Would this be traumatic for a child?

2 Comments

When I was a young kid my parents used to yell at each other a lot, nearly every night. It wasn't directly in front of me, it was after I had gone to bed but walls in a trailer aren't very thick and I could hear every word. My mom would always threaten to kill herself or leave and not come back. It really stressed me out, I remember thinking about what would happen to my sister and I in either of those situations. If my mom killed herself we'd only have our dad and then I worried what would happen if he didn't want us. If they got a divorce I knew my sister would want to live with my dad and I would too but I knew I couldn't because It would break my mom's heart and there would be no one to make sure she didn't hurt herself. In the beginning I cried a lot, there was no one I could talk to about it so I just bottled all my feelings up. When they would fight I would just tell myself I didn't care and if I caught myself feeling too upset or crying I would scratch my arms as hard as I could until I calmed down.
I want an outside opinion on if this could be considered traumatic because I feel like shit for feeling upset by it. A part of me is always saying that I'm being dramatic, it wasn't that bad,or that some kids had it way worse and that's strange to me because I would never think those things of another person.

Yes 38
No 1
Not sure 0
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Comments ( 2 )
  • RoseIsabella
    5 years ago

    Hell yeah, that is traumatic for a small child! You, my dear, have nothing about which to feel ashamed. Do not ever blame yourself for any of that mess that you were exposed to as a small child!

    To be completely honest I wouldn't be surprised if you have suffered from a fear of abandonment throughout the course of your life. I am of course not a professional as I am just a lay person on the internet with an opinion that just might be an educated guess of sorts. I'm also quite mad myself.

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  • Boojum
    5 years ago

    Of course that sort of thing is traumatic for children. It's almost always true that a childhood could have been much worse than it actually was, but that doesn't make it okay.

    Some kids seem to be natural worriers, and hearing that kind of crap going on would be horrible for them and could cause very deep-rooted feelings of insecurity, low self-worth and uncertainty about romantic relationships and even people in general.

    Possibly even worse is the fact that, since you grew up in a dysfunctional family, you may well have problems in your own relationships as an adult. Kids learn from the behaviour they see being modelled by adults, and you didn't grow up seeing how two adults can live together, deal with all the problems and tensions that inevitably arise in a positive way, and maintain a caring, loving relationship.

    It's possible that, as an adult, you may find yourself in an argument with someone you're involved with and suddenly realise that what you're hearing coming out of your own mouth is the same vicious, hateful stuff you heard your parents saying when you were a kid. It can be very difficult to unlearn the scripts we learned as children.

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