6 Lies From Childhood Trauma

hey everybody welcome back to the channel i'm patrick thien lacsw and so in this video i'm going to be talking about six unspoken childhood trauma lies that kids experience when they grow up in toxic families i think that these lies are still a big part of our subconscious and how they play a part in how we feel how we react and ways that we're currently stuck in in places and rather than overly explain what i mean from childhood trauma lies is that you'll see as i go through this list what i mean through each one

as we go through you can simply think about these lies as beliefs that can run childhood trauma survivors and when we really take a closer look at them we really see that they're not really true or if we even value them so if you're new to me or new to the channel welcome if you like this video you can hit some buttons at the end of the video like the subscribe button you can't miss with any of the buttons and if this channel is helpful to you and your recovery you can consider the work that

goes into the channel by supporting me on patreon and please know that at this stage stage in the channel i don't take on any sponsorships or don't have any really third parties going on so that it doesn't muck things up for the viewers such as you guys and if you want to connect with me or check out my childhood trauma e-course work you can do that on my website and i'll have all the links in the description and below in this video so let's dive in um they are not listed in importance of severity and

please know that some of these might be triggering to you or might be heavy just fyi so the first one on the list is number six is the real you isn't acceptable this lie is rooted in authenticity and becoming real or becoming who we are meant to be because a lot of that stuff gets lost growing up and you might have this lie going on if you experience any of the following being able to shift or blend into many social situations almost like a chameleon but not it's it's like a skill but it's not really

a good it's it kind of is a skill that makes us feel weird about how we can shift in and out of those things that's one another is a strange one it's adopting other people's vibes or personas or even their mannerisms there's there's that one another is being stuck in a career that isn't really for you it's a big one that i get a lot from my clients another is spending a lot of energy into watching what you say for fear of reactions from others like reactions of around abandonment that's another one another one is

always defaulting to the choices of others like you want pizza or thai you're like you pick you never take that risk and make and pull the trigger on those things another is spending a lot of energy into covering up what happened to you or what your family system is like another is being overly concerned in what other people might think about you another is feeling stuck about exploring this is a big one feeling stuck about exploring things like writing or art or music something you're really drawn to but experiencing terror about how that will look

if you get into it another is you might even struggle knowing not knowing what is your real identity or your real personality is which is okay you know to have that going on given what our childhoods were like now let's look at what it might look like to have those going on what it might what might be some origins from childhood trauma about why those things we might be experiencing those things first one is having a parent who lived that lie and was inauthentic themselves another is having parents who are way too focused on appearances

like the looks good on paper family from another video the seven to seven types of toxic family systems another is experiencing constant criticism and shame about your schoolwork your interest your friends all of it another is having to placate people or sue the toxic parent which is a big one another is having to give up things or your voice for the sake of the toxic family like rocking the boat would have like caused so much drama it wouldn't have been safe another is having parents who lived safe and sad lives i know that that's weird

but parents who lived very sort of meh mediocre lives were not criticizing them but these are people who would not take risk you're not gonna you're probably gonna have a hard time with authenticity when you have parents like that or that's what was modeled another is a big one is having narcissistic parents who modeled toxic fake authenticity i know that that's like an oxymoron but this is the parent who was all show all the time out in public and that people got into it or they enjoyed it but this parent was different at home see

authenticity is about being consistent or being sort of safe or being the real person so a lot of that gets messed up with this one so if we grow up with no one being truly authentic then of course we'll have problems about being real or being comfortable with who we are people in society have mask on we all kind of know that but i think we are taught how to wear these masks in our family because of what is modeled for us an inner child journaling exercise some homework for this one is to ask your

inner child who do you imagine that you are what comes to mind if you guys close your eyes to pause the video and ask that question what comes up so much of our identity was formed around toxic people so children are going to need a lot of help with becoming who they are in safety like that's the opera operative where we have to become who we are in a safe environment not the way it went down originally so the opposite of this lie is something like it's safe now to be you and to find out

who that really is as like the opposite of this lie so there's that lie so moving on to the next one is number five good things won't last this lie is about not being fully present in our lives and when we get to the childhood trauma roots about the lie it will make a lot more sense what i mean by this one good things won't last is a lie that might be running you if you have any of the following things going on one is living in constant fear of being fired from your job that

is a big one that many of my clients complain about another is worry that your partner will leave you having that always being in the background of your mind another is being overly concerned about if the things that you buy will get damaged or worn down i know that that sounds really super specific but you can see what i mean about good things won't last another is finding friends and then not engaging with them for fear of losing with them or losing them i know that that one also sounds weird another is waiting for the

other shoe to drop this one's very common especially if things are going well that's really when it really kind of comes up is this like how we doing another is um having a consistent nagging feeling that something will be taken away pets friends if you have children you fear that that's going to happen as well and that's going beyond a reasonable healthy concern about losing those who are close to us another is feeling like conflict with your partner or somebody else is just around the corner it's like inevitable so now let's look at some of

the reasons why you might from childhood about why you might struggle with this one one is growing up with a parent who lived this lie more caught up in potentially losing things than being present another is growing up where your belongings were never respected or there was no justice about how your belongings were treated from the parents um and you know things would often get wrecked another is growing up where there was chaos and it would go from a somewhat peaceful experience to a disaster from like zero to ninety like a rager parent coming home

or a drunk parent coming home that would really break up the piece another is having a parent who will have these all of a sudden emotional outburst or abusive attacks on on you or other family members another is having things literally taken away in childhood the school or the friends that you liked because of a move loss of a pet without any process around that a bad divorce or having like a golden child sibling who got all the resources like time and money and attention that's what i mean by that one and another is having

a family where one member consistently ruined things for the others like an acting out sibling or an alcoholic parent or an acting out parent and another is experiencing loss of a family member or being adopted even without getting any real help as a child and processing that and when we consider those examples that i just listed it makes total sense why and if you are vigilant about loss or things not lasting and of course you know we're we're run by this but what would it look like if this lie was no longer with this light

no longer ran us and if it was healed you know to be fully present in a relationship and be loving without the fear of losing it like that's almost like a sort of like a spiritual existence or something like that and it's funny but in reality it's interesting about this one all things do end like i know that that's sad but i know as trauma survivors we're so overly doomish about loss that we never fully enjoy about what is in front of us the activity in front of us or the person in front of us

we're so attached to the experience of losing when we need to be more attached to the experience of experiencing others um imagine if we could develop a healthy and wise letting go when my i'll tell you a story about this one when my son was a toddler and as a new parent i had a lot of like amped up anxiety about his safety outside of the normal protective concern of a new parent which is still like huge you won't be terrified have a kid about their safety um and i was convinced that something would happen

to him like abduction or something like that and it didn't matter to me how safe things actually were that this fear was running in the back of my mind and it actually went away when a wise friend said to me well patrick like that's the cost of loving someone so much is you worry about them and for some reason that blew my mind and totally normalized this fear it almost like made me emotionally sober because i was so amped up about losing him or pain that i wasn't taking into account that of course that's there

that's the cost of like being a parent and loving them and it totally normalized it for me which is still blows my mind so moving on what would it look like if we just did our jobs at work and weren't so keyed up or vigilant about getting fired um about things going terribly wrong what if we didn't have that going on in mind think of the relief as an inner child exercise is for our adult to discuss the things that got lost growing up and educating the inner child about normalizing things like if we lost

our job or we left it so what it's just a job and we we got this confirmation that we're hireable we got a job to begin with who's to say we won't really get another one we are of value well you know we got a job once and we'll get another one again inner children my point of that is inner children think in absolutes always never it's never going to happen and the opposite of this lie is something like i can be present for what i have and i can also be present for what i

might lose that's a little bit of a mind twist but spend some time on that one so moving on to number four you're not enough this lie of you're not enough can look like any of the following one is thinking that a toxic partner would change if you mattered more to them this is actually projection of one of one or both of our parents onto a toxic person and it's a big one another is explaining all situations in dynamics through a lens of that you're less than you didn't get the job or you didn't get

invited or you didn't get the social circle that you want or you didn't get the text back from somebody because you're less than when that isn't true another is a background assumption that even strangers aren't into you i know that that sounds weird but like at a coffee shop or a grocery store reading that everyone is indifferent to you when they have their own thoughts and their own stuff going on another is feeling like your family system would be different if you were a greater person i know that that's one but that's actually a common

one having another is having a strategy to go way above and beyond in relationships or at work just to be acceptable like it's like a rock star rocket scientist mentality you have to be so up here just to have people tolerate you that's a that's a huge one another is having to be a chameleon because the real you isn't good enough related to the first one we talked about and now let's look at these where how they might have been evident growing up in childhood one is being neglected and not seen or valued as a

child and that's like the parent the parental indifference or having disinterested parents are they're actually abusing their children by being disinterested because it affects our children's self-worth so much the indirect message that's not said but implied is you're not enough another is being abused physically or emotionally or sexually children start to think that if they were better or that they were more lovable or simply enough then the abuse wouldn't happen from that parent which is a lot of these are lies that kids have to come up with to survive it's not always a lie that

is directly said another is being the scapegoated kid and seeing that you see start to see that others are more valuable that others are enough but we're not that's one another is not being able to affect a parent to treat you better and what that means to effective like like related to the first item on this list is if we can affect our parent through our cool drawing or being nice or being whatever then they might see us or shift or change that's what it means to affect somebody and usually if the parent is toxic

the children don't affect them another is as i've mentioned in other videos is being parentified or trying to solve huge adult problems like healing an abused parent healing a depressed parent fixing a marriage or fixing a victimized parent and being unable to change that tragedy going on that's a huge one and you can see if we're trying to fix this impossible situation as children we grow up into adults thinking that we're not good enough to make stuff happen it's because we were really set up with impossible things going on that's especially true if you struggle

with codependency or caretaking or taking on like an empath taking on or a highly sensitive person taking on all this stuff from people that's what i mean about the ideology of that one or the origins of that one another is growing up and say that looks good on paper family where the bar of achieving was so hot ridiculously high that you're never really seen or cherished even if though that you're amazing at school and amazing all these things all those things are really kind of for naught with that one going on so the lie here

is usually assumed by a child to make sense of how they're being treated or their situation or how they're being parented what would recovery look like from this lie well first is to get real about the abuse of worth or self-worth and make the subconscious conscious about where our negative self-worth actually comes from such as like the list that i just gave out and next when i work with clients you know they tend to miss that children are totally worth it to begin with that they are enough just because they're they're they're in their family

their parents lives you know how can someone not be um just in awe of the creation that their child is meaning it definitely wasn't you guys it was our parents so lastly i have my clients work on re-parenting their inner child to battle these ingrained lies this can be tough when we get triggered and we feel like we're not enough at work or with our partner i have my clients work with their inner child to remind them that it was true growing up that they were told that or they didn't feel that they were enough

because of the family system but that in the present it's so different i also work with them to teach them to give their inner child loving feedback affirmations and self-love they don't really work unless we make it in context of our childhood abuse so what i mean by that is i have the client have the inner child talk about how they felt not good enough growing up and the reasons why then with the the adult needs to sort of take ownership about the present and explain that but you know we do an amazing job at

work but you know we're a really good enough boyfriend girlfriend or whatever we are good enough in this way we're good enough in that way i think we're just feeling our childhood it's that it's it's an ongoing battle because inner children have a death grip onto these lives and onto these beliefs and it is a process to really help this little inner child change their mind about things but we can't just say you're good enough you're awesome you're lovable we can't that's never really going to land unless we can't we talk about childhood or the

context in the way that these things got wrecked so hopefully that makes sense to you guys um the opposite of this you know you're not enough is you are a gift okay so number three is the sexual you is bad slash sex is bad i'm discussing a lot here in this one so just bear with me in addition to sex i'm also going to be in factoring things like our gender and our relationship to touch and affection so you know sex is usually such a huge part of our lives and childhood trauma really mucks all

that up even if we were not directly sexually abused the sexual attitudes in the childhood home will affect a kid greatly and this lie here manifest in any of the following ways if you if you have shame or problems with any of the following issues and before i get into them please don't mistake these as me making moral judgments on you or your lifestyle or from me in general that would be like triggering you to the lie to begin with if i was judging these issues around sex my attitude is of course we have these

issues and maybe they aren't really issues at all maybe a lot of them are normal so here's that list of things is worrying about being too sexualized or being too preoccupied with sex worrying about having too low or too high of a sex drive or libido another is identify identifying as asexual but feel shame about it um being asexual is not bad another is experiencing sex as an exchange and not a mutually shared experience that's kind of a clue for this one another is not liking to be touched or being too focused on or um

or or being too focused on touch or being too needy around touch i know that that's a lot another is getting too caught up in being a good lover or being too caught up in performance another is putting all of our self-worth into our sexuality like i mean all of it and another is not liking um aspects of our gender or our gender in general and before i explain the possible like trauma roots the best way for me to explain the effects of this lie is with a hypothetical i'd like you to think about it

to pick an issue that you might have around sex or your gender or a touch and think about what would it be like i know it's a strange hypothetical if you went to your parents and talked to them about it like if you brought it up what would be their reaction and that's what i mean about this lie like that's the clearest way that i can explain it is how would our um what would your parents say if you identify as asexual gay or bi or trans or what would they say if you go to

them with a concern of being too sexualized and putting all your worth there think about what would they react what would they what would they say if you said it was traumatic for them to shame you about your gender or your body or that they missed how obvious it was that you were not born either you were born into the wrong body and they weren't safe to talk about it with i know it's crazy hypothetical and it's not a it's not even a safe in reality but um your toxic parents reaction is what i think

that this lie is really about chances are their response would be so shaming and narrow-minded um in such an abusive toxic way that that's what we're talking about here and i also mean that you might have grown up with statements like don't be a typical male like your father or only [ __ ] wear that or you're just like your mother you're a you're a manipulator or you have no ass or uh of course you're a boy don't be stupid you can't wear that um all of those are like sexually abused abusive phrases because it's

an assault on gender it's assault on sexuality and kids get so confused and all that stuff so i know that there's some hard scenarios that are to the root of this so here are some of them growing up with a sexually off parents that they didn't protect kids from adult sexual topics like porn growing up in a sexual vacuum where parents didn't have a sex life or they didn't talk about it they didn't express any of that or growing up with abuse around gender like character assassinating your gender or shaming you for what you were

drawn to another is being sexually abused and not getting any help around it outside the family inside the family another is touch and affection being wrecked through poor boundaries or manipulation another is feeling like you have no boundaries or no protection another is the family being fixated on conservative norms or even a fundamentalist religion that like obliterates a sexual existence another is inappropriate comments about your body like i mentioned earlier or your development so of course we need to be on a sexually healing journey to reconcile a lot of this stuff if we experience them

and of course we have some problems and hang-ups around sex the best healing advice that i have around the issue of sexuality is to develop a mantra of i am a healthy sexual fill in the blank man woman trans asexual add some adjectives like fabulous or amazing and start to kind of live that as a way to battle that and again like i mentioned earlier an affirmation like that isn't really going to make much sense unless it's in context of the abuse that we experience um you know an example like i'm a healthy sexual non-binary

creative human is so different than what the family would label us as and that's what i mean by that or i'm a healthy sexual man i'm a healthy sexual woman whatever i think you guys kind of get the point work on embracing what you know to be true about yourself and like with the prior example i teach that i teach clients to talk with their inner child and yes we can talk to our inner child about gender and sex and touch that mantra is going to work well if we talk about it again in context

of the toxic family system abusing us around sex and gender and touch i find with childhood trauma when we spend a lot of time even working on general shame there usually comes like a sexual sort of healing or a sexual sort of like reconciliation and lastly the opposite of this lie is that i am a healthy sexual fill in the blanks and that's what i mean about number three moving on to number two people don't want to know you this lie is really about not feeling a sense of belonging and we tend to confirm that

sense through our own sort of collecting data or our own behavior and you'll see what i mean by that you might struggle with this one if you experience any of the following experiences lie you constantly compare yourself to others their relationships their status their ability and things their family another is having a tendency to isolate which is another one another is people tend to exhaust you i know that that sounds a little bit strange but like related to the one about in authenticity or authenticity is wearing a mask is kind of exhausting or or having

to hide the real ones so when we are in social situations like work or a party or whatever it drains us because it's like we're not safe to be the real us so we have to be this we can be really extra in those situations it takes energy to be extra another is that connecting with others or taking social risk are very big for you to do um going to a party takes a lot out of you another is looking for ways to confirm not being connected like see they didn't include me in this or

they didn't include me in the convo when i walked in we're looking to confirm that data about the lie another is only relating to people in one way through like people pleasing or negativity or only knowing how to be surfy to protect oneself like being surface oriented or um i think you know what i mean another is constantly feeling like you're on the outside watching the rest of the world sort of enjoy itself that definitely is going to be coming from trauma so now let's look at how these might have been evident in childhood from

growing up one is being neglected and growing up and not getting any help around being in social situations or having friends another is having parents who had no friends that they had no life they had no sense of community they didn't belong anywhere another is living in a shameful and really off family system like if you grew up in a cult or if you grew up in an alcoholic family which is kind of like a cult or a fundamentalist kind of church experience that can really cause this one another is being scapegoated and assuming that

how people feel about you is just like how people feel about you at home that people don't really want to know the real you like in school it's like we're just really talking about shame underneath the stuff another is growing up in chaos where there's multiple moves where there was no consistent relationships or friendships and like with the other ones so when you think about when we go through that list so of course we have problems like these of course it's hard for us to put ourselves out there and of course there's some self-fulfilling prophecy

going on from the ways that we kind of are in the world coming from our family system you know and maybe you haven't found the right circle yet this right circle of people yet i always coach my clients that um you'll probably jive with people so much better if those people experience what you experience growing up i think a lot of us spend a lot of time of just trying to be normal and try to be normal with other people which isn't i don't i don't think that really works i mean trust me i tried

if we try to just adapt to what um what we think normal people do or what they are will still feel like we're on the outside looking in so that's what i mean by that one the recovery idea on this one is about risk taking people won't know us until we take more risk and understanding that that is a process to find it's a process to find like-minded people or friends another really great recovery tip is rejection can also be seen as protection when it comes to that kind of process and what i mean by

that is um i think a lot of trauma survivors we just wanted to be acceptable um not all of us but a lot of us wanted to be popular wanted to fit in wanted to fit in with the people at work and whatever and we tend to only look through things from that like tunnel vision lens but you know in a way that we're not included in those things is like we might be protected in that that we we might not see that those people might be toxic or that situation might not be good for

us um so that's what i mean by that and the opposite of this lie is something like people won't know me unless i take a risk and we can do some inner child dialoguing around that one so lastly this is the big one number one is the the lie that love isn't real the last one here runs really deep if you have this lie going on in your subconscious or the inner child is preoccupied with it just like a refrigerator buzz background kind of a thing which you know is kind of the same thing it

might look like this having like reserving the feeling that your partner will eventually cheat or leave or both another is seeing happy couples might make you disgusted or skeptical another is feeling like at any moment someone close to you is going to alienate you or tell you how they really feel about you another is staying in relationships that are beneath you because you don't believe that you'll be able to get the love that you really want in the world so this is the best you got going on that's a common trap another is looking for

evidence that love is in fact kind of fake like see you know they broke up another is growing up in the anti-love family another is expressing love might make you nauseous or grossed out that's another common one that my clients might kind of talk about for those who are really reserved around expressions of love is they really feel grossed out if they are to express it that tells us a lot about something that went down in their childhood about the expression of love and these might be in place for you if you grew up in

any of the following situations parents who divorced parents who should have divorced i'm not saying divorce is bad um experiencing infide in um i'm trying to say infidelity in the parental system another is loss of a parent or loss of the good parent which is hard another is being adopted another is parents whose marriage was a toxic power struggle and what i mean by that one is like the modeling there is that like this is what love is this really long-term miserable duking it out over the years which is really heartbreaking and really toxic modeling

when we think about it another is parents who expressed love to you but didn't back it up with loving behavior phrases like you know your father loves you you you i love you you can do anything in the world i don't think you can really do that you know it's like there's a really a big contradiction in what they express and how they really are with you and that's a that's a really confusing one when you really kind of dial into it another is parents who are profoundly miserable and broken-hearted themselves like when you experience

a parent who was really beaten down by life and their love life was a mess that can really be sort of in the mix of this lie depending on especially depending on if the parent would be doing any work around that most likely not another is seeing a parent who lived this lie another is as a child not being able to affect your parent to treat you better like what i mentioned earlier another is expressions of love felt manipulative or gross probably because they were in some way and like all the others in the recovery

piece about the love lie is about really focusing on how it got wrecked so my then i challenge my clients who have this going on to look for love in the world look for evidence of love in the world as opposed to confirming that love isn't real or even sort of safe i will often have my clients who are struggling with their own family life or struggling to find a partner or struggling about this issue of love being real i will ask them what comes up when they see a family with a stroller or something

like that or a couple who seems to be in love or enjoying each other or just you just kind of get sent the sense of something nice is going on is i would challenge them to say take that as sort of i know it's face value but take that as some evidence that there might be love in the world because again like the inner child has a death grip onto these beliefs the inner child is like nope doesn't work doesn't work for me i think it's bs when i see it and elsewhere so it's a

bit of a battle you know like the good things don't last lie this is about being present for love and being available to it when we do experience it um love is also about taking risks so if you want some serious insight close your eyes and ask your inner child like we did before earlier in the video what do they think about love what do they know about it you might get an answer of like a disney fantasy that's a common thing you might get a really negative feeling that kind of comes up and again

try not to judge it it's going to make sense given the way that you kind of grew up if you identify as growing up in childhood trauma in a toxic family system as a side note if you are currently in a loveless relationship for example that lie might be running you and the recovery piece is to take risk about with your partner about this absence of love in the relationship and if that fails you might have to consider couples therapy and if couples therapy fail you might have to kind of consider leaving this is what

i mean about this love lie the opposite of this lie is something like love is what we make of it by taking risk and choosing people who are capable of it people who are capable of love they might actually intimidate you guys when you find them or they may feel foreign to you and that's all due to childhood again try not to judge that so there's the list you guys and in closing if you notice with these lies i'm talking about the recovery ideas are about questioning what you really value i think all of us

need to explore what we value because it's totally different than what we learned from our parents growing up or what our family system valued but we are stuck with still with that childhood conditioning in those toxic values so here's what i mean by this value thing for number six do you value authenticity over going going along to get along for number five do we value being present over being worried we'll lose something or someone for number four do we value the concept of having something to offer and being worthwhile to the world do we really

value that for number three do we value building the sexual life that we want as opposed to our sex life and our sexual identity fading away for number two do we really value the idea of being known to others why is that scary and for number one do we value love whether it's self-love with our inner child love with a partner love with our own kids love in our community so that's what i mean about those values when we really it's almost like the questions kind of sober us up like if we really have a

lie that love isn't real or whatever is if you were talking about love with an actual four-year-old would you tell the four-year-old ah isn't real just gonna kick your ass through life we wouldn't do that so if we wouldn't do that because we we have a value sort of around it so my mentor mentor curtin often talks about would you say that to a kid would you say these broken-hearted things to a kid not to break their heart but almost thinking about like are they are you really right are you really right that like love

isn't safe that's what i mean about those things so that's the list i hope it was helpful to you guys and as always may you be filled with loving kindness may you be well may you be peaceful and at ease and may you be joyous i will see you guys next time [Music] [Music] you [Music]