Past Triggers, Present Reactions—A Therapist Reflects on Childhood Wounds and How to Face and Heal Them.

As much as my clients want “the past to be in the past”, as a clinically licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, I cannot help but see how much the environment my clients were raised in affects the issues they present with in session.

As an example, I’ll illustrate with my own story. Hopefully, this helps someone else understand how childhood experiences shape adult mental and emotional reactions, and how healing these past wounds can help transmute our pain into empowered, intentional living.

Image Credit: @REACHOUTRECOVERY

As a therapist, I know that growth and healing never stop throughout our lifetime. Who would want to stay stagnant? I’ve done years of therapy throughout my life, and continue therapy twice a week. I keep working on myself, so I can better serve others.

As I see this image, I reflect on how I’ve worked to regulate my nervous system, so that I am responding from a Grounded, Aligned, and Intentional place, rather than automatic, triggered reactions.

I am not perfect, which I’m the first to admit to my clients and others. I personally resonate with 7 out of 8 of these childhood triggers.

• 2. Raised Voices or Angry Tone

  I am very sensitive to energy and non-verbal cues in others (helps with my work). When I sense anger in body language or tone of voice, my nervous system immediately is on edge.

  I grew up with an amazing mother, but my father was reactive and unpredictable when he drank alcohol, leading to domestic chaos.

  Never knowing if I was walking into a safe or unsafe environment after school was impactful.

  Now, as an adult, I still feel a measure of anxiety when I hear (men’s) raised voices, especially out of anger.

  I have worked towards healing this by gently repeating in my head, “I am safe now. This is not my dad. I am an adult now, and can use my voice and boundaries to advocate for myself and keep myself safe.”

  This has helped soooo much to rewire the neuropathways in my brain to respond calmly in these situations, rather than automatically going into a freeze response.

• 3. Feeling Ignored or Unheard

  I was always physically cared for as a child—I never wanted for anything, except emotional attention.

  I was a sensitive child and now, in retrospect, I can see how not having safe adults explain emotions to me and tend to my emotionality has shaped me into an adult who has had to learn to acknowledge my own emotions, name them, journal, meditate, accept and allow the feelings, and nurture myself through the emotional waves that inevitably flow throughout our life experiences.

  I now provide for myself and my inner child what we did not receive growing up.

• 4. Feeling Left Out or Abandoned

  I didn’t have many friends growing up. I was a quiet, reflective, bookish kid. Until college, I usually had one (more confident) friend who would “adopt me”.

  Now, as an adult, I have a hard time relating to most people. I am still quite reflective and prefer deep conversations to small talk (I literally don’t know how to small talk lol).

  While I’m at peace with this aspect of my personality, there is a deep rooted sadness in not feeling connected to many people.

  I am grateful that I’ve attracted many other “deep feeling” friends since college and throughout my adulthood until now at 35 years old; however, I have a tendency to isolate and not reach out to my friends as often as I should—especially when I am hurting.

  I now find much joy in solitude and my solitary self-care and self-nurturance activities. That said, I am working with my therapist to address this deep inner child sadness by intentionally reaching out to my friends more through more regular texting (and actually responding to text messages, most of the time), and being a little more proactive about scheduling hangouts, all with the goal of building an internal sense of community.

• 5. People-Pleasing or Over-Apologizing

  Many of my clients present with this, and I can relate!

  Growing up, with a child’s egoic mind believing everything was my fault, I felt like if I was “good”, it would help keep the peace between my parents, thereby protecting my mom from my dad when he was intoxicated.

  Now, even through my healing journey, as the image says, “approval feels like safety”.

  I work my ass off at running and building my group practice business, managing my Team, and mentoring my Graduate Student Therapists.

  Even though I’m a “leader”, I feel pressure to push myself to my energetic limits in order to “stay on top of things” so that no one feels like I’m not taking care of my responsibilities (my fear of them being upset with me). When I have a lapse, like being late to responding to an email or procrastinating on a task for a client or one of my therapists, I over-apologize despite knowing that I have valid reasons—I am respecting the natural ebbs and flows of my energy now, and trying not to push myself into “productivity” when my body calls for rest.

  I work to heal this by setting a boundary with myself that “when overwhelmed, I just do the best I can”, doing tasks when my brain is the most “on”, and respecting my body and brain when it is just over it. I also end my workday by 6pm as a rule. Even as a business owner, the world is not going to end if I’m three days late responding to an email.

  What’s the point in having anxiety about it? I now trust my future Self to take care of what needs to be done. I’ve proven that I. get time-sensitive shit done, so I try not to stress in the moment as, inevitably, something new gets added to my “to do list” daily.

• 6. Conflict or Confrontation

  Growing up witnessing unpredictable, alcohol fueled arguments, I often felt tense in my body, picking up the tension in my home environment.

  I remember a moment when, as a pre-teen, I jumped out of the shower, threw on a towel, and rushed downstairs just because I thought I heard a raised voice (it wasn’t).

  Now, as an adult, witnessing or being a part of a disagreement puts my nervous system on edge and it feels emotionally unsafe.

  While as a therapist I know healthy conflict resolution language and skills, as a human being with my own wounds, I still have a “fawn response” tendency during conflict. I appease, make myself and my needs smaller, and acquiesce quickly to just make it stop.

  With my therapist, I am actively working on using my Voice and advocating for myself in moments of conflict or confrontation, and it’s working! As recently as this past weekend (four days ago), I actually used my True Self Voice in a moment when someone who was upset with me confronted me directly.

  I stayed calm, and spoke and behaved in alignment with my values of loving-kindness, authenticity, radically acceptance of reality, and compassion.

  I addressed the issue clearly and compassionately (towards both myself and the other person), sincerely apologized for the impact of my actions way before I explained my context and intentions behind my behavior.

  I was heard, without over-explaining or raising my voice, the confrontation diffused, and the other person even expressed gratitude multiple times for our conversation!

  I am learning!!! YES!!!

• 7. Being Compared to Others

  This one is more subtle.

  As a child, I was “good” (as previously stated). I was an achiever throughout my life and excelled at most things I did.

  My achievements were not met with much praise, but rather, they were just what was “expected of me”, which hurt.

  As an adult, I put pressure on myself and compare -myself to myself- in many things I do.

  I often feel like I’m “not enough” in my striving, despite my many accomplishments.

  This “not enough” feeling is very subtle, and has only recently been uncovered through shadow work and parts work with my therapist.

  I have learned how to acknowledge Shadow (as I call her), witness her pain, meet it with compassion and love, and am learning to love and accept her—with the ultimate goal of integrating her into my authentic Self, which gets better and better each day!

• 8. Someone is Upset with You

  As a child and even now as an adult, I often feel like love is conditional upon my achievement and success.

  People expect excellence out of me, but rarely acknowledge it when I make extreme effort, but comment when I don’t perform to the standard they’ve grown to expect from me.

  This has created what I call an “acceptance wound”, where external approval is what makes me feel loved by others.

  As an adult committed to the never-ending inner-healing work, I am continuing to learn to self-validate and approve of and love myself—independent of any output.

  I have learned that my Worth is not determined by my productivity. I am Whole and complete just as I am, with nothing to “fix” or “change” to be worthy of love.

  This self-validation practice allows me to feel accepted (even if just by myself) when someone else is upset with me, especially when they are close to me.

Thank you for taking the time to read my vulnerable 5 AM reflections on my life.

If you experience present-day triggers or mental/emotional/behavioral patterns that you don’t understand why you keep doing, just know you’re not alone.

Weekly therapy has helped me address the wounds I carry from childhood and how they impact my day-to-day functioning and responses to others.

I genuinely believe therapy may help you, too. That is why I live my purpose and do what I do—guide others in the therapy room as they navigate the complexities of life, and I absolutely love my job.

I don’t have to be “perfect” to be a therapist/guide. Us therapists are all “wounded healers”, and hopefully other therapists are also doing the inner work necessary to continue the healing journey.

Personally, I use the lessons and wisdom gained from my life experiences to accurately “attune” to my clients, and have “accurate empathy” as I hold space as a container for their pain, their joys, and everything in between.

If you’ve been considering therapy, or just want to work on how you show up in the world and activate more empowered Authenticity, Acceptance of Self/others, and live more in Alignment with your values and your Higher Self (the version of you that you strive to be), therapy at The Liz Davis Therapy Group may help.

All of our Team are trauma-informed and trained to help individuals and couples heal from the past, process the present, and manifest the future they deserve.

If you’re interested in scheduling an appointment with any of the amazing therapists on our Team, feel free to click the button below. We cannot wait to be the holding container for you, and walk alongside you as a gentle guide as you transmute pain into presence, and learn to live with Intentionality and Alignment.

—Warmly, Liz