What to Expect When Grieving Childhood Trauma
Often when we think of grief, we think about the emotional turmoil following the death of a loved one. That is certainly grief. But you don’t have to have lost a loved one to experience grief.
What is grief?
Grief is the emotional impact of missing something or someone. It is the aftershock of loss. Sometimes that loss comes when there is a change or transition in life. Other times that loss comes from looking back at childhood and realizing what was missing.
What is childhood grief?
As we venture into adulthood and grow from our past, it’s common to see things differently. As a child there’s not much choice as to how you will navigate life - you’re at the mercy of the environment your caregivers provide. As an adult, you have much more choice as to how you want to live and how you’re going to get your needs met. As you learn to care for yourself well as an adult, you might experience some grief about how you weren’t cared for in childhood.
What if I don’t hate my parents?
Before you spiral into all-or-nothings, I’m not suggesting that you have to demonize your parents in order to honor the grief in your childhood.
It’s quite possible you have saints for parents, who were also humans that missed the mark in some big ways and some small ways, and everything in between. Your parents’ goodness and positive intentions don’t dismiss the pain of your experience - the harm that was caused or the things that were missed.
We can hold compassion with candor - they are not mutually exclusive.
Denial
As you’re recognizing the grief from the effects of your childhood, you may notice denial. This may appear as dismissing the situation as insignificant. This might sound like:
“I know so many people who had it worse than me.”
“Why bother, there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
“Why linger in the grief? It is what it is. I’ve always had to just move on, so that’s what I’m doing now.”
Again, just because others had worse situations, doesn’t mean your situation didn’t happen. Dismissing your experience as minor may be your grief showing up as denial. While nothing can be done to change the past, you can transform the way you feel about the past by allowing your grief to be expressed and explored.
Sometimes our sense of hopelessness and need to “just move on” is reminiscent of what we felt back in childhood - hopeless and helpless. It makes sense that it’s easier at times to be in denial rather than to make room for those uncomfortable emotions.
Anger
Your grief, once you’ve come to accept that you have it, may transform into anger. You might notice that you begin to resent people who contributed to harm that befell you in your childhood. You may experience bitterness and even feel an inclination to cut people off. This may be your grief showing up as forms of anger which is an appropriate boundary-setting emotion.
Your emotion of anger might be telling you:
A need is was not met
A boundary was crossed
An injustice occurred
This is an appropriate emotional experience to have. The information that the emotion of anger carries is useful to understanding how your experience impacted you. As an adult, you get to discern how you want to process and act upon the anger in a manner that is congruent with your values and goals.
Processing your anger may involve:
Finding new ways to get your needs met (perhaps by new people)
Identifying and expressing new boundaries
Processing forgiveness, asking for amends, and moving through reconciliation (if continued relationship is desired and the other person is emotionally safe and available for the work of repair)
You might notice your anger taking on the shape of younger you. For this reason, you might feel embarrassed or immature for feeling anger. You might notice your urge to act out on your anger appears childish. This is where creating a safe and supportive space to process your anger can be helpful - therapy is a great place for that!
Sadness
There may be a phase in your grieving where you experience sadness and sorrow simply at the fact that things were less than ideal in your upbringing. You might wonder, with a dim sense of hopelessness, at how life could’ve been different.
This too is a normal part of processing the grief of hurt from childhood. It’s important that we allow ourselves to experience the sadness, the felt sense of hopelessness, but to not be alone in it. In childhood, it’s likely that you experienced this sadness and real hopelessness in isolation. As you’re processing as an adult, it’s important to give yourself a different experience - of getting to grieve in connection to a supportive other person that validates the sorrow.
Our grief needs to be witnessed. Our witness needs to know how much of an honor and treasure it is to get to be invited into the witnessing.
Acceptance
Perhaps in your grief, you arrive at a place of acceptance. This doesn’t mean you like what happened (or what didn’t happen) in your childhood. But you come to a place of honoring what was, and shifting your attention towards what it means about you.
Perhaps you find meaning and purpose from the pain and transform it into love and connection. The pain of the past may prompt you to focus your attention and values on the very things you most needed but didn’t get as a child. Now, as an adult you have the ability to choose how you’re going to re-parent your inner child and create the life you want.
Your pain is real and your grief will likely ebb and flow as it is a normal part of being human. But your pain doesn’t have to remain in it’s current state. You can practice being with emotion without being overcome by it. You can hold the grief and honor it.
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Not all grief experiences are traumatic, but all trauma will involve a grieving processing. So as we do the work of unwinding the pain of childhood trauma, we should come to expect grief and make room for it to be processed in a safe and supportive way.
If you’re processing grief from childhood trauma and would benefit from the support of a trauma-informed EMDR therapist for adults in Phoenix, reach out for a free 15-minute phone call today!
