Traumatic experiences in childhood can have a profound and long-lasting effect on your health and wellbeing later in life. Causes of childhood trauma may include; neglect, abuse, divorce, illness, bullying, being forced into public speaking, witnessing an accident, death of a loved one, a dear friend moving away or even misunderstanding something they have seen or overheard (whether real or imagined).

The stress response activates the bodies sympathetic nervous system reducing cognitive function and depending on which fight/flight/freeze response is strongest they may experience mood swings, irritability, aggression, anxiety, fear, feeling trapped, desire to get away, panic or even procrastination. This can be over whelming and the strange intensity of emotions difficult to deal with. It may cause them to feel alone and unable to understand or deal with the emotions, and choose to withdraw into themselves or suppress emotions deep inside.

We hope that our children will find someone they can talk to and that they will learn how to

manage stress, understand their emotions and access the resilience and strength within themselves. When that happens they can bring their focus back into the present feeling more confident about themselves and their future.

Unfortunately if that does not happen for them in childhood the stress of childhood trauma can affect their health and ability to care for themselves and others. The reason is because all forms of stress including past, present, work related and nutritional stress have an accumulative effect on the body, exhausting the adrenal glands and depleting nutritional reserves and causing hormonal imbalance.

It is common for long term emotional stress to cause heart palpitations, raised blood pressure, chest oppression, asthma, dizziness, tinnitus, confusion, blurred vision, anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue, Insomnia, bad dreams, irritable bowel, loss of appetite, frequent urination, skin conditions, thyroid problems, absent menstruation, excessive menstrual bleeding, reduced fertility, panic attacks, headaches, unexplained aches and pains and other stress related illnesses like fibromyalgia.

Unhealthy ways of coping with stress are smoking, drinking too much, comfort eating, using pills or drugs to relax, sleeping too much, avoiding or withdrawing from friends or taking out your stress on others i.e. angry outbursts or physical violence.

To help improve your health it is important to remove or reduce all stress whether it is in the past or present. Working on the conscious, subconscious, emotional and nutritional levels will help you to improve your health more quickly and then introducing daily or weekly stress management activities like belly breathing, eating a health diet, taking supplements, practicing yoga, self hypnosis, meditation, walking outdoors or meeting up with friends will help you to keep well.

Working with a therapist who specialises in working with the conscious, subconscious and emotions will help to get to the root of the problem and speed up your recovery.

Amanda Roe is a Trauma therapist and Mind coach. She uses a range of holistic therapies to help clients improve their mental, physical and emotional health. To book a FREE 15 min Consultation with Amanda click here.