“How it all connects to our childhood”

Do you wonder, how our early childhood experiences shape us and develop our personalities? Why every psychologist and therapist starts with childhood, how come childhood is to be blamed for the past that has been created?

To find the answer to all that we need to delve deeper to find the connection of our childhood with our present life, and how it impacts our, emotional, intellectual, spiritual and physical wellbeing. It is mostly influenced by early interactions with parents, peers, and friends.

Impact on Personality Development:

Our childhood experiences greatly impact in shaping our personality, our relationship and interaction with our early care givers, parents, siblings, and friends, influence our social emotional skills and form our behaviors.

Positive experiences create the foundation of a secure and confident individual, while negative experiences may lead to insecurities, low self-esteem and fears.

Impact on Self-esteem and confidence:

Self-esteem is overall value of a person in his/her mind, who you are, what are your values and beliefs, basically how you perceive yourself that is the basic idea of self-esteem.

Childhood is a critical period for developing child’s self-esteem and confidence. Encouragement from care givers can boost a child’s self-esteem and belief in self. Criticism and neglect from the primary care taker, like parents can impact on a child’s confidence and self-esteem. Childhood experiences does mold our understanding of right and wrong, our decision making and reasoning that later on influences our decisions and actions in adulthood.

Information of Values and Belief System:

Our values comes from basis of moral compass, our experiences and then our own cognitive abilities to interpret and adopt the values, our families, culture, societal influences shape our belief system and form our values from a very young age. Childhood experiences does mold our understanding of right and wrong.

Our Coping Mechanisms:

Coping mechanisms are mechanisms by which we deal with any adverse situation, mostly these are our defense mechanism that we learn through early childhood experience and continue it in later life until and unless you recognize the unhealthy coping mechanisms and unlearn and relearn from it.

Some of the coping mechanism are:

· Repression:

In this mechanism an individual learns to repress or forget the threating memories unconsciously. As a result of that individual are not aware of their anxiety provoking conflicts, they cannot identify triggers. But the repressed impulses remain active and impact on individual’s life.

· Sublimation:

It means converting unacceptable impulses into socially acceptable actions.

Like channelizing your emotions in healthy was, as aggression can be sublimated to boxing and martial arts. Sublimation is considered healthy coping strategy.

· Regression:

In this people try to cope by reverting to previous patterns of behavior, to reduce the tension and anxiety individual wants to go back in that stage when he was in peace and tension free.

· Rationalization:

Rationalization is an attempt to make actions or mistakes seem reasonable and justified, so we can hide from ourselves the real reasons for actions.

Like student blaming the teacher for failing in the exam that they don’t do justice or they have personal issue with them.

Individuals may develop healthy or unhealthy coping strategies based on early experiences. Recognizing and modifying these coping mechanisms can lead to improved emotional well-being.

Impact on Attachment Styles:

Attachment styles means the pattern of interpersonal relationships that is learnt in early childhood and it continues to influence the behavior, emotions, and relationships throughout the one’s life.

Psychologist John Bowlby initially introduced the concept of attachment theory, which was further developed by Mary Ainsworth through her research on infant-parent interactions.

There are mainly four attachment styles:

1. Secure attachment: individual who were given consistent response and attention tend to build the secure attachment later in their relationships and life.

2. Anxious-Preoccupied Attachment: People with anxious-preoccupied attachment styles may have experienced inconsistent caregiving during childhood. They often feel insecure about their worthiness of love and attention, leading to a strong desire for closeness and reassurance in relationships.

3. Dismissive-Avoidant Attachment: Individuals with this attachment style may have had caregivers who were emotionally unavailable or dismissive of their needs during childhood. As a result, they learn to suppress their emotions and become self-reliant and later in life they attract people who give them same treatment of avoidance.

4. Fearful-Avoidant Attachment: This attachment style is combination of anxious and avoidant behaviors. Individuals with fearful-avoidant attachment styles may have experienced traumatic or inconsistent caregiving in childhood, leading to conflicting desires for closeness and fear of rejection.

Attachment styles developed in childhood influence how we form relationships in adulthood, while insecure attachments can lead to difficulties in forming and maintaining relationships.

Impact on Emotional Regulation:

It means having ability to effectively manage and control one’s emotions, it can be done firstly, through identifying the emotion, meditation and coping it effectively. Emotional regulation skills are developed during childhood and continue to develop throughout life. Healthy emotional regulation is essential for managing stress, conflicts, and relationships. Childhood experiences can influence how individuals express, understand, and regulate their emotions.

In conclusion, our childhood experiences has a lot of influence on various aspects of our lives, from personality development to social skills, behavioral patterns, coping mechanisms, and beyond. By understanding and connecting these reflections from our past we can change towards healthy and positive future.