What are the root causes of trauma? | How to Recover from Childhood Trauma Series, part 1/3

Ever had someone or something save your life, literally, metaphorically, spiritually, or all of the above? 

The 12-step program of Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families (ACA) and its supportive community was that for me. It saved me in all the ways. I swear this isn’t an exaggeration. 

You may be wondering, Saved you from what exactly? 

That’s easy. From falling into the black hole abyss of childhood complex trauma. From living a life out of fear, squandering any and all potential for real love, joy, freedom, peace, connection, empowerment, creative expression...the list goes on. 

I’m on the other side of that black hole today. That’s not to say that I don’t struggle. I promise you I do but it’s worlds apart from where I started. My mission now as a fellow traveler and an Internal Family Systems (IFS) trained psychotherapist is to serve high achieving, passionate professionals, and big-hearted creatives who are ALSO adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families. Or adults who experienced childhood complex trauma. 

Hey you, I’m speaking to you.

Yes, you. The one reading this who’s on the edge of that black hole abyss. I see you.

The one who’s burned out from putting on a brave face while living a secret life of fear. I see you. 

I’ve made it my life’s work to show up for you so you don’t have to go through what I went through. 

Here’s the truth—you deserve more than that. 

You’re worth having your own insides match your outsides. 

You’re worth being and feeling in alignment with the innate power within you. 

You’re worth belonging to yourself, to people that genuinely love you for YOU, and to something greater than yourself however you define that. 

You’re worth becoming the hero of your own story. 

This is why I’ve created a 12-step Self-Hero program that looks at your particular flavor of trauma and past baggage through the lens of Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy, a holistic, non-pathologizing, evidence-based psychotherapeutic approach developed by Richard C. Schwartz, Phd. This program can be used alongside your personal therapy, the ACA program, or on its own depending on where you’re at and what works for you. 

This blog post is Part 1 of a 3-part Self-Hero series that will be your introductory road map to the journey of becoming the loving hero of your own story.

I’m going to be tackling questions like:

• Who are adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families (ACAs)?

• How do you become an adult child?

• How to know if you’re an adult living with childhood trauma?

• What are the underlying root causes of childhood trauma impacting you right now? 

If you’re already an ACA fellow traveler, I’m writing this for you. I’m dedicated to giving back to all the adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families out there committing one step at a time (if you’re anything like me one breath at a time) to healing your traumas, emerging out of your secret life of fear and into a life rooted in your self-care and self-love. 

If you’re just learning about adult children or wondering if you’re an adult child, I’m writing this for you too. I’m dedicated to guiding you. You, my friend, are at the brink of discovering that there’s a whole other safe, loving world out there and inside of you waiting to be seen, heard, known, and felt by you. 

I’d like to start with a confession. 

When I was 16 years old, my cousin who was 10 years older than me was in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). And I was so jealous of him. Let me explain. We spent a summer together in our tiny mountaintop village in Southern Greece near Sparta (yes, that Sparta) where there were more olive trees than people. There we would lose all concept of time as we sipped our beachside iced coffee or ate our mountaintop lamb chops talking about life, suffering, purpose, and what it really means to change. I couldn’t name it at the time but in retrospect we were also talking about our traumas. 

I can’t say that “trauma” was on my radar as a 16-year-old teen but I was definitely on trauma’s radar. She followed me wherever I went (even in places that looked like paradise) and sucked the color out of my world leaving me in a grey, muted version of reality. I was using whatever strategy I had to escape her. Dissociation, numbing, and obsessive compulsive strategies were top of the list. But she would wait for me at the pit of my belly reminding me through a stinging, burning, piercing sensation that she was still there. A relentless, stalker poltergeist stabbing me from the inside. I’ve got to admire her persistence. 

Did anyone else feel like this? Or was it just me? 

My cousin was like me only that he used to drink to escape. Now he was fighting his battle with his trauma poltergeist with a newfound perspective, a community, a mission, the structure of 12 steps, and a spiritual lens through which to navigate the world. Everything I wanted to escape from, the shame, the vulnerability, the pain of being so lost I couldn’t pick my own self out of a police lineup, he was facing alongside other brave souls and survivors of trauma. He shared the Serenity Prayer with me and my jaw dropped. I fell to my knees gasping. I wasn’t even religious but I wanted that. All of it. Maybe (or most definitely) not the alcoholism part. But everything else. 

Ok here it goes. I’m embarrassed to admit this….

But for the sake of being real—a small part of me actually wished I was an alcoholic so that I could belong to this AA world. Or at the very least I wished there was a program for people like me that I could work. I didn’t even know what that would look like or be like.

Something inside me deeply resonated with people showing up for themselves and one another as they traveled a clearly defined path with guideposts (as any good Type A personality would dream of). I wanted to climb out of my rock bottom—also known as exorcise the trauma poltergeist from the pit of my belly—and come to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to my sanity. 

Restore me to feeling safe. 

Restore me to not feeling lost. 

Restore me to not being in pain. 

Restore the color in my world. 

Restore me. Period. Full Stop. 

Fast forward 12 years later. It’s winter in Athens. 

It’s Tuesday night. I’m sitting alone at the corner cafe drinking my cappuccino showered in my preferred inordinate amount of cinnamon while a Coldplay song plays in the background. I’m on the phone with my dear friend and soul sister Kristina. I’m writhing in pain like someone took my soul, froze it, and shattered it into a million pieces with a pickaxe. I’m having what can only be described as an “emotion seizure'' although I’m pretty sure I could feel every cell of my body physically shaking. I’m in a public place of course so I’ve got to keep it all under wraps. Fortunately for me, the lighting was dim and I was seated at a back table.

I’d just had another falling out with my family in New York. 

One that had me leave NY yet again and move back to Athens. One that had me feeling stupid for trusting them again or trusting that things could be different. One that triggered the abandoned, neglected, abused inner child parts of me that I lovingly refer to as emotional orphans. As if that wasn’t enough, my family thought I was “crazy” (disclaimer: their word, not mine). If I was at a different place in my life, chances are there would be a big, loud part of me doubting my own sanity. 

Gaslighting, anyone? Not here. Not now. Mercifully. 

So I’m on the phone with Kristina. To be fair, she’s more on the phone with me as I vent and purge all my insides onto her. Then the seven words come out of her mouth that would change my life, “Maybe you should look into this website?”

It’s the official website for Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families. Before she could say another word, my laptop’s open and I’m scanning the entire website and literature of the program. 

I fall into what’s referred to as the pink cloud. 

I feel the trauma poltergeist at the pit of my belly loosen up her grip just enough for me to experience a real sense of hope and possibility. 

Maybe there IS another way to live. 

Maybe, like my cousin in AA, I too can have a newfound perspective, community, mission, 12 step program, and spiritual lens through which to navigate the world.

Maybe I don’t need to become an alcoholic to belong to the AA world (or any world for that matter). 

Maybe I AM an adult child and this program is for people like me. 

Maybe, and just maybe for this once, I got what I wished for. A real way out of my pain and back to myself. Not escaping. Not numbing. True freedom. Power. Belonging. Self-love. 

Sign me up yesterday, please. 

As I sit here now writing this at 6 in the morning, a part of me wants to send a shoutout to Kristina, my loving, fierce, supportive fellow traveler who’s witnessed me at my worst and best with equal kindness and her signature no bullshit attitude. None of this would be possible without her.

So Who Are Adult Children Of Alcoholics And Dysfunctional Families?

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to time travel? I have. And then I realized I don’t have to wonder. I’m time traveling all the time! And you probably are too. I noticed throughout my healing journey that whenever I was “triggered” or overwhelmed by someone or something, I was mentally, emotionally and physically time traveling to the past. Similar to a flashback. 

Case in point. I had to make an important business decision a few years ago. I became so overwhelmed by a little voice that said, Who am I to make this decision? I don’t want to have to do this. I can’t do this. What voice was that? 

I went inside and recognized it as the voice of 5-year-old me. 

She was in the driver’s seat and thought she had to navigate this situation. I’m sorry to say but I don’t think 5-year-olds should have that level of responsibility when it comes to making business decisions. Or any decision for that matter. No matter how bright or lovely they are. 

The same is true for when I’m time traveling to the future. When I'm projecting myself into the future playing out the worst case scenarios (sound familiar?), I'm still time traveling to the past. 

You may be thinking, What kind of crazy, mind-bending inner physics is this? I know I would.

I was troubleshooting all the ways any business decision I made could go horribly wrong leaving me poor, desperate, and homeless. I went inside and again recognized that 5-year-old in me. I was seeing my future worst case scenarios through her anxious eyes. Past me was in the driver’s seat again. As an adult with clarity and calm, I could see that the numbers in any scenario just didn’t add up to “poor, desperate, and homeless.” 

Numbers don’t mean anything to an anxious 5-year-old of course. I get where my 5-year-old was coming from. It was an important business decision that would have long-term consequences. But it wasn’t a life-or-death situation even though to her it felt like it. Because let’s face it—poor thing has been through a lot. 

This is the textbook definition of an adult child. 

When confronted with a situation that makes us feel vulnerable, we time travel to a stage in our childhood. According to the ACA Big Book: 

The term “adult child” means that we respond to adult interactions with the fear and self-doubt learned as children. This undercurrent of hidden fear can sabotage our choices and relationships. We can appear outwardly confident while living with a constant question of our worth. 

In the Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy world, we say that a part “blends,” which means it takes over the driver’s seat just like my 5-year-old self did. We’re traumatized and these parts of us are effectively stuck or frozen at the time and place the childhood wounding occurred. We end up using the survival strategies they learned back then and there. 

I can’t tell you the number of times my clients have been overwhelmed and, after doing some inner work, we come to realize that my clients are in fact NOT overwhelmed. Inner child parts of them are stuck in the past blending, making them time travel to a time and place where survival strategies were limited to say the least. 

This happened with a client who argued with her partner constantly. She came to realize her 10-year-old self was defending the needs of a 38-year-old grown woman to her 40-year-old husband. Can you imagine how strange, disorienting, and hopeless it must’ve felt for a 10-year-old to advocate for a 38-year old woman’s need to be heard for god’s sake? 

Another client of mine was trying to make a decision about whether or not she wanted to have a baby. She later discovered that her 12-year-old self was in the driver’s seat. Can you imagine how confusing and scary it must’ve been for a 12-year-old to decide “to baby or to not baby” on behalf of a 34-year-old woman? 

If you’ve had a childhood where abuse, neglect, or emotionally absent caregiving were present, then chances are you have a constellation of parts stuck in the past that to this day are working overtime to help you survive. We can acknowledge, appreciate, and honor these parts because back then and there it worked. We survived after all. 

Here I’d like to circle back to my trauma poltergeist.

Remember the one that was sucking the color out of my world, stalking me, living in the pit of my belly, and stabbing me from the inside? 

SPOILER ALERT: Plot twist ahead!

What appeared all along to be a “villain” or “inner demon” that needed to be confronted and vanquished ASAP was not that at all. The trauma poltergeist is a young part of me carrying my trauma or childhood wounds around. 

She’s a wounded inner child who was stuck like a bug in amber. I know her now. She lived in the pit of my belly screaming out for a chance to release all the hurt she’s been carrying for years and even decades. Her blending with me and making me time travel to the past was my default state. 

That’s the hard truth about being an adult child. Blending with parts, time traveling to the past, experiencing flashbacks, using survival strategies learned as a child--however you want to call it--this is our autopilot. Our norm. 

I’m here to tell you that there is another way to live. You CAN heal your childhood wounds. You CAN help these parts of you go from using survival strategies to thriving strategies. Trauma is not a life sentence. Trauma resolved can be a gift.

“Trauma is hell on earth. Trauma resolved is a gift from the gods,” as founder of Somatic Experiencing and Trauma Expert Peter Levine, Phd. says.

More on that in Part 3 of this Self-Hero Series where I’ll lay out the 12 steps to heal from childhood trauma. First you have to understand a bit more about how this all happens. 

How Do We Become Adult Children Of Alcoholics Or Dysfunctional Families?

Well we have to have an alcoholic or otherwise dysfunctional family, for one thing. “Dysfunction” exists along a continuum and can range from experiencing physical, emotional, sexual abuse and/or extreme neglect on one end to inadequate or insufficient caregiving marked by emotionally absent or overwhelmed parents on the other. When I say “parent” I’m referring to any caregiver who took on the role of parenting. 

Your parents could land somewhere on this continuum and struggle with extreme addiction or compulsions. Or not. Chances are belittling, threatening, shaming, hateful, critical, and/or indifferent behavior by your parents was part of your everyday life as a child. Perhaps your parents served you up a combination platter of physical, verbal, and emotional abuse on a bed of perfectionism sprinkled with controlling and all-or-nothing thinking, and a side of criticism with extra harshness. You probably received the message, “Don’t talk. Don’t trust. Don’t feel.” 

I’m not very comfortable with the word “dysfunction” and neither are many of my clients. The prefix dys- stems from the ancient Greek word for ill, bad, diseased, abnormal, or faulty. This is not a compassionate or accurate view of our own struggles or those of others. Your parents are also adult children after all. 

They too were time traveling to the past while raising you as a result of their unresolved trauma. They too must’ve felt like a 10-year-old responsible for the physical and emotional well-being of a toddler having a full-on meltdown between the cereal and cleaning detergent aisles at the supermarket with all eyes on them. This in no way is meant to excuse, minimize, or rationalize away the abuse or neglect that you experienced. My intention is to offer a greater context that overtime can be clarifying and shed a forgiving light on yourself, especially the parts of you that have had less than stellar moments as an adult in the process of trying to survive. 

The bottom line is that we become adult children because our parents were adult children whose lives were driven by fear. 

That’s why I firmly believe that one aspect of our purpose as adult children is to become chain breakers. To become one more healed person in the world and to model for future generations (whether you have kids or not) what it means to be born in the belly of the beast, claw your way out by the skin of your teeth, and move on to have a thriving life not in spite of but because of your childhood wounds.

One of the ACA mantras is “Keep It Simple.” 

And I always have to ask myself, “What if I could make this easy for myself and others? What would that look like?” To find the real way out we have to understand how we got here in the first place. For simplicity’s sake here, I’d like to dig a little deeper and talk about what all of our childhoods have in common. The common denominator of childhood trauma so to speak.

The childhood of an adult child is marked by wounds of abandonment, powerlessness, and worthlessness. I call these three primal wounds because they strike at the heart of our Being-ness, our right to Be as human as they come. Our right to Be and feel alive and aligned with our life force.  

The Two Dilemmas Of Adult Children Of Alcoholics And Dysfunctional Families 

Two dilemmas appeared to us as children like forks in the road that would lead us to our childhood wounding. 

The first dilemma of connection: “To belong or be me?” 

The first dilemma you faced was having to choose between yourself and others. Between your connection to yourself and your connection to others to be more exact. You got these messages early on:

• You couldn’t be yourself and be accepted and loved. You have to abandon yourself or be abandoned by others. This is the abandonment wound. 

• You’re not worthy of attachment, or love and connection to others if you’re being you (and all that is you). This is the worthlessness wound. 

• Your authenticity, or connection to yourself, an evolutionary need in its own right would risk your attachment to your caregivers. Your authenticity is inextricably linked to your power. When you’re authentic it means you have access to the parts of you that hold the gifts of your intuition, gut feeling, inner knowing, or inner compass. Our ancestors needed these internal resources to survive in the wild. When you sacrifice your authenticity, you lose access to your power gifts. This is the powerlessness wound. 

• You couldn’t belong as your authentic self to the people who held your life in their hands. That’s registered in your nervous system as an existential threat. When what should’ve been sources of love and connection that reflect back to us our own belonging, worth, and power as human beings become sources of threat, we experience childhood trauma. 

Here’s the first dilemma in its various reincarnations. Be yourself and sacrifice acceptance, love, and belonging. Or in an attempt to receive all of the above, sacrifice yourself. Honor all parts of yourself to preserve your authenticity OR exile parts of yourself that threaten connection. Access your power to become self-sufficient OR deny your power to receive love and protection from powerful others. Abandon yourself OR be abandoned by others. Betray yourself OR betray others. Disconnect from yourself OR disconnect from others. Choose authenticity OR attachment.  

Can you guess which one your young brain chose? 

The solution to this dilemma that most of us “choose” is to exile parts of ourselves that risk the tenuous attachment to our caregivers. I say “choose” in quotes because it’s not a conscious decision after all. And let’s be honest. It’s a false choice. Can you really choose otherwise?  You were a child whose life depended upon your parents. You developed strategies that helped you fit into what’s expected of you for the sake of survival. “Fitting in is the opposite of belonging,” as shame and vulnerability researcher Brene Brown says. 

When faced with this false choice between authenticity and attachment, you suffered a tremendous loss. You lost access to your sense of true belonging, worthiness, and power. You lost access to your ability to accept and love yourself as you are. You lost access to your capacity to trust yourself. You lost access to the belief that you could have a loving relationship with yourself and safe others. I say lost access instead of lost. Nothing was ever lost, damaged, or broken within you no matter what hell you’ve been through. Contrary to popular belief. I believe this with every cell in my body as a fellow traveler and therapist on this healing journey with you. 

Belonging, worthiness, and power are all innate qualities of being human. They are your birthright. You never lose them. You just temporarily disconnect from them because you got bogged down or burdened by messages that contradicted who you are at your core. That violated your Being. And guess what? Whatever you picked up you can let go of. It’s a memory issue in the end. And you can recover. You CAN have a full remembrance of your right to be in loving connection with yourself and others. 

The second dilemma of responsibility, “To blame me or them?”

The second dilemma is related to how you go about solving the first dilemma. Regardless of how young you were at the time of your trauma, your sense of inner knowing registers the wounding and absorbs its impact. Your inner system is wired to minimize the impact as much as possible as part of your survival strategy. You intuitively try to make sense of what’s happening to you and regain a sense of power and control. Here it is: Blame yourself or blame others. Am I really that bad that I deserve this or do I deserve better and it’s, therefore, my parents who are bad and treat me unfairly?

The second option of “bad” parents leaves you on shaky ground in terms of your survival (which depends on unsafe others). It also violates your sense of power and control over your own life. If the people you’re supposed to depend on to experience a sense of belonging and worthiness treat you unfairly and unpredictably even when you’re “good,” then how can you believe that you can affect outcomes with your behavior? How can you believe that you have the power to change your behavior and therefore control your environment?

Your turn again. Can you guess which option your young, tender brain chose this time around?

It’s much easier to believe that you’re bad and deserve to be treated poorly.

Are you surprised by this answer? Think about it.

If you’re bad and deserve this (whatever “this” is in your case), then you still have power and control. It means you can get better and change how others treat you. It means you’re still an agent in your own life. And it means that your parents are safe so it’s also safe to belong. It’s just you who needs to change. In a genius yet twisted way it’s a hopeful escape route out of this dilemma. Your little brain back then and there was trying to protect you by preserving your power and belonging. Even if it meant temporarily losing access to your worthiness by taking on the belief that you’re bad or deserving of neglect or abuse. Chances are you also took on the belief that worthiness was something you had to achieve, be given, earn, buy, or be deemed by something or someone outside of you. 

As a member of the Walking Wounded Club (aka high achievers, perfectionists, brave-face wearers who are ALSO survivors of childhood trauma), you may have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility for others’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. You may have a hard time knowing where someone else ends and you begin. Striving and perfectionism can feel like recurring yeast infections that don’t go away regardless of how many probiotics you take. You may have boundaries that shape shift between loose, slimy floating jello and rock solid, sky-high fortresses. You may be a people pleaser on the one hand and an angry, ruthless fire-breathing dragon on the other. Work may consume you to the point of burnout.   

You have strong, dedicated protective parts that took on survival strategies focused on controlling and manipulating the external world. Their intention was to minimize the impact of the abuse and neglect and maximize the chances of experiencing belonging, worthiness, and power. Together they developed layers of high tech, AI-level protective armor undetectable to the human eye. This armor can be so impenetrable even YOU are unaware of your primal wounds. In the meantime, your inner child parts are suffering the injuries of abandonment, unworthiness, and powerlessness deep in the abyss.

I’m going to be putting oour protective armor as adult children under the microscope to help you unlock and understand the survival strategies, core fears, and primal wounds your inner system developed in Part 2 of this Self-Hero series. The more you understand about your internal family system and childhood trauma, the more you can embrace your capacity for loving connection and authenticity. The more you can claim your power and become the loving hero of your own story. 

In Part 3 of this Self-Hero series, I’m going to deep dive into the 12 Self-Hero steps that you can take to heal your wounds, recover your innate belonging, worthiness, and powerfulness, let go of fear that keeps you stuck in survival mode, and discover your thriving strategies. These steps will be informed by the evidence-based, Internal Family Systems Therapy approach.

Take a deep breath to check in. If it feels right for you, invite your attention inside. Does this resonate with you? What’s going on inside your body? Is there a sense of lightness, softness, tingling, expansiveness, upward movement? If it does, your next step is to book a free consultation with me. 

I believe in my bones that you already are the hero of your own story and all you need to do is uncover the innate healing potential within you. You CAN heal from your past and achieve the life deep down you know you’re worthy of. And I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be painful or uncomfortable. You CAN feel joy, peace, freedom, and love along the way. 

Now, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section below. Here’s some food for thought: 

• Which of the three primal wounds (abandonment, worthlessness, powerlessness) applies most to you? And which do you feel needs the most healing and attention for you to move forward in your life? 

• What are your thoughts, feelings, reactions to the dilemmas you had to face as a child?  Do some parts of you prioritize authenticity whereas others prioritize belonging, or “fitting in”? Do some parts of you blame yourself while other parts of you blame others?

• If you’re new to the Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families (ACA) world and the Walking Wounded Club, what’s it like to learn that there are other high achievers, perfectionists, brave-face wearers who are ALSO survivors of childhood trauma out there just like you?  

• If you’ve had experience with ACA, what’s it been like to hear a new perspective on what it means to be an adult child, especially one that’s also a member of the Walking Wounded Club? What do you wish you had known at the start of your healing journey? 

This is Part 1 of my 3-part How to Recover from Childhood Trauma Series and I can’t wait to hear from you. This is just the beginning of our conversation and hopefully many more to come. I look forward to seeing you around sofiavasi.com. 

With love xx,