Sharing – Why The Age You Experienced Trauma Matters

What Sarah says here is important, not because any trauma is “worse” than any other, but we often forget that children’s brains are still literally developing when trauma occurs and those of us who grew up with trauma often have to spend a portion of our adult lives learning and developing our mental and emotional resources later in life.

“When children experience trauma while their brains are still developing, they may have fewer protective factors — and therefore risk more life-lasting consequences. If you experienced trauma as a child, this could explain why it seems to leak into everything you do in ways you might still be discovering.

This is not to say experiencing trauma as an adult doesn’t have devastating, life-long consequences, or that your traumatic experience counts “less” if it happened later in life. But it is true that adults who experienced less childhood trauma often have stronger foundations to deal with the trauma adulthood throws their way.”

What’s also interesting, as you read through the rest of the link below, remember that we all develop differently and we all react to trauma differently. One particular mental or emotional development that one survivor already had prior to trauma, might not have been present for the next survivor when they experienced trauma, even if the ages were similar.

When we talk about the effects of child abuse and other childhood traumas that last well into adulthood, this is what we are talking about. The normal development cycle was simply disrupted and we now must play catch-up.

It’s not impossible to learn and develop even as an adult, but first we need to stop blaming ourselves for both the trauma, and the effects of the trauma. We need to be open to learning new tools without judging ourselves for not already knowing how to fix ourselves.

If it were that easy, everyone would do it. Clearly that isn’t happening.

https://themighty.com/2022/03/why-the-age-you-experienced-trauma-matters/