The Monster Under the Bed: Addressing Your Childhood Trauma
Slaying our demons - before we become them
Have you ever heard about the monster under the bed?
Many of us have come across it in some variation. Either we may have experienced a really frightful time with a conjured-up monster as a child with a highly imaginative mind, or as a sibling, parent or carer trying to assure a loved one that the monster they’ve perceived does not exist.
Here’s one of my favourite variations of the story.
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A child is desperately afraid of something they’ve seen below their bed-frame. They frantically cry out to their parent, who rushes up the stairs to find out what has caused such a ruckus. The child, in tears, points to below their bed as the source of such incredible fright. The parent stretches out to embrace the child, before duly kneeling and uncovering the duvet masking the perceived fiend.
The parent raises their eyebrow, and are faced with a surprising sight. There was something which indeed, could cause fright. The parent blinked, and the shadowy figure blinked right back at them at the exact same moment. Uncovering the duvet more, the parent sighed deeply as they realised what they were dealing with.
Their reflection.
A mirror, placed slightly ajar and in the shadows of the duvet, had caused quite the scare. The parent jostled the mirror out from under the bed covers, held it up to the child, who stared in awe at themselves, thumbing the edge of the reflection. After the child had been soothed, the parent walked back down the stairs, pondering on the discovery of the mirror. Something had unsettled them…
There was something quite powerful and yet unsettling about being met with their reflection. Something quite poignant in seeing that the monster under the bed was indeed…
…themselves.
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Stories are one of the great ways we come to learn more about ourselves and the world, particularly fiction. The story of the mirror and the monster under the bed goes beyond the importance of confronting fears - it presents us with an important question.
What happens when the monster you end up confronting is you?
Sometimes our greatest monsters are not those that exist outside. Forget the gory films and long list of classic 80s horrors, filled with ghosts, goblins, ghouls and all manner of supernatural tomfoolery. In fact, sometimes the greatest monsters we need to slay are those that are within.
What makes this story even more poignant is the distinction in responses between the child and the parent. The child was frightened, whilst the parent looked at the monster, unsettled, with a quiet familiarity. What a brilliant analogy for the way that childhood trauma manifests - first, it is quite the fright, until we begin to begrudgingly accept the monstrousness as part of us.
How do we slay the demons we have in our life before we become them?
Key Points:
What is ‘Childhood Trauma’?
What Effect Does Childhood Trauma Have on Us?
How Do I Identify Childhood Trauma
Dealing With the Monster Under the Bed
What is ‘Childhood Trauma’?
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, childhood trauma is defined as the following:
The experience of an event by a child that is emotionally painful or distressful, which often results in lasting mental and physical effects.
Many bad things happen to us as children. Being a parent can be a nightmare, because protective instincts can only do so much to shield a child from traumatic experience. Some childhood trauma that we experience are quite overt, obvious and in some cases, extreme. War, natural disasters, physical and emotional abuse, or growing up in dangerous communities can be detrimental. Other experiences, like overhearing arguments and incidents of bullying can also lead to childhood trauma.
The most common (non-exhaustive) causes of childhood trauma include:
Dysfunction in the house
Accidents
Bullying/cyberbullying
Chaos or dysfunction in the house (such as domestic violence, parent with a mental illness, substance abuse or incarcerated)
Death of a loved one
Emotional abuse or neglect
Physical abuse or neglect
Separation from a parent or caregiver
Sexual abuse
War/terrorism
What Effect Does Childhood Trauma on Us?
Childhood trauma can have an alarmingly huge effect, depending on the scale and intensity of the trauma we’ve experienced. It’s something that many of us suffer with, but hate addressing. It’s the one kryptonite that we definitely need to address in order to move on in our lives. The process of understanding and coping with trauma is a natural cause of children’s developmental process. But quite regularly, trauma gets stuck.
When unaddressed, trauma can have long term effects on the quality and length of a person’s life. According to a Cleveland Clinic podcast, adults who experienced trauma as kids are much more susceptible to depression and mood disorders, as well as thoughts of suicide. They are also likely to abuse alcohol, other substances, and other people.
Experiencing trauma in childhood can also impact the way that you form attachments in romantic and platonic relationships. In this study, it was found that students which experienced physical, emotional, or sexual abuse were more likely to exhibit attachment styles that were fearful, preoccupied, and dismissive. It also found that students that did not experience childhood trauma were much more likely to have secure attachment styles into adulthood.
You can check out my article for more on attachment styles and affect regulation here.
How Do I Identify Childhood Trauma?
According to the Integrative Life Center, there are 8 main signs of repressed childhood trauma:
Unexplained reactions to specific people: If you find yourself feeling consistently off around specific groups of people, or individuals, it might be a sign of repressed childhood trauma. Someone, or people, who fit their characteristic, may have been a perpetrator of harm, neglect or abuse to you.
Unease in specific areas: In a similar fashion to specific types of people, places can cause unease due to repressed trauma. There may be rooms, areas, and specific environments which remind your body of a time and place where you experienced trauma.
Extreme shifts in emotions: If you find it difficult to regulate your internal state, or find yourself constantly in flux between emotions, you may have trauma which caused this response. You could have anger management issues, tend to be fearful in several situations, or trouble conjuring positive emotions in response to positive experiences.
Attachment style issues: Whether you have an intense fear of abandonment and exhibit a clinginess to your partners and friends, or are highly avoidant in relationships, chances are you experienced one or several disappointments which contributed greatly to your attachment style.
General anxiety: If you find yourself generally anxious and stressed constantly, the anxiety may not be triggered by a conscious, present stressor, but a chronic one in response to an initial trauma.
Child-like reactions: If there are certain situations where your response is childish, or one of your coping mechanism is to revert to childlike behaviour, it could be that trauma has compelled you to regress into a child-like state. This could include throwing tantrums, speaking in a child-like voice, or being stubborn about menial things.
Consistent exhaustion and burnout: When you have traumatic repressed childhood memories, you subconsciously spend quite a lot of your energy on this. As a result, it becomes more difficult to connect with others due to consistent burnout and exhaustion.
Inability to cope with stressors: Though life is filled with stressors, this is a natural reality of life. If you find yourself constantly lashing out, hiding or unable to cope with the everyday stresses life throws, you could be regressing to the initial original state you were in during your experience of trauma, in order to protect yourself.
Dealing With the Monster Under the Bed
From that list alone, I can guarantee there are a few little monsters under the bed that have gone unacknowledged - or worse yet, you have learnt unhealthy coping mechanisms which do not deal with the root of the problem. Once we name the specific internal traumatic episodes that have impacted our lives, there are a few necessary steps to banishing the monster under the bed, once and for all.
1. Acknowledge your trauma: Sometimes, it’s easy to spend years of your life hiding, minimising or ignoring what has happened to you. Find a practical way to give name and shape to what happened to you. You might want to journal, or speak aloud, or record it as a voice note. The most important thing is that you say it. The first step to starting the healing process is to acknowledge that a traumatic event did occur and that you were not responsible for it.
2. Seek support and don’t isolate yourself: One of the most common trauma responses is to stay far away from other people, but isolation can often worsen coping mechanisms and symptoms arising from trauma. Make the effort to maintain your relationships and seek support. Talk to a trusted family member, friend, therapist or counsellor and consider joining a support group for survivors of the trauma you have faced.
3. Take care of your health and wellbeing: It becomes easier to cope and overcome trauma when you spend time taking care of yourself, rather than punishing yourself or using other escapism tools. Establish a daily routine that allows you to get plenty of rest, eat a well-balanced diet and exercise regularly. You can check out my article here on establishing healthy habits. Most importantly, stay away from alcohol and drugs. If you have found yourself in a position of addiction, now is the time to share with a friend, loved one, or a therapist to help you access the help you need.
4. Be patient with yourself: When you’ve been harmed or denied needs as a child, you may develop extreme emotions, hopelessness, defence mechanisms and problematic perceptions which may be hard to unlearn. Be patient with yourself and celebrate the small wins along the way. After all, the the little wins will help you win the battle of healing your childhood trauma.
Dealing with the monster under the bed might not be as simple as one first thought. Many of us think we can remove the mirror whole and remain unscathed.
Yet sometimes dealing with the monster under the bed means unearthing, shard by shard, the parts of ourselves preventing us from fully embracing the light, and anticipating a better image of ourselves upon reflection.
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That’s all from me this week folks. As ever, if you found this useful, feel free to share Optimise Me with a friend.
Let’s all become better humans.
-RK
Audio
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Book
It Didn’t Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle.