Few if any of us are able to avoid experiencing some kind of emotional or physical trauma throughout our lives. This trauma or even the ‘threat’ of trauma can have a profound effect on one’s life.  Much of this trauma occurs when we are children and adolescents trying to find our ‘place’ in the world, when we are developing an identity of ourselves.  Moreover, the way others interact with us informs our self-identity.  Whilst many experiences may be very positive, leaving positive imprints on our sense of ‘Self’, many experiences can be the opposite.  It is these opposite or negative experiences that are often buried in our unconscious minds at an early age and can manifest at any other time in our life in the form of unwanted behaviour, belief systems or thoughts.

 

Negative experiences carry emotions. The emotions or feelings may resurface as adults when a similar circumstance or person re-presents.  Feelings that may come to the surface are unconsciously driven - for example “I am hurt”, “I am afraid”, I am embarrassed”, “I am angry”, “I am useless”, "I am unlovable".

 

In addition, there is usually a belief and value system that underpins the emotion or the feeling. Values are very individual and reflect how we think things and people ought to be or to act.  Generally they relate to our view of honesty and integrity; our personal idea of what is right and what is wrong.  

 

 

The degree of the impact on our thoughts and behavior varies greatly between individuals. It depends on what we ‘make of’ our experience at the time it occurs.  For example, a child is starting school for the first time.  In his/her eagerness for acceptance, the child trips up the steps into the classroom and feels humiliated when their peers laugh at them. The child then may withdraw and then keeps the incident tucked away as it is too painful to contemplate, ‘stored’ in the unconscious mind as a repressed memory along with the attached emotion/emotional pain. For one child this experience may have no impact at all but another may ‘take it on’ as a perceived threat to their survival; this being a critical time for establishing peer or social groups.  Of course this is a small example of a whole range of things that can happen to us as children.

 

As adults our response to life’s challenges is dependent on our perception of ourselves and how well we look after our emotional health.