Childhood trauma arises when we go through overwhelming stress that exceeds our ability to cope during our formative years. It could be the death of a loved one or a pet, rejection by a close friend, or physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Stress generates negative emotions that can distort the way you perceive yourself or others. These incorrect perceptions and shadow emotions linger on into our adult life unless you take steps to heal your inner child. So, what are the signs of childhood trauma? And, what can you do to heal and live a fulfilling adult life? Let’s discuss more below.

Common Signs that You Are Struggling with Childhood Trauma

#1: Dissociative Behavior

A childhood trauma survivor finds lots of things in their environment as triggers to re-experiencing the trauma. For example, the sound of a dog barking may remind you of an abusive parent who kept dogs. That sound will make you disconnect from others as your mind drifts back to the negative memories.

The dissociation and soul loss happen as a subconscious way for the survivor to cope. Mostly, it is those random moments when you are unable to connect to your thoughts, identity, memories, or feelings because, as the brain remembers how you felt, it triggers your body to freeze.

#2: Difficulty Concentrating

Do you find yourself asking those around you to repeat what they tell you? Your poor concentration or short attention span may come from your childhood traumatic experiences. Here, the trauma disrupts attention processes leading to gaps in your memory, blacking out, or difficulty maintaining your train of thought.

In turn, you struggle to keep a job, study, have conversations, or stay in a long-term relationship. Attention impairment can be frustrating. And, those around you may see you as arrogant. Yet, it is your mind crying out to you to deal with the unhealed childhood trauma.

#3: Extreme Desire to Stay in Control

Are you the type of person who plans for everything? And, do you get frustrated when things don’t go the way you expect? This extreme need for control is an indication of your distrust for yourself and the world in general. It stems from a childhood traumatic experience that left you feeling helpless and vulnerable.

Hence, over the years, you opt to micro-manage every aspect of your life and worry about things beyond your control.

#4: Extreme Fear of Failure

Having a certain degree of fear is healthy. It triggers your survival instincts, pushing you to make choices that get you out of danger. Often, childhood trauma can make you have a negative belief in yourself and internalize your shortcomings.

At this point, you develop unhealthy fear that outweighs your motivation to succeed. You will shy away from opportunities and stop being creative. Plus, it leads to perfectionism and insecurities.

#5: Fear of Success

Are you always holding yourself back from getting something you want? Is it that you fear what will happen once you get it? This fear of success is the fear of losing what you anticipate getting, even before you get it.

If this habit resonates with you, it could be an indication of your repressed childhood trauma. Think of it as a tendency to unconsciously sabotage your chances of success, originating from when a parent put you up for adoption or when you lost a loved one at a young age.

#6: Struggling To Ask for Help

After undergoing any form of mistreatment or abuse, many people struggle to ask for help. These individuals are too afraid to reach out to someone else, hence, preferring to suffer in silence. The fear of rejection, being seen as weak, or denied by those around them makes it impossible for the wounded person to speak out.

#7: Anger and Self-Harm

Do you lash out at people? And, when dealing with an issue, do you prefer isolating yourself from the rest of your family? Unhealed childhood trauma can cause you to become emotional, volatile, and overly sensitive. Further, you may take out the anger on yourself by abusing food, drugs, and alcohol or having suicidal tendencies.

Introspective & Spiritual Practices for Healing from Childhood Trauma

Identifying the above signs of childhood trauma is your first step towards getting the help you need to heal. Next, I share some practices you can pursue in your healing journey: –

#1: Acknowledge and recognize the trauma

Often, we tend to deny a traumatic experience, hoping it will disappear. Yet, it creates shadow emotions that disrupt your lives when we least expect it. Start your healing journey by accepting yourself as a former victim of childhood trauma. Acceptance is not about justifying the trauma. Instead, it is deciding that you want to deal with it.   

#2: Cry

If you are holding onto emotional pain and are struggling with anger or drug abuse, release these suppressed emotions through crying therapy. Emotional tears will soothe you and release feel-good chemicals that improve your moods instantly.

#3: Let go of your victim mentality

Here, you aim to reclaim control of your life by making choices based on who you are today, not your past pain.

#4: Ask for help

Here, you want to connect and share your experiences with other childhood trauma survivors. Build healthy relationships. Nurture healthy habits.

What bad habits do you have as your way to escape from your pain?

Start replacing them with good ones. Start by identifying the triggers. Keep yourself busy all the time. Also, decide on a substitute for the bad habit. Then, hold yourself accountable to a close friend or family member. Note that some habits like alcohol and drug abuse require professional intervention. For this, work with a therapist or your local support group to get the help you need.

#5: Give yourself time to heal

It takes time to let go and replace misconceptions, poor coping mechanisms, and shadow emotions from childhood. Journalize your healing journey and celebrate small wins.

Conclusion

Is childhood trauma holding you back from achieving your full potential? The out-of-control emotions, misconceptions about ourselves and those around us, or poor coping habits that leave us feeling helpless, ashamed, anxious, and depressed. If you recognize the tell-tale signs of childhood trauma in your life, it could be your inner child trying to tell you that all is not well. Then, make a conscious decision to seek help and start your healing journey.

Some kids go through a series of events that trigger heavy emotions that they can’t get their heads around. These traumatic events come as a shock, forcing a part of the child’s mind to lock and remain frozen in an immature state. Next, the child grows up acting immaturely or saying things that are not entirely correct. It is almost like another person is talking to them. If you are this grown-up child, you could be dealing with a wounded inner child.

Understanding the Inner Child

The Wounded Inner Child

Note that, we all have an inner child. You know those child-like aspects in our lives. However, it becomes a problem when this inner child makes you behave based on your childhood traumatic experiences. For example, you could be struggling with shame, anger, and fear of abandonment, depending on how your parents scolded you or how your peers bullied you. It is your wounded inner child developing coping mechanisms without you even knowing it.

How Do You Work with Your Inner Child?

Working with the inner child is about locating and healing this wounded child in us. Unlike other healing techniques, the inner child healing practice makes you look at yourself as a child. You take up a parent role and correct misconceptions and unresolved issues that interfere with your lifestyle decisions to date.

Moreover, kids learn by asking lots of questions. Likewise, our healing technique starts by asking the inner child a series of questions about our forgotten dreams, expectations, hopes, and fears. So what are the questions to ask your inner child?

The Dialogue: Re-parenting Yourself

Set aside some quiet time alone. It could be in your study room, besides a campfire in your backyard, or a picnic spot at the park. Set up your relaxing area, then question yourself and give honest answers to these questions: –

#1: What do you wish your parents knew about you?

Did you grow up having poor or no communication with your parents? Were they too strict? If so, what things about you would you wish you could tell them. It could be that you lie only to protect your mom from your abusive dad. And, when you go silent, you don’t mean to be rude. Whatever you hold back against your parents or superiors, now is the time to bring it forth and deal with it.

#2: What gets you excited and happy every morning?

Every child grows up with a passion for what they want to become. Yet, they face adults who discourage them. In turn, the kids end up pursuing careers to fit in and live an average lifestyle. Asking the inner child about their drive evokes those carefree happy feelings kids have.

#3: What would you do if you won a million-dollar jackpot today?

This question helps to bring back your childhood dreams and ambitions. By answering it, you question the things that restrict you from reaching your full potential right now. That way, you can differentiate between actual limits and your fears.

#4: If you were to advise your adult self, what would you tell him or her? What would you want this adult to remember about you?

This question addresses any self-esteem issues you have. It gets you to open up and be honest about how you view yourself vis-à-vis how you would wish those around you see you. The answers help you acknowledge your strengths and accept your flaws. Likewise, you will relate better with your loved ones.

#5: If you were to re-write your life story, how would it read? Who would you want to be the main characters?

If you love storytelling, here is a great chance to look at yourself as an outsider. Rewriting the story of your life takes stock of all your meaningful moments from childhood up to now. Hence, we remind ourselves that we are relevant to our local communities. 

Give this story a theme. Is this the theme you wanted from childhood? If not, divert this story to the person you want to be. Do this by making healthy lifestyle changes.

#6: If you were to relocate, where would you want to live?

Deciding about where you live is one of the most important decisions you will ever make. It reflects where you want to make an impact, start a family, establish a career, and grow old. Yet, many adults feel they are a victim of their bad choices. They feel stuck in jobs they hate, relationships they feel out of love, or communities with unrealistic expectations.

Exploring your relocation options helps you see that you can get out of a rat race or make drastic decisions to start your life afresh.

#7: Where do you see yourself 10 years ago?

Finally, permit yourself to go back in time. Think of a moment a decade ago or at a time just before a traumatic experience. For example, did you lose a loved one in the 9/11 tragedy? Go back to a month before that disaster. How were you?

What choices did you make now that you find hard to make today? If this traumatic experience never took place, how would you see yourself today? This final question assesses the impact of the traumatic events in our current life.

Importance of Inner Child Healing Practice

These questions to ask your inner child helps us reconnect with that frozen, immature part of our brains. It takes us back to that traumatic childhood past, highlighting how it is affecting our adult lives. Next, we come up with remedies to recondition the mind to undo all those biased thoughts about ourselves or life as a whole.

More so, inner child healing practices open up a gateway to long-forgotten possibilities, helping us pick up from when we stopped dreaming or being ambitious.

Conclusion

Inner child healing practice is a technique that permits us to heal from the most difficult childhood scars. This healing journey to wholeness must be at a child-like level. It begins with a series of questions to our inner child to connect with it. Once awake, we can open up possibilities and embrace our talents and creativity that lay dormant all these years.

Are you going through soul loss? That psyche fragmentation occurring after a traumatic experience or overwhelming shock? It is a temporary survival mechanism to help you get through the pain that comes with the trauma. So, do you do nothing about it and hope your soul will return soonest possible? Or, are there practices you can do for soul retrieval?

Well, one thing is sure. Soul loss makes you feel incomplete in all aspects of your life. This emptiness can trigger mental health problems, physical illness, and even death. Plan to take action to retrieve your lost self for better health.

Now, let’s explore how soul retrieval works:

Understanding How Soul Retrieval Works

Imagine yourself living in a big house with several rooms. Then, one day something tragic happens to you. You respond by locking all your memories, thoughts, and emotions associated with that day in one of the rooms. Yet, these thoughts are necessary for you to live a whole life.

Now, soul retrieval is about finding ways to locate this room, open the door, and retrieve this suppressed part of your soul. It entails bringing back those pieces of yourself that you may have lost over time due to difficulties like illness, loss of a loved one, abuse, accidents, or divorce.

This loss is often due to emotional trauma like bullying and severe punishment or neglect by parents. In turn, it requires hard work by the person going through the soul loss and the other person assisting in the retrieval.

Soul Retrieval Methods

There are two main approaches to soul retrieval. These are Shamanic practices and psychotherapy. We take a deeper look at each below:

Shamanic Soul Retrieval Approach

The shamanic approach to soul retrieval views the cause of illness as power loss or spirit loss. As per the principle of conservation of energy, this lost power or spirit never disappears. Instead, it takes a different form and stays that way until the day we do something to trigger it back to its former state.

Hence, shamanic practices date back to ancient cultures.

It features spirit guides in communities conducting rituals and cleansing ceremonies as part of the healing process. Here, participants connect to the higher wisdom of their past. They go back in time as much as possible to discover their soul parts. Next, they examine which of these parts are ready to be restored. Then, with careful guidance, the participant reintegrates these soul parts into their lives.

Using Plant Medicine

Plant medicine is also one of the shamanic approaches to soul retrieval. It involves tapping into the therapeutic abilities of plants to help us reconnect with the lost soul parts. These plants feature in most shamanic healing rituals since the healer handpicks them depending on the healing intentions.

Most of the plants used for soul retrieval have visionary or psychedelic properties. They alter the participants’ perception of reality, creating the right circumstance to explore the limitless healing power of the mind. In the process, it reframes any shadow emotions and reconnects the lost soul parts.

Psychotherapy Approach to Soul Retrieval

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis refers to therapeutic and theory-based techniques that address the unconscious mind to achieve healing. During soul retrieval, psychoanalysis techniques release our unconscious thoughts, memories, desires, and feelings.

Hence, the therapist guides participants in bringing those repressed parts of their minds into the conscious state. That way, the participant can deal with the repressed conflict that triggered soul loss in the first place.

Hypnotherapy

Gentle hypnosis and visualizations can get you into a relaxed state, making it easier for you to go back to that time and place where your soul fragment remained. At this point, this fragment can integrate back into the self.

Moreover, relaxation reinforces the sense of self. Plus, it helps you identify and let go of any dysfunctional beliefs arising from a traumatic experience. More so, the hypnotist relies on love, understanding, and forgiveness to guide you into restoring your original innocence.

Still, you can opt for self-hypnosis by using such techniques as mindfulness, anchoring, creative visualization, mental rehearsal, and cognitive behavioral therapy.  

Dream Analysis

Did you know that studying your dream patterns can help you heal from soul loss? What you dream of today may relate to various periods in your earlier life. The dreams indicate the associations between who you are today and your fragmented soul parts.

More so, the dream patterns give suggestions on how best to do the soul reintegration. For example, if you dream of rescuing a child from harm, it could indicate a time when you were that young when your soul loss took place. And, if you have more than one lost soul fragment, this dream may recur, with children of varying ages, and in different circumstances.

Whatever the scenario, working with a skilled practitioner can help you use these patterns to attain soul retrieval.

Deep Guided Meditation

Deep guided meditation is a deep energy-based healing technique. It revolves around shifting our energies to a time and place when soul loss took place. Typical deep guided meditations include soothing audio with background sounds, a video with calming imagery, deep listening,  breathing exercises, upbeat music, gazing, yoga, and moments of reflection. 

These meditation techniques widen your imagination, make you more aware of your inner self, improve attention span and sleep patterns, reduce stress, and calm negative emotions.

The Bottom Line

Shamanic approaches are the pioneer techniques of soul retrieval. They treat physical illnesses by mending the soul. The healer corrects and redirects our energies to achieve balance and stability in our spiritual, emotional, physical, and mental wellbeing. In contrast, the psychotherapy practices for soul retrieval rely on science and clinical medicine to explain and treat illness arising from spiritual matters. Hence, the shamanic techniques remain superior in dealing with soul loss.

When you go through a traumatic experience, a part of your soul may leave because it is too difficult to stay. This temporary soul loss is a natural impulse to help you cope with the pain. Yet, if it lingers on, soul loss can disrupt your life and manifest itself as a physical or mental illness. Soul retrieval through shamanic or psychotherapy approaches helps you reconnect with the lost soul parts and attain healing. They help us reclaim our wholeness for better living.