In this paper on childhood traumas, we will look at how they affect emotional imbalances in adulthood. A child's body holds such deep feelings and manifests those that were never given to him.

Many adults live with their repressed feelings for a lifetime, and many cannot even resolve these feelings. We will see that certain actions in adult life are a reflection of the traumas experienced in childhood and have never been treated in the proper way.

To do this, we will understand definitions of trauma. We will discuss the most common types of traumas that originate in childhood. of the child's brain by means of these traumas. Finally, we will talk about the consequences of these traumas in adulthood, and how traumas can define certain attitudes in adult life.

Table of Contents

• Childhood Traumas: What is trauma?
  • The types of childhood traumas
  • Psychological Assault
  • The Violence
• Physical Aggression as Childhood Trauma
• Sexual Abuse
• Childhood Abandonment and Trauma
  • Patterns of inferiority
• Brain development and childhood trauma
  • Brain development
• The consequences in adult life
• Conclusion: on psychoanalysis and childhood trauma
  • Bibliographic references

Childhood Traumas: What is trauma?

Trauma is a word of Greek origin, referring to wound. Each individual has a way of reacting to situations experienced, from quiet ways to more aggressive ones. Most of our attitudes are connected to events we have experienced in the past. S ccording to Lacan, trauma is understood as the entry of the subject into the symbolic world; it is not an accident in the life of the speaker, but the constitutive trauma of subjectivity.

For Winnicott "Trauma is that which breaks the idealization of an object by the individual's hatred, reactive to the failure of this object to perform its function" (Winnicott, 1965/1994, p. 113) "The notion of trauma retains the idea that it is an essential economic concept of psychic energy: a frustration in the face of which the ego suffers a psychic injury, is unable to process it, and relapses into astatus ZIMERMAN, 1999, P. 113).

In other words, traumas are painful experiences that remain in a person's unconscious, and these experiences can modify a person's behavior throughout life, p Trauma triggers several types of symptoms that can be physical or emotional.

The types of childhood traumas

Childhood is the most important time for the development of the psychological profile of the human being. Children have a very great ability to absorb all kinds of stimuli that occurred in their childhood It is a period where you learn a lot, But it is also a period when certain traumas happen that leave permanent scars until adulthood. Below we will present some of the main types of traumas that a child suffers and carries until adulthood.

Psychological Assault

Living a life in violence is not a pleasant thing, regardless of age. Psychological aggression often manifests itself in different ways, and they are not always as explicit as most people understand. Psychological aggression is the most "common" trauma that occurs during a child's childhood, this trauma manifests itself in a violent way in adulthood, because its triggers are deeply rooted.

Many times, as a way to "educate" the child, parents or guardians end up saying words and phrases to the child that are often in a threatening tone. For example: "boy, if I come over there, I'm going to hit you; if you do it again, you're going to be grounded; Behave yourself or the bogeyman will get you; don't cry for nonsense", among many other phrases that are said to children every day.

These violent lines, which mark the soul of a child, try to be justified by parents or guardians because they are tired from their daily activities at work, and when they get home, they still have to take care of a defenseless being that does not understand the world still and that it is in its learning moment. But what many parents don't remember is that they themselves were like this one day in their lives.

The Violence

This is a type of trauma caused by psychological aggression, which often generates a feeling of guilt on the part of the children. The child "sabotaging" himself by changing himself to become a person he was not born to be, All this to prevent it from getting in the way of the parents' day to day life.

Such attitudes destroy the child's self-esteem and generate an accumulation of emotional wounds, and many times the child grows up to be a violent person, because she grew up with violent stimuli. Such reflections are more subtle and are difficult to see, much more so than bruises or scars.

Physical Aggression as Childhood Trauma

Several types of aggression suffered by children today are considered "normal" by older adults, because according to them "a good spanking doesn't hurt, it educates". Not so different from psychological violence, physical aggression also leaves deep scars in the child's soul. According to Marco Gama (president of the Scientific Department of Safety of the Brazilian Society ofPediatrics) in the period from 2010 to August 2020, about 103,149 (one hundred and three thousand, one hundred and forty-nine) children and adolescents up to 19 years of age died victims of aggression in Brazil alone.

The pandemic only contributed to highlight what many people didn't want to admit, child physical violence is growing every day in this country. A child that is physically assaulted in its childhood by a person that it understood to be its "protector", generates traumas that many times are difficult to be worked through in a psychoanalytic psychotherapy session. Imagine that a child isassaulted every day when she gets to the school stage, where she would have the opportunity to socialize with other children, she will just pass on what she has been "taught", that is, she will hit the other children as a way to protect herself from possible aggression from others.

And a child who grows up aggressive becomes an aggressive adult, often angry at the male figure (be it a father or stepfather), which ends up making the relationship and trust in the male person more difficult. Even because the child is encouraged from an early age to hit the other, as a stronger child, thus demonstrating their power and authority before the others.

Sexual Abuse

Sexual abuse is a way in which an adult seeks sexual satisfaction from a child. It usually happens through physical or verbal threats, or even manipulation/seduction. And in the vast majority of cases the danger is much closer than one can imagine, the abuser is a person known to the child/adolescent (usually family members, neighbors or close family friends).

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To be considered abuse does not necessarily require touching the child, as it can often be verbal, or even observe a child in his underwear taking a hose bath. Not all children will react the same way when they experience a type of sexual violence, for each reaction will depend on many factors (internal and external) that will shape the impact this violence will have on the victim's life in the future. Some of these factors are:

• the silence of the parents,
• not to believe the child,
• the duration of the abuse;
• the type of violence;
• the degree of proximity to the aggressor,
• among other factors.

Such events can significantly alter a person's life, especially sexually, because for a girl abused in childhood, there can be feelings of disgust with her partner, feelings of not deserving, and a total or partial absence of libido. For boys, ejaculation difficulty, or premature ejaculation, can occur. And in both cases the search for partners of the same sex can occur, as a form of unconscious protection.

Childhood Abandonment and Trauma

Psychoanalyst John Bowlby (1907-1990), developer of attachment theory, states that: "the absence of maternal or paternal care, or of a substitute caregiver, leads to sadness, anger, and distress. A common feeling of abandonment among all people is the fear of being alone.

Abandonment does not necessarily have to be the fact that a child is left at the door of a foster home. Abandonment is often in simpler, everyday forms:

• ignore a child who wants to play;
• reject a child because he is considered to be special (an autistic person, for example);
• offend a child because he has done something that the adult thinks is right (for example, calling him a donkey);
• not to welcome the child;
• commit acts of injustice against the child.

These acts are present in the everyday life of adults, but they often don't realize the mistake they are making with the child. What happens to a child in his childhood will end the type of adult he will become in the future. The lack of welcoming, of understanding, of empathy and respect are factors that hinder the healthy development of a child.

Patterns of inferiority

Being close to a child, giving attention, affection, being present, are things that all adults could do, but for lack of these activities children develop certain patterns of inferiority, insecurity, lack of social interaction. When paternal or maternal abandonment happens, the child cannot understand the real intention of the father or mother, or understand his feelings toward her.

Thus the child develops a variety of negative emotions, which become part of his being and are carried over into adulthood. This feeling creates a mark deep inside the children, where it is felt, consciously and unconsciously.

Brain development and childhood trauma

The brain is the most complex organ in the human body, and its development begins already during gestation, starting on the 18th day of pregnancy, and its total maturation will only occur around the age of 25. The first years of a child's life are fundamental for the full development of its brain, and this development has a very significant role that will reflect in the adult phase.

Basically, the brain's function is to determine who we are and what we do, but in the infant stage, the brain develops through various aspects of a child's life, such as: decision-making, self-knowledge, relationships, and schooling, among others. According to Freud, the first trauma that the individual suffers is at birth, where the individual was inside his mother's womb, in his true "paradise", However, during birth, the child is removed from its "paradise" and thrown into the real world, unknown until then and that, in order to survive, the child must learn to adapt to its new reality, with this rupture Freud called this trauma "Paradise Lost".

Positive childhood experiences contribute greatly to healthy brain development, allowing your brain development to be sound and have a more solid structure to overcome difficulties. According to Friedmann, "the process of brain development is especially intense, as the foundations for the child's acquisition of physical, intellectual, and emotional abilities are formed."

Brain development

Gradually, the child's brain develops through the nourishment obtained from the stimuli around it, which are often inadequately cared for, and of course through the child's interaction with other children, and from observing and listening to their adult caregivers.

Good social interactions carried out in childhood contribute to boosting a child's healthy brain development. If a child is neglected (and most of the time it is totally neglected), many stages of brain development can fail to happen, which can (and will) affect their potential to learn and develop.

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The consequences in adult life

No one comes out unscathed from the traumas suffered in childhood, not even Freud can escape. A trauma experienced in childhood doesn't just serve as a learning experience, but leaves certain scars, and these scars can continue to hurt and can change the child's way of relating in adulthood. The impact caused by a trauma experienced in childhood is very deep and particular to each person. In the past, and even before the pandemic, it was very difficult for parents to believe that their child might be suffering from some kind of trauma caused mainly by them, and many times such feelings were judged as "coolness".

But after humanity started to go through this pandemic period it can be observed how the mental health of children and adolescents really was. We must emphasize the importance of certain pillars that support the psychological development of a child need to be consolidated. It is common for a child to reach the adult phase of his life with a feeling of "emptiness", as if something was missing for him, and that many times even he cannot tell what is missing.

Violence (psychological or physical), sexual abuse, and feelings of abandonment combined with disrespect towards the child are very strong elements capable of causing the child to develop traumas that will be carried throughout his life, causing the child to seek outside (in other people) what he could not fulfill with his parents / guardians. For these reasons it is common thatan adult who has suffered childhood traumas makes it difficult to maintain solid and satisfying relationships, because this child has failed to develop a solid foundation and has not had a pleasurable (satisfying) feeling with the one who should provide him with love, affection and care.

Conclusion: on psychoanalysis and childhood trauma

Traumas are more common in childhood than happy moments. The human being has the ability to adapt to all circumstances that life throws at him, and the infant brain has the ability to store everything what was witnessed in childhood, whether good or bad. But certain events usually leave marks, and these marks remain for many years and can bring not very good consequences in adulthood.

It is not easy to care for a child's wound when our own child is still wounded. This paper sought to define clearly what trauma is and to identify the main traumas that occur in childhood, as well as their consequences when not properly cared for. The psychoanalytic approach is extremely important to treat the most common traumas that occurred in a person's childhood.

Through the methods of this technique it is possible to bring about an understanding of how a person's current attitudes are linked to certain events that occurred in childhood, and thus it is possible to treat the wound of the soul, keeping in mind that the mark of this wound will remain, but after the analysis it will be possible to touch this wound without feeling pain. This is the most important thing for a person's mental health.

Bibliographic references

FRIEDMANN, Adriana et al. Brain development (Online). Available at: //www.primeirainfanciaempauta.org.br/a-crianca-e-seu-desenvolvimento-o-desenvolvimento-cerebral.html/. Accessed on: Sep. 2022. GRANDA, Alana. Agressões contra crianças aumentaram na pandemia, diz especialista Maus-tratos devem ser denunciados a órgãos como os conselhos tutelares. (Online). Available at: . Accessed on: Sep.2022. henrique, Emerson. psychotherapy course, theory, techniques, practices and use. (Online). available at: //institutodoconhecimento.com.br/lp-psychotherapy/. access on: apr. 2022. harris, Nadine Burke. deep evil: how our bodies are affected by childhood traumas and what to do to break this cycle; translated by Marina Vargas. 1st ed. rio de Janeiro: record, 2019. miller, Alice. the revolt of thebody; translated by Gercélia Batista de Oliveira Mendes; revised by Rita de Cássia Machado - São Paulo: Editora WMF Martins Fontes, 2011. PERRY, Bruce D. The boy raised as a dog: what traumatized children can teach about loss, love and healing - translated by Vera Caputo - São Paulo: Versos, 2020. ZIMERMAN, David E. Psychoanalytic Foundations: theory, technique and clinic - an approachPorto Alegre: Artmed, 1999.

This article on childhood traumas was written by SAMMIR M. S. SALIM, for the Psychoanalysis Clinic blog. Leave your comments, compliments, criticisms and suggestions below.