Our Child Within who has experienced disrespect often have difficulty identifying, expressing, and managing emotions, and have limited voice for feeling states.

Our Child Within who has experienced disrespect often have difficulty identifying, expressing, and managing emotions, and have limited voice for feeling states. We internalise and/or externalise stress reactions and as a result experience significant depression, anxiety, or anger. Our emotional responses become unpredictable or explosive. Our child hidden within may react to a reminder of a traumatic event with trembling, anger, sadness, or avoidance. We who have a complex history, reminders of various traumatic events may be everywhere in our environment. We react often, react powerfully, and have difficulty calming down when upset. Since the triggers are often of an interpersonal nature, even mildly stressful interactions with others may serve as trigger reminders and result in intense emotional responses. Having learned that the world is a dangerous place where even loved ones can’t be trusted to protect you,our child within are vigilant and guarded in our interactions with others and are likely to perceive all situations as stressful or dangerous. While this defensive posture is protective when we are under attack, it becomes problematic in situations that do not warrant such intense reactions. Alternately, many of us also learn to “tune out” (emotional numbing) to threats in their environment, making them vulnerable to re-victimisation.

Difficulty managing emotions is pervasive and occurs in the absence of relationships as well. Having never learned how to calm ourselves down once we are upset, many of us become easily overwhelmed.  We become so frustrated that we give up on even small tasks that present a challenge. We who have experienced early and intense events also have an increased likelihood of being fearful all the time and in many situations. We are more likely to experience depression .