Transform Your Childhood Trauma into Growth and Healing | with Stephanie Carinia

This is Stephanie Carinia. I'm a psychologist Stephanie, you can find me on Instagram and Facebook. I'm so happy to be here and to be at this conference with you, talking about trauma and healing.

Today I will be discussing with you on how to mature, basically how we restore the arrest developments of childhood trauma. How do we go from surviving or striving to thriving?

Inner Maturing

So, let's start at the beginning. The topic I chose is inner maturing. There's a lot of focus on inner healing, and that's good, that's great.

We need to do the basic workout to be able to transform, self-criticism and self-rejection into self-compassion, which is self-love. Only then we will be able to thrive in the world. I'm gonna go more into it and what does that look like? Because we also need to mature in other aspects and the self-love also has some other things that we need to have a look at more in detail because I hear a lot of people say self-love, what is that? Well, it's more than just self-accepting yourself. So that's what we're gonna discuss today.

So, what is necessary for us to be able to thrive, to be happy?

We need to basically be able to live in reality and not our reality.

So many people who get stuck are stuck in their childhood reality. So, they keep on living life, going through interactions through the lens of their childhood, through what they believe the world is like. So, if we were grew up in a more hostile environment, or where our parents were neglectful or more selfish, then we might project that other people or our boss or anyone else or our friends are selfish and don't think about us. Then we will also respond in a more hostile way or we won't be able to experience that connection, that connectedness. So it is important for us to be able to live in reality to check if we're having a clear lens and that our boss is actually rejecting us or simply just giving us feedback, for instance, and that we are appreciated. Also, when we have a reality check and that's okay, we see the reality as it is, we must be able to make most out of it, which self-love is necessary for that we must be able to strive for the option that is better for us. So, if we're not happy with our jobs, we need to leave perhaps find something that we like more. But a lot of people are stuck in not feeling that they have the capacity to leave or do something else. Okay?

We have with childhood trauma often leads to not be able to fully develop, to fully mature. So, we will get stuck in immature behavior, not that we are totally immature, but there are aspects of ourselves that might be still more immature and that will lead us to problems in the interaction, plus problems in getting our needs met. In the end, it's all about the ability to get our needs met and most of us are able to buy food and survive, but we also want to have our higher needs met.

So, immaturity is surviving or striving.

So surviving is people who simply survive and striving are people who perhaps, try to become successful, become successful, but are actually not their authentic self, they are what they thought that society expects them to be. So that's not real thriving, that's not real authenticity.

So, signs of immaturity are   behavior, like people pleasing, choosing the wrong partners or being the wrong partner yourself, fixating, obsessing on others, wanting the other person to heal you, for instance, to be the parent that you never had unconsciously and then clinging on to them instead of being able to find that peace within yourself, become your inner parent. Being emotionally unavailable, will child trauma will leave us, leave us disconnected from our emotions, and don't get me wrong, when we suddenly have this overwhelm of emotions and finally sometimes become very emotional, that is not being in touch with our emotions, that is being triggered our inner child being a wounded child, being activated.

So, to be able to be emotionally available is not always that easy. We will need to go perhaps in a safe attachment to that dark place inside to shed light on it, and then we can activate our emotion system and our energy again.

So, immaturity is taking things personally. Yeah. My boss criticized me, he's against me. He wants me out instead of, well, yeah, perhaps I didn't do a really good job. He's not necessarily rejecting me. Let's see if he has a point, for example because we might take things personally when we have a wound, when as a child we were attacked, we were unfairly treated, we weren't considered. So, we might project that onto actual, so situations in our daily lives, but that not necessarily reflect reality anymore, Feeling used or taken advantage of just the same example.

Dependency or codependency is also a way in which we are not able, we haven't fully matured, we're still dependent upon the other person.

Narcissism, the opposites also not full, fully being able to mature because if we would be fully able to mature, we would be also be able to be vulnerable and not perfect, and not amazing, and we can just be, you know, I'm worthy of being average. But mature people feel they're worthy of being average because they already feel they're worthy, so they don't need to compensate anything.

Perfectionism, same thing. Perfectionism tell is, say is telling your inner child, you're unworthy, so you need to compensate. Or often a perfectionism is a way in which you try to avoid feelings of shame, criticism, et cetera when as a child you were subjected to that one being your authentic self. The silent treatment is a way of immature communication. It's ignoring the other person's existence, sending them a message. Don't behave that way anymore. You hurt me, you insulted me, don't you dare. Don't do that. Instead of having mature ways of communicating, gaslighting a different way of controlling, it’s an inability to communicate your feelings in a normal, in a mature way.

Black and white thinking, that is a bad, big problem for many people. The ability to mentalize property, if you have big problems with that checkout, mentalization based treatment. We need to be able to live in reality. We need therefore to be able to assess the reality accurately. Only when we are able to assess reality accurately, we need the truth to be able to deal with the truth, right? We need to live in reality, that's why people often want to know, tell me the truth, because then I can deal with it. So black and white thinking unfortunately is immature, not fully developed way of thinking. If you go back in the cartoons was sort of like, that's the bad guy, that's the good guy. You rarely see in the cartoon for four-year-olds, that bad guy has some good qualities and that guy has, that rarely happens. So, these people stuck in black and white thinking might reason, and it's like that or that if you are appreciate, if you're my therapist and you care about me, then I will need to be able to call you whenever I want to. If you don't allow me to do that, or if you don't call me often, regularly, or you don't give me this, and this treatment, that means that you're a bad therapist, that you don't care about me. That is black and white, the inability to see you care about me as a therapist within your limits.

The healing fantasy.

When we haven't gotten the love and care we needed, we weren't seen and felt understood or attempted to be understood as a child, we might end up unconsciously wanting a parent in our adult life. It's not like we go out there and they're like, okay, now I need a parent. No, we look for that person who sees us, who gives us that attention, who has that ability, and then we might clinging to that. We want them to be there always for us, instead of finding that inner peace within ourselves, connecting to our inner adult, giving that to our inner child. So, we won't get into dependent situations. So also, the ability to be responsible, take personal responsibility instead of expecting, hoping someone else to come and save us.

Feeling abandoned that you don't care about me has also to do with the black and white thinking and the healing fantasy and feeling that we don't have the capacity to be in control of our lives, that is a big problem. Many people face, I'll discuss a little bit later.

Maturity Is The Ability To Live In Reality

Immaturity is unfortunately living in our reality, that is the reality, our childhood reality, and we need to be able to learn to distinguish that. I feel triggered now. I feel that my boss is gonna fire me. Oh, this might be my wounds, my distrust wound, because I don't know who, I could never trust them and now I might be, you know, triggered. So, I might need to check, become curious, is this my wound or is this the actual situation to prevent from me acting hostile to my boss? And then things get worse instead of becoming more connected, okay, what do you mean? What do you need from me? Let me see my part. Okay, then I need this from you. And then we can connect and we can work together.

Maturity Is Having Fully Matured

It's the ability to see the truth and handling it so we can act appropriately. Means also the other way around, if we are naive and someone is abusing us or using us, we also need to be aware of that.We need to see the red flags goes both ways.

Human Needs – Thriving

So, the competence theory about the three basic human needs that are proven is autonomy, a sense that our actions result from ourself and not from external pressures. I'll also call an internal locus of control. We'll elaborate later on that. Competence, sense of mastery to accomplish projects or achieve higher goals, I mean, most people can go to the supermarket and get groceries so we are already in a way, competent. If you survive, you're already competent because you're not dead. So, you got yourself still alive but we also want to not survive, we want to thrive. So, it's the sense of mastery and not everyone has developed that as a child will get that later. Relatedness, connectedness, the sense of belonging, having caring relationships, of course without needing to sacrifice yourself because that's not caring relationships, that's not equal relationships. So, we need self-love and we need the ability to think and assess information accurately to be able to get our needs met and thrive.

So, the first part, we need self-love because self-love accesses our compass. It's more important than just life experience. Some people say we can go through life without self-love with, we have the experience, but experience is not a self-protective mechanism automatically. If you love yourself, you take care of yourself, you respect yourself, you have your own back, it will automatically guide you towards safe situations and the highest possible achievements, not that it is about achieving, but it is about making your life as nice as you like, as comfortable as you like, develop your capacities as much as you want to. So, it is the actually the only way for thriving.

Now I'm gonna explain what self-love consists of. Also self-love is necessary to be able to experience love from others. Other people cannot love us when we're promoting, telling them, showing them, there's nothing, not much to be loved because look at how I treat myself and how I talk about myself. The other person think I might be missing something, it's not safe for me to love that person when that person doesn't even love themselves. So, yeah, it is important to work on that because otherwise we end up without any love whatsoever.

To Mature A Child Needs

Security, stability, attention, love, and unconditional acceptance.

Not only when you make mommy happy or the guilt tripping, all these things are conditional acceptance. A child doesn't owe a mom or a parent anything. A parent owes the child everything until they're 18 or the adult age. So, the child needs to feel independent and not guilted for separating and going, making their own choices. They need to feel, to feel free to self-express, to ask for what they need and not be guilted or grow up being afraid of being angry and all these things, they need to feel carefree to be able to play and be spontaneous. So, the child needs not to be parentified and give adult responsibilities or talking about serious things with mom, mom complaining about the dad to, the child and which the child is not able to take on that responsibility. So, the child grows up feeling responsible for other people's feelings, and it might take away their playfulness. Child needs to feel safe within age appropriate limits and boundaries are very important for a child as well. So, do you love yourself to ask yourself to get an impression if you love yourself? Ask yourself. Do you have re realistic view of yourself? Because self-awareness is key, do you know also your weaknesses, your strength is, do you know what kind of influence people have on you? How you respond to that? Self-awareness is important, so because it's self-knowledge and we need knowledge, we need the truth to be able to survive accurately, accurate truth.

So, are you pursuing or maximizing your happiness or are you just passive?

Do you pursue favorable outcomes in the choices you everyday choices that you make?

It might sound logical that you're maximize your happiness and favorable outcomes, but it's not for many with childhood Trauma.

FOUR ASPECTS OF SELF-LOVE

1. Self-Awareness
2. Self-Acceptance the ability to also then with what you know and everything, you know, accept yourself. So we cannot do the self-acceptance tense without the self-awareness because we really need to also know are not no nice sites, our immature behavior, our toxic behaviors, everything. We need to learn everything and we need to be in spite of that. We need to accept ourselves.

Self-acceptance and self-awareness are not a critical voice. You're stupid. You're this, you're that, that is not ourself. Those are our parents, caregivers, teachers, whatever, critical others that is not us. So inner critic, this has nothing to do with self-love, that is trauma, that is not self-love. Self-love is the ability to identify, ah, this is the inner critic, the voice, this is not me. I'm not gonna pay attention to it. I'm not gonna fight it because there's attention. I'm just gonna leave it, so self-acceptance.

3. Self-Trust the ability to trust ourselves as much as we trust others. For instance, with dependency we trust ourselves, our trust in ourselves as low trust in others is high. So, meaning we believe that when we look back on our lives, that we didn't make the right decisions, that we're not able to of making the right decisions. For instance, and we're not the agent of our life. Going to get back to that later.
4. Self-Efficacy the ability to achieve also higher goals that we are able to achieve things. So self-love is awareness.

What I discussed self-awareness will be hard knowing who you are. It's your identity when you have grew up with a parent who is, for instance, narcissistic, they won't be able to reflect back at you who you are like these are your qualities, et cetera, they will just project on you what they want to. For instance, the golden child, you're perfect. You're this, you're that. That's not an accurate description of who you are. So, we need to understand who we are, especially hearing from narcissistic parents, that's a whole journey with self-acceptance, the ability to unconditionally accept us, not I accept myself as soon as I lose weight, as soon as I have a partner, as soon as I get that job, as soon as I have that car. No, that is not self-acceptance. And it's also accepting the person that you truly are not the person that your parent wanted you to be.

So, a couple of things that can happen are that we develop some schema that are wounds. So, when we have con be conditionally accepted, a worldview that we have, our emotional history that we are confusing current reality with is shamed effectiveness, the feeling that we're defective, bad, unwanted, inferior or invalid in important respects or that one would be unloved to significant others if exposed. This will involve hypersensitivity to criticism, rejection, and blame. Self-conscious, making comparisons, insecurity around others, sense of shame regarding, one's perceived flaws. Flaws as in we can feel we're afraid that we're selfish, that can have angry impulses, etcetera, or that we're not good looking or not good status.

Then self-love is the ability to self-trust. I trust myself as much as I trust others also not the other way around. I only trust myself, but I don't trust others. So that is not healthy either. This is when we have lots self-trust, we have issues with autonomy often, and it also relates to the external locus of control, our life feels controlled in that case by external forces instead of our own actions. So, we might tend to feel that things are not our fault, so we don't feel person. So that's the personal responsibility aspect, we not taking personal responsibility. Things feel that that's not our fault. The problem is they're also then not under our control, and that can feel scary in life and that can leave us susceptible to trusting others, getting into abusive relationships who will dominate us because we trust them more than we trust ourselves. Often is this external locus of control can be very problematic, it is very hard for people when you cannot trust yourself. You, you look like your life and you believe that you didn't make your own best decisions and that things happen outside of your control, that leaves you feeling powerless. That often happens when, for instance, as a child, you start doing things and then you expect, you can see that what you do has an outcome, but if your parent then just says, ah, you built this all, all this, I don't know, with your toys and everything or you made this for daddy or whatever, and then throws it away, then you blah, blah, got another present, and then, the input that you had had no influence, no impact. You teach your child, whatever you do, doesn't matter. External influences will guide your life. Instead of a parent who says, ah, you made this for that present, so then we won't need to buy another present or shows the child that they have influence over their out the outcome. As an example, this is very important in our healing to be able to have an internal locus of control to work on it.

And this is the other problem, there's where dependency start. As soon as we believe that we don't have influence over our lives, then yes, we're gonna invest in other people, we are gonna be other oriented. We're gonna have the belief that we are not able to handle our own lives, we're gonna become enmeshed. We will have an excessive emotional involvement, closeness with one or more significant others at the expense of full individuation, of normal social development. Often, we will be trying to make others happy, we trying to make manipulate them because we believe that they have influence over our lives, we don't. So that's a huge problem because then we lose ourselves. So, the energy that normally people spend in their self, you know, we need a strong sense of self, the self-love, whatever you would like to call it. All the energy that goes into there, to introspection, to getting self-awareness, self-acceptance, the ability for ourselves to make this happen, the ability that our input has influenced and that we have control over our lives. All that energy these people put into others, well, that's a huge loss. We need to turn that around to put, go inward and work on ourself. Then we will have our own rock and at the mercy of others because it'll also predate a lot of resentment when we're dependent on others.

Internal Locus Of Control And The External Locus Of Control

Internal Locus Of Control

When we have the internal locus of control, we feel responded with responsibility for our actions. We're less influenced by other people's opinions. We have a strong self-efficacy; we work hard because we believe that it actually is worth it because it will pay off. But when we have an external locus of control while work on something, when as a child already we worked out, won't matter, other circumstances will take over. We will tend to be physically healthier because we will be literally working on ourselves, on our body. We will be happier, independent. We will often achieve greater success at work because we feel that we have an influence in it.

External Locus Of Control

Is when we blame outside forces for our circumstances. We often credit lock or chance by, for any successes. We don't believe we can change the situation through our own efforts. We feel hopeless, powerless with difficult situations. Difficult situations we feel like we cannot solve, that we have been experiencing, we earned helplessness. So often depression is the feeling that whatever we do, it won't matter. So then you're like, I give up. It's very unfortunate. So, perhaps when realizing this we can start changing it with therapy or with within safe attachments.

Self-love - The fourth pillar is self-efficacy versus the learned helplessness and capable of reaching realistic beneficial outcomes.

Maturing Is Loving Ourself, But Also Others

We need to also trust other people unless proven guilty and not the other way around, unless proven untrustworthy, not the other way around. So, childhood trauma might create the schema, distrust, mistrust the expectation that others will hurt, abuse, humiliate, cheat, lie, manipulate, use, or take advantage of us, usually it involves the perception that the harm is intentional or the result of unjustified or an extreme negligence, may include the sense that one always ends up being cheated relative to others, or getting short end of the stick.

So, we cannot go through life when we believe that people don't care about. I mean, usually when we deal with people, we usually want to win in the situation, so unless they prove the opposite. So, it's important that we start changing that expectation and that we don't test them and try to focus only on the things that it turns out that they're abusing us. Also, to try to see the other parts, to see with your own eyes that other people can be trusted. Group therapy can be tremendous help to achieve this.

The Truth Will Set Us Free

So, we need to be able to access the truth if we want to go from surviving to thriving, we need to be good in reality testing.

Reality testing means that the information that we get through our emotions and through our reasoning, that is as accurate, that comes as close to what is actually happening within the interaction with someone, our abilities that into reality. So for that, we need to listen to our emotions. We need to go to our GPS, we cannot leave it aside and definitely not start going to other people to tell us what we want and need. We have our own system within start making use of it and then when we get the emotions we need to reason.

Emotions Are Our Inner GPS

Childhood trauma or adequate parents who weren't able to access their emotions or think to deal with emotions and listen to emotions weren't able to model to us. Believe us with an inactivated GPS. Our emotions are part of our reality testing, they tell us if we're on the wrong or safe right path.

BASIC CATEGORIES OF EMOTIONS

Fearful also, fear of rejection. Do I feel that? Do I feel threatened?

Don't only confused, don't only look at anger. So, we have fear.

Sadness

Anger

Joy, contentment and inner peace.

Shame might be also under fear.

So, try to access these emotions, don't get stuck only in the anger. Anger is often self-protective emotion for fear or shit. I feel rejected, I feel abandoned, and we become angry. Then you're not only angry, you're also frightened either or thinking, distorts our reality. So, we need our emotions, but we also need to be able to think non-binary, meaning we need to be able to not think, or it's this or that and there's no other in between option. So, for instance, you are my therapist and but you don't call me as often as I want to, or you don't this or you don't that doesn't automatically mean that you don't care about me. Perhaps the per therapist cares about you, but has a certain limit. So, there's other options.

So when we think of either or, for instance.

You're being the being the victim and the other, the victimizer or the other way around. So, it becomes either or, but often we're not only the victim or the victimizer, it's more complicated, it's more gray. So healing is the ability to see gray.

How Do I Mature?

We need self-love in the four pillars. We need other love to trust other, other people that they have the best intentions normally they also have their own intentions and their own gain, but they're not necessarily out to disadvantage us. Only the people actually are. So, the third thing is that we will need to be able to assess reality accurately using our emotions and reason to reason. So, be curious instead of, is it either or? No, that excludes curiosity because there's so much, many more answers.

What Does Maturity Look Like? Maturity = Thriving

Examples are being authentic. So being the ability to not have to hide yourself, to be who you are. We can also only do that when we have you know, remember the first pillar of the self-awareness. And that's only when we are self-aware of who we are, not of what our parent needed us to be.

So, maturing is the ability to strive for authentic, not ego needs.

Authentic are needs of more needs of the soul needs that make us happy. For instance, an authentic need would be to go to a job that perhaps pays less or has less image, less good image, but it makes us, as hard fields. So, an ego need would be to get the highest paid job, even when we don't like it, for instance.

Also, authentic need would be to choose a partner that is able to make you happy like authentically happy, a partner that respects you, a partner that you can have a good time with, a partner that is consistent. Ego need might be, I want a partner that is successful. I want a partner that's going to heal me, that is our egos, our egos, our wound needs that might not be realistic because other people cannot heal us anymore.

So, the ability to be caring and committed, and also, look for, to attract caring and committed people instead of people that disrespect us, personal responsibility is a sign of maturing, it's the ability that to understand that we as a child, we were perhaps the victim and we were not responsible for what would done was done to us, the neglect didn't mean that we were unworthy or shameful. It meant that we were dealing with incapable parents that were incapable to meet our emotional psychological needs.

So, as a child, we were the victim. As adults, we are responsible, we are survivors. We are responsible for how we deal with that damage, not them.

Equal relationships and friendships, we expect the other person to see us, hear us for who we are, we want a good relationship and adult relationship, which is equal. We don't want them to become the parent we never had to always be there for us. You don't care about me. That is a childhood need, unmet need that we need to deal with our inner parents. So, we can have equal relationships, not to high expectations and resentment so the other pet person or friend or partner won't feel that they're failing us because they can never be our parent. We need to be able to be vulnerable for that. We need to access our emotions. We need to not be afraid to be rejected like we were as a child or ignored when we'll be vulnerable but we will need to access that. That is a huge, huge healing change for many people.

When people are able to be vulnerable, then we can actually start talking about having done the healing work. Also, to be able, when we've done that properly, we will be able to see other people's vulnerability as a strength and not as a weakness. We need to trust ourselves as much as others. We need to be connected to our emotions just like I said with the vulnerability. We need to be self-aware, not who we are. Self-compassion at the inner critic is not who we are. We need to have self-love as in general, what we discussed. As a result, won't have excess ego, we won't need to pretend we're good or better or this or that, or that we're worthless, that's all ego (access ego) We have all need our basic ego to deal with we're not perfect, we are some to some level insecure, so we need our ego but the excess ego will not be there that much. So, we're gonna be assertive when we are mature and not passive aggressive, assert assertive, we are gonna be curious instead of judgmental or thinking I black or white. We will feel complete. We will be able to separate the trigger from our wound. I feel disrespected what you'd say. Now, don't feel considered, oh shit. I remember as a child, I felt this often perhaps this is a wound that is triggered. It's not you not considering me or disrespecting me. We need to become our own agent that we feel that we have our back. We are able to do this, to make our decisions and if we screwed up in the past, let's see how I can do this in the future, but not start just trusting other people to do it. We cannot out outsource parts of ourself, we need to go and do that ourself, trust ourselves and believe in our own ability to achieve.

So, this was the presentation. I think this is an important one.

Healing from trauma has the potential of getting us past conditioned, a conditioned life where many people are surviving or striving in, but are not actually thriving. So, we are able to live where we can a life where we can actually thrive in if we do the healing journey properly and really connect to our authentic self. And don't forget to enjoy this journey to your authentic self, it can be the most beautiful journey you experience.

So yes, this was me, Stephanie Carinia, I'm a clinical psychologist.

Please go follow me on Instagram. Would love to see you there or on Facebook, and you can also check out my website for courses and resources. Thank you so much!