was having a lesson with my Italian teacher.
We were having dialogues about my daily life and my teacher wanted to inspire me to talk about things she thought would be easy: what was my life like at home as a child? How was I as a child? What did I like to do? Was I lively or quiet? What was my favourite food? Did I like to read books? What was my favourite activity at home?
These are things that most people would be able to talk about freely, but I was very often stuck. My teacher never understood why it took me so long to think of something to say.
The truth was that I had to make things up because I didn’t know what I was like as a child. I didn’t know what we did and what it was like at home.
I usually managed to make something up and get away with it – masking the unknown truth – but one day she had a special role play for me that just threw me.
We were going to have a telephone conversation in Italian. I was going to call my mother and she would play my mother on the phone. She said “ok, call your mother now and I will answer”.
Ouch, there it was, just like that. It felt as if I had been banged on my head and I was suddenly feeling dizzy. I was so surprised, no shocked, and absolutely speechless.
Perhaps I haven’t told you yet, I certainly hadn’t told my teacher, that my mother passed away when I was a child, and I don’t know a lot about myself and my life at home as a child.
So, basically, I had nothing to say. I had never had an adult conversation with my mother, let alone a phone call on my iPhone.
I had to come clean and tell my teacher that I couldn’t do this role playing because I had never had a conversation with my mother as an adult.
She was surprised, but, to my relief, we never had these kind of, normally innocent, dialogues again.
This was just an example of how our childhood trauma sometimes pops up in situations when we least expect it. Have you ever experienced a situation where you were suddenly taken aback by innocent questions, by well-meaning people? Did you find a way to nagivate the situation?
Send me a message in the contact form or post your comments below. I would love to hear from you.
Reclaim your past and create a brighter future
Sarah