From Broken Boy to Mended ManSample

Starting to Understand Your Childhood Wounds

How do childhood wounds affect us as adults? Some of us are angry. Some are sad. Many of us are both—and confused. If your parents were self-absorbed, angry, or abusive, that might make your emotions easier to understand. Or maybe, like me, you’re confused and feel guilty for being so upset because your parents were “nice” people.

Whatever your specific situation, the result is that you have a hard time believing people really care about you.

The first stage of highly regarded psychologist Erik Erickson’s theory of human development is “trust versus mistrust.” Early in life, a child decides whether the world is a safe or a dangerous place. If people do not care about your needs when you are young and vulnerable, the stage is set for you to look at the world with suspicion, fear, and mistrust.

So if one or both of your parents didn’t care (or care enough), it’s no surprise you have doubts and suspicions that anyone else would care either. In fact, today you are wary of people who seem to care. You don’t trust their motives. You’re waiting for the thud of that next shoe to drop.

You find it difficult to trust people’s sincerity when they express genuine affection for you. It’s risky to accept someone’s delight in you. What if it’s fake? What if it’s real, but I don’t measure up or can’t perform to their satisfaction? What if they change their mind? Then what?

You lack self-confidence in relationships. You’re still unsure that you’re okay, a good person, worth helping, or worth caring about—even if you’re a proven leader with significant skills and accomplishments. You’re on high alert, and you struggle to tell real affection from fake intimacy.

Because you fear repeating the cycle of pain, like me, you tend to feel reserved or guarded when you walk into a room. Everyone has self-doubts, but yours are exaggerated. You often feel left out, excluded, out of the loop, overlooked, uninvited. You assume, They don’t want me.

You have difficulty developing close friendships (although once you do, you are the most fiercely loyal friend someone could ever have). When people don’t give you enough positive feedback, you assume they will let you down and abandon you, and you have experiences to back this up.

You’re insecure about where you stand with people—even those closest to you. Even your spouse. That’s how bad it can get.

To protect yourself from this pain, you’ve walled yourself in and others out. At times, you feel starved for love and friendship, but the risk of being hurt seems greater than the reward of letting someone in.

As you reflect on your own childhood wounds, to what extent do you have a hard time believing people really care about you?