In my last post, I shared six reasons why many people struggle to see themselves in the historically understood definition of “childhood trauma.”

Those reasons boiled down to the limitations of historical definitions, causing people to discount their trauma because of the subtlety of certain experiences, because their mother was the abuser, because the abusers may not have been guardians/parents, because they viewed the privilege they had also experienced as some kind of neutralizer, because they experienced gaslighting about their experiences, and because they had preconceived notions about what “counted” as abuse or trauma.

There are many reasons why people struggle to see themselves inside the definition of “childhood trauma,” and all of those reasons are what led me to use the term “relational trauma” very often in my work.

In today’s post, I want to share my........

© Psychology Today