Do you think you might have childhood trauma? Something’s been nagging at you. You can’t remember anything specific, but you’ve been wondering about it. You’ve heard about repressed childhood trauma in adults. What is that exactly? Do you have it?

How could you find out?

That’s a tough question

If you did suffer trauma in childhood, you’ve forgotten for good reasons.

So, let me shed some light on those reasons and why memories get repressed in trauma.

Then, I’ll go into some signs that you might be suffering from trauma’s aftereffects.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s)

Physical Abuse. Emotional Abuse. Sexual Abuse. Sexual Trauma. Rape. Physical and Emotional Neglect. Abandonment. Mental Illness in Parents. Divorce or Separation. A Parent’s Substance Abuse. Violence in a Family. Incarceration of a Parent. Starvation of Love.

These are the worst things that can happen to a child.

If any of these happened to you, you experienced childhood trauma. And, along with it was most likely criticism. Humiliation. Shame.

Keep quiet about it. It’s the family business. Don’t tell. Those were the messages you got. So, you kept it a secret. Then, you “forgot.” There was no one to help you.

You don’t know whether to blame yourself. Too often you do. You think it must be your fault. And, maybe you were told it was. To “suck it up.” Or, “Shut up. Stop complaining. You deserve it.” Maybe, you believed you did. And, if you weren’t sure, there was no one to reassure you.

Maybe you lived in silence. No one talked to you. Or, you were expected to take care of a parent. Or your siblings. You had to be quiet and good. No one seemed to care. No one noticed you. You felt invisible and unimportant. Too much. Or not enough.

You developed a lot of self-hate.

The bottom line is that you were on your own. You had to figure things out for yourself.

No one can live with these kinds of experiences. Not when they’re happening. Not after.

The feelings you had (and have) are too much.

What Is Repressed Childhood Trauma?

Those feelings that were too much got shut down, along with memories.

That’s known as repression.

Yet, a more correct term for repressed memory is dissociative amnesia. Dissociation is the most common reaction to a traumatic experience.

If something is intolerable – you have to “go away.”

This results in feeling “not there.” “Watching from a distance.” Not in your body. Other words for this experience are de-realization. Detachment. Disconnection. You’ve likely continued to live your life that way. Not quite there. Staying away from people. Feeling it’s safer that way.

Not feeling present in your life is one thing. But you might also have other memory lapses.

Your memory is not only “not good,” you “lose time.” You frequently wonder what happened to too many hours of the day or the week. Losing time is a reaction to severe trauma. It’s an extreme form of “going away” – especially if something threatens to trigger your trauma.

Dissociation (or dissociative amnesia) is a self-protective mechanism. You had to survive. And, without help, you are still surviving your trauma in the only way you can (and could).

But now you’re stuck with the thought something might have happened to you. Something you’ve forgotten and can’t remember. The question is: what happened to your memory?

What Happens to Your Memory in Repressed Trauma?

You don’t remember your trauma for a reason. It’s either too terrifying or too sad to think about. You can’t be alone with your thoughts or feelings. That’s why you’ve “forgotten.” When it happened, there was no one to help. No one cared about your feelings, how you were treated, or what was happening to you. You were powerless and scared.

You couldn’t help it. There was no other choice. You “went away.”

If you were to remember, you’d have a lot of feelings you didn’t and don’t know what to do with. There’s a lot of sadness and grief. You might be angry, but that was a scary feeling in childhood. You’d be punished for expressing it. And, maybe you were the onlooker or recipient of violent, explosive anger from a parent.

What happened to you is too painful to recall. The feelings are too much for you to feel.

So, you went numb. Dead inside. You learned to shut down your feelings.

You wonder what it would take to heal. Is it one trauma you need to remember?

Repressed Childhood Trauma May Not Be One Thing

Trauma is most often a complex web of traumatizing experiences. You likely suffered more than one trauma – abuse, neglect, loss, or abandonment. And, because of that, you also lived with many tortuous feelings you couldn’t feel or understand.

Having feelings is normal. However, all children need help sorting them out. And, this takes an understanding, receptive, and empathic parent or adult.

If you didn’t have that, that’s trauma.

We are now understanding more and more about Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD). And, if you’ve forgotten your trauma, that’s likely the diagnosis you have.

What happens in CPTSD is that it’s not only your memories that are forgotten but your feelings along with them. There are signs, though, that these feelings are not dead or gone.

Traumatic memories and feelings “return” as symptoms or behaviors.

Here are some possible effects and signs that you may have repressed childhood trauma.

9 Signs of Repressed Childhood Trauma

1. Trust Issues

If you’ve suffered childhood trauma you can’t trust easily. Not when you couldn’t trust those in your life “entrusted” to care for you; and who didn’t. Now you can’t trust people in your adult life. You see “signs” of betrayal. You don’t feel listened to. You’re sensitive to feeling neglected and rejected. Maybe it’s hard to ask because you expect disappointment and hurt. You might avoid relationships to protect yourself. You’re hyperalert for reasons not to trust.

2.  Avoidant Behavior

If you find yourself avoiding things, this is one of the symptoms of PTSD that comes out of an insecure, scary, unpredictable childhood. You protect yourself by avoiding situations that evoke anxiety or frightening feelings. Perhaps you avoid certain places and are unsure why. Or you stay away from people who could provoke memories you want to keep at bay. Or maybe you keep to yourself, stay isolated, and are afraid to have relationships.

It’s lonely, but…

Letting people get close is unsafe if you weren’t safe in childhood.

3.  Anxiety, Depression, Suicidal Thoughts

If you have an ongoing struggle with severe anxiety, depression, or a combination of both, this could be one aftereffect of childhood trauma. These symptoms can be unrelenting. You don’t see a way out. Your depression and anxiety won’t let up. You don’t know why you feel the way you do. Everything seems wrong, you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. You wonder why you can’t feel happy or relaxed. You feel jealous of people who can.

When anxiety or depression won’t let up, you might have suicidal thoughts.

Dying can sometimes seem like the only way out. It’s not.

4.  Chronic Physical Symptoms

Another effect of dissociated trauma is chronic physical symptoms. Constant fatigue. Headaches. Migraines. Stomach aches. Ulcers. Eating Disorders. Constant Back Pain. Fibromyalgia. Or other chronic illnesses. As Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk writes about:

When you can’t know what happened or what you feel, your body keeps the score.

5.  Repeating Abusive Relationships

Do you find yourself in one abusive relationship after another and wonder why? You think you’ve chosen differently this time, but what’s happening is all too familiar. Have you been seduced by someone who “love-bombs” you since you’re hungry to be loved? Yet, what seemed like love has turned into gaslighting, making you feel you do one thing after another that’s wrong.

Why is this happening to you, you wonder. Are you in your childhood again?

Is it your fault? No. It wasn’t then, it isn’t now. But the feelings are overwhelming.

6.  Dramatic Mood Swings

When you had no one to listen to or care about your feelings, you dissociated them, numbed them, tried to put them aside, pretended you didn’t have them, or didn’t care.

But there are triggers.

Triggers are reminders of trauma, even if you don’t realize what you are being reminded of. Triggers can be extreme feelings of rejection, criticism, feeling not enough, and humiliation.

And, these feelings provoke a strong emotional reaction you can’t control. You might lash out in anger. Or turn the anger against yourself and berate yourself with such thoughts as: “How could I be so stupid?” Maybe you’re possessed with uncontrollable jealousy or self-comparison. Or intolerable sadness and loneliness. Your moods might seem all over the place, shifting from one to the other.

Sometimes you don’t know what to do with yourself.

7.  Substance Use & Addictions

When feelings are overwhelming and too painful to bear, you might feel desperate to find a way to numb them. That’s where addictions come in. Drugs or alcohol, food, gambling, or out-of-control spending can all function like “quick fixes” to the pain you feel. And, unlike an unavailable parent when you were a child, these substances are immediately within reach, instantly satisfying or soothing in their way, whenever you need them.

They can even momentarily take away how awful you feel about yourself – “either never enough or too much.”

8.  Low Self-Esteem & Shame

Self-hate, self-loathing, self-doubt, feelings of humiliation, and shame that seem inescapable are probably the worst consequences of repressed childhood trauma. You are constantly criticizing yourself for needing anything from anyone.

Always feeling wrong in someone else’s eyes, you live with a critical eye inside your mind, watching and then berating yourself for all the ways you “fail” or are wrong.

These feelings originate in insecure attachment and lead to terrors of abandonment.

9.  Insecure Attachment & Fear of Abandonment

You can’t trust people because you never had a chance to form secure attachments if you were traumatized as a child. Love was either nonexistent or unpredictable. Perhaps you were abandoned and neglected, and love was out of reach.

This made you feel like something was wrong, with you, leading to self-doubt or self-hate. Now you expect to be, or feel, abandoned at the slightest “hint” it might be happening, even if it isn’t. You believe it is. There’s no other way you can see it.

If you live in terror of being left all alone and unloved – this is a sign of trauma.

Repressed Childhood Trauma Is Starvation of Love

Childhood trauma is always a trauma of love: the absence of it. Being abused, neglected, ignored, criticized, humiliated, or the like, you were starved of the love you needed.

All children need love. Consistent love. Reachable love. Empathic love. Non-punishing love.

If you were left starving for love, you likely gave up and made your hunger for love “go dead” because there was no one there to love you. Now, you feel suspicious of what people give you. You had to (and have to) tell yourself you have “no needs.” You’re ok by yourself.

Starvation of love is one of the causes of repressed childhood trauma. Blocking your needs and hunger for love is often the best survival strategy any small, traumatized child can find.

Yet, it has consequences.

And, loneliness, no real security, repeating old unsatisfying or abusive relationships, feeling “bad” or inherently unlovable, and struggling with success and creativity have followed you into adulthood.

Working things out isn’t easy.

It means awakening feelings that were and are too scary to feel.

You can’t do this alone.

So, What Do You Do About It?

How do you heal the signs and symptoms of repressed childhood trauma? Healing takes psychotherapy with a trauma-informed therapist; one who specializes in working with survivors still struggling with trauma’s aftereffects. You must feel heard, supported, and cared about; all the things you didn’t have early in your life.

And, of #1 importance is to seek out someone who feels like a good match. Someone who doesn’t judge, lets you go at your own pace, and helps you build safety and trust. If you don’t feel any of these things, move on. It’s necessary that you feel understood.

The effects of repressed childhood trauma can be healed, even your wish to “forget.”