 Have you ever wondered how your childhood experiences shape your personality as you grow up? This question has been asked by a psychologist since the dawn of psychology, and it's up for debate even today. But when it comes to childhood trauma, it's clear that the hardships of childhood make you into the person that you are today. Emotional or physical trauma can shape the way you think, the way you behave, your personality traits, and even make you prone to some serious mental illnesses. So here's how childhood trauma could shape your personality. Number one, you become a perfectionist. Are you a perfectionist with impossibly high standards? But do you feel like your perfectionism is holding you back, making you anxious and stressed all the time? According to research published this year in the Journal of Research and Personality, your childhood trauma may have something to do with it. The connection between childhood trauma and perfectionism happens when your parents set high expectations and demand everything to be just perfect. They don't accept a B plus. You have to get an A. They don't care if you've already done your homework. You have to study for a few more hours. They don't care if you want to be an artist. You must go to law school. Your hobbies are not up to their standards. Your room is never clean enough. You didn't do your chores exactly how they like them done. Were your parents like this? If so, you surely understand the exhaustion that comes from never feeling good enough for your parents. As you try to keep up with their demands, this way of thinking becomes a part of you and shapes your personality when you grow up. If you feel like something isn't perfect, you get overwhelmed with anxiety. And sometimes this can lead to symptoms of depression because you never seem to be satisfied in life. Number two, you may develop an eating disorder. Sometimes your mental trauma can express itself through your body. Several studies found a link between anorexia or binge eating disorder and childhood emotional trauma. You may be especially vulnerable to developing an eating disorder if your parents focus too much on your body and looks in general. But it's not always just about looks. For trauma survivors, eating disorders may become a mechanism for coping with negative emotions they experience. Through unhealthy eating habits or by controlling your weight, you may feel like you're finally gaining control over something in your life. You may feel like your whole life is out of your hands, but at least you still have ownership over your body. You may also indulge in emotional eating. This is when food becomes your best friend, and you turn to it when life gets you down. But no matter how good it may feel at the moment, this ordered eating just adds to your trauma in the end. Number three, you sometimes act childish. Do you sometimes act a little too childish? Trauma can sometimes make you stuck in your childhood. All those feelings that you may experience, shame, guilt, humiliation, fear, pull you back and sometimes make you terrified of being an adult. Maybe you feel like you can't make decisions for yourself, or like you're not capable of handling adult stresses, like going to work, paying the bills, handling chores, and so on. This can make you feel so overwhelmed that you may turn to your inner child for help. This is called age regression, and it's a psychological defense mechanism where you return to some childlike behaviors to help you cope. This can include baby talk, throwing temper tantrums, using stuffed animals to self-soothe, and so on. While age regression can be a symptom of some serious mental disorders, sometimes you may temporarily regress in a response to a stressful event or one triggered by a memory or a traumatic event. It can be difficult to cope with because people may see you as childish and immature, but it's important to remember that you're still capable of living your life to the fullest. Number four, you develop an insecure attachment. Finally, we can't talk about the effects of childhood trauma if we don't mention the attachment theory. According to the attachment theory, when you were a child, your way of thinking was shaped depending on how your parents treated you. If your parents were loving and caring, you learned that you can trust people to be there for you. You learned that you are someone deserving of love, and this is called a secure attachment. But if your parents ignored you, neglected you, what if they didn't respond to your crying and pleas for help? Then you may have developed an insecure attachment. That means that now you have feelings of low self-worth. You think other people are not trustworthy, or you have a strong fear of people rejecting you. There are three types of insecure attachment, and each one describes how today you may feel towards yourself and others. The first is anxious or preoccupied. If your attachment style is anxious, you might have low self-worth. You feel hurt and unlovable, or like there's something wrong with you, but at the same time you crave love and attention. You are strongly afraid of being abandoned, and you do anything to get approval from someone who means a lot to you. Next is avoidant or dismissive. People don't always have a bad self-image, even if they survive childhood trauma. If your attachment style is avoidant, you may see yourself as strong and independent, but you can't say the same for other people. Because your parents treated you so poorly, you may have decided that people are just bad in general. So now you don't want to be around anyone. You feel like you don't need friends, or a relationship. You don't want to share your feelings, or be intimate with anyone. And lastly, there's disorganized or fearful avoidant. Most people with this attachment style had parents who were hot and cold. One moment, everything was fine. The next, they're showered with insults, or they're being yelled at. Did something similar happen to you? If so, now you're not sure how to react and how to behave. Maybe you do want to be close to others, but you're afraid at the same time. What if they start mistreating you out of the blue? With this attachment style, your self-image may also be unstable as well. You're not sure who you even are, and let alone what to think of yourself. So, how did your childhood experience shape you into who you are today? How are you coping with it? These examples are just a few out of many, many more. We'd like to invite you to share your experiences too in the comments down below. We hope that by sharing your experience, you realize that you are never alone. 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