How to Know if You Have Childhood Trauma
Did something from your past quietly shape the way you move through life today — and you’re only just now starting to wonder?
You're not alone. The truth is, childhood trauma is much more common than most of us realize. According to the CDC, nearly two-thirds of adults have experienced at least one adverse childhood experience (ACE), such as abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction. The tricky part? You might not even remember or recognize what you went through as “trauma.” But those early experiences — even the ones you brushed off or had to forget in order to survive — can echo into adulthood, affecting how you think, feel, react, and relate to others.
In this post, I want to gently walk you through how to know if you have childhood trauma, why it matters, and how you can begin to heal. Think of it like talking with a friend who gets it — because as a trauma therapist, and a fellow human, I really do.
How To Know If You Have Childhood Trauma
Let’s start with what we mean when we talk about childhood trauma. This post will help you:
Understand what childhood trauma actually is
Recognize signs of childhood trauma in adulthood
Explore how it shows up in relationships, health, and work
Learn about tools and pathways for healing
Most importantly, I want to normalize the process. Unpacking your story doesn’t mean you’re broken — it means you’re brave enough to stop carrying things that were never yours to begin with.
What Is Childhood Trauma
Childhood trauma is any experience that overwhelms a child’s ability to cope. That might include:
Physical abuse
Emotional abuse
Sexual abuse
Neglect
Witnessing violence
Living with a caregiver who struggles with addiction or mental illness
But here’s the nuance: it’s not just what happened — it’s how it felt. Two kids can go through similar events and be impacted very differently, especially depending on protective factors like whether they had a trusted adult to confide in. Having one safe, loving person who listens and believes you? That can make all the difference in how trauma is processed and whether it turns into long-term wounds.
And for many of us, we had to grow up fast. Maybe you became the emotional support for your parent. Maybe you were the “good kid” who kept everything together. You learned how to read the room, keep the peace, anticipate everyone’s needs — often at the cost of your own. You were “the adult in the room” way too early, and while that made you strong and capable, it also left parts of you behind.
How Do You Know If You Have Childhood Trauma
Not everyone who experienced trauma remembers it — and not everyone who remembers it realizes how much it’s still shaping them. Here are some signs of childhood trauma that might be playing out in your adult life:
Difficulty Trusting Others
You keep people at arm’s length or feel uneasy relying on anyone. Maybe you’ve been burned before, or maybe it just feels safer to go it alone.
Fear of Abandonment
You might cling tightly in relationships or push people away before they can leave. This fear often comes from early experiences of inconsistency or emotional neglect.
Emotional Dysregulation
You feel like your emotions are either too much or completely numb. This can look like big reactions to small things, or like feeling detached from your own feelings entirely.
Low Self-Esteem
You struggle to believe you’re enough — even when people tell you otherwise. Those early messages of unworthiness can stick, especially when they came from the people you looked up to most.
Hypervigilance
You’re always on alert, scanning for danger, reading between the lines. Trauma can train your nervous system to stay in survival mode long after the threat is gone.
Difficulty Setting Boundaries
Saying “no” feels like a risk, or you feel guilty for putting your needs first. If your boundaries weren’t respected as a child, it makes sense you’d struggle to assert them now.
Chronic Health Issues
The body keeps the score. Unresolved trauma can lead to issues like heart disease, autoimmune conditions, and chronic pain. What we suppress emotionally often finds another way out.
How Does Childhood Trauma Affect Adulthood
Even if it feels like the past is behind you, childhood trauma has a way of sneaking into the present. Here’s how it might show up:
Mental Health Challenges
Trauma is linked to conditions like depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These aren’t flaws — they’re signals that your system has been carrying too much for too long.
Relationship Struggles
If you’re drawn to unavailable partners, avoid intimacy, or feel like you’re always “performing” in relationships — those patterns could trace back to childhood. Trauma teaches us what love feels like, even if that version of love was inconsistent or painful.
Workplace Difficulties
Maybe authority figures make you shrink, or you over-function and burn out trying to prove your worth. Early trauma often plays out in how we relate to power, structure, and expectations.
Substance Use
Trying to quiet the pain makes sense. Many people turn to alcohol, drugs, food, or even overworking to escape what feels too big to sit with.
If this resonates, I encourage you to check out our post on navigating trauma, which goes deeper into how trauma — even the “little t” kind — can impact our lives.
How To Heal From Childhood Trauma
The good news? Healing is absolutely possible. It’s not about erasing what happened, but about giving yourself the support, care, and space you didn’t get back then.
Seek Support from a Mental Health Professional
Therapy offers a safe container to unpack your story and make sense of your experiences. Look for someone trained in trauma-informed approaches — you deserve to feel seen and safe.
Connect with Trusted People
Whether it’s a therapist, friend, partner, or mentor — having someone you can lean on is one of the most powerful resilience factors. You don’t have to heal alone.
Try Somatic and Experiential Therapies
Healing doesn’t always happen through words. EMDR, somatic experiencing, and other body-based approaches can help release trauma stored in the nervous system. Learn more about what is ketamine assisted psychotherapy, which can be a powerful complement to trauma therapy for some clients.
Take Care of Your Inner Child
That younger version of you still lives inside. Offer them the compassion and care they didn’t get — even simple acts of self-soothing, play, or rest can be deeply healing.
Honor Your Pace
This work is not linear. Some days you’ll feel lighter, and other days you’ll feel like you’re right back where you started. That’s okay. Healing is messy — and beautiful.
Childhood trauma isn’t the whole story — but it might explain why some parts of your life feel harder than they should. You’re not broken. You adapted. And now, you get to choose something different.
Whenever you're ready, help is here.