13 Super Specific Signs That Your Childhood Was Extremely Damaging

hey hi everyone I want to talk about 13 super specific signs that your childhood may have been extremely damaging my name is Jerry wise I've been working for over 45 years with people who grew up in narcissistic toxic and dysfunctional families helping them finally get the family dysfunction out of them and become the true self they were never allowed to be so what are these specific signs that your childhood was extremely damaging one thing is that you smile your way through hell and I think what I mean by that is you just smile no matter

how awful things are whatever no matter how you're treated no matter what goes on you keep the smile on and you always keep up the stiff upper lip and never make anybody uncomfortable with who you are how you feel and so you smile your way through hell another sign of growing up with a damaging childhood is serious feelings of isolation and loneliness we have the isolation and loneliness because of what we have learned what we have believed about ourselves what we were programmed when we were growing up and so that's why when we have the

symptoms of isolation and loneliness which I certainly did experience in a pretty severe way I also realized I learned that and that was a part of how I was to cope with myself and being and feeling isolated and lonely because of not having the support and affection and help that may have happened in a more functional family another sign that your childhood was extremely damaging is a lack of healthy and lasting relationships if your relationships haven't lasted if you don't have healthy relationships probably there is damage that went on when you were growing up and

a lot of people come to me and say I don't have friends I don't know how to make friends I don't how to get a relationship I don't know how to have a husband or a wife or I've had two bad marriages and it's never going to work out I understand it can feel that way it can seem that way and I understand how painful that can be however there are ways in which we can unearth the problems that are underneath the isolation and loneliness and create a better environment for you and a much more

open possible forward motion with friends romantic relationships Etc and if we take a look back we can do some expelling of that programming we can do some healing of the trauma which will help us to have different relationships today another sign that your childhood may have been extremely damaging is being startled by even the smallest noise that's certainly a uh PTSD symptom you know we we are just startled by everything and it's very difficult I realize there are some people that have a heightened sense of hearing senses but I'm not really talking about those I'm

talking about those whom have become much more ready to be startled because of their childhood abuse because of childhood intimidation bullying fear um and terrorized being terrorized and many children are terrorized growing up and that's all legal these days unfortunately because we do protect parenting which I understand we do need to protect the relationship between a parent and child but hopefully we will grow into some more mature understandings of what it means to protect in our society children from very unhealthy parents another sign that you grew up in a with a childhood that was extremely

damaging is changing your behavior when someone enters the room your inner dialogue shifts your mental state shifts your behavior May shift someone enters the room and you shift that may be a sign that you had damaging experiences growing up as a child another example of a specific sign that your childhood was extremely damaging is feeling guilt and shame in completely normal situations and I remember that like even with bosses which is kind of a professional relationship kind of a normal societal relationship and when the boss uh says well you know I wish I would have

liked you to to have seen you done better in the last six months I think you've maybe made a dip in your productivity and then you feel waves of Shame and guilt it's their job to bring that to bring that up it's their job to ask you about that and it would be their job to help explore that with you but we feel who have had damaging childhoods we feel the shame and guilt that comes rushing in as a result of that criticism even the hint of possible criticism we can have lots of reactivity to

that another specific sign that maybe your childhood was extremely damaging is you either overshare or share nothing at all in other words we live in extremes or the pendulum type of life we overshare over here or we unders share over here often if we've had a childhood that's been damaging we overshare with people we shouldn't be oversharing with and we unders share with people who we should be sharing with uh we actually end up doing the opposite of those things because of our childhood programming and experience another sign uh that your childhood may have been

extremely damaging is your friend circle is very small and you have no friends well certainly maybe you're not one to get along with people maybe you don't want to be around people okay you can make that choice that's fine and they're more introverts versus extroverts I understand that but if you don't have any friends who really can't be uh in your life then again it may not be just your fault it may not be you're a bad person or you're you know you're an you're a person who can't have friends or maybe maybe you feel

you're a person that's Unworthy of having friends but probably there are some childhood issues and Trauma that are behind that another sign that your childhood may have been extremely damaging is having struggles with authority either needing too much of it or rebelling against it in other words we don't have a healthy relationship with authority uh it's usually an unhealthy relationship we resent it we hate it we fight against it or we comply submit and do not think when it comes to authority of others over us and that can be a sign that our childhood had

some damaging things going on there another specific kind of sign is seeing a parent child relationship and wishing it was you fantasizing about I wish I could have been like CHR parents I wish I could have had a family who treated me like that uh I wish or you see others mother and child in the grocery store and you go that would have been so wonderful you may have had a damaging childhood another specific sign that you may have had a damaging uh childhood is becoming childlike around your parents that we immediately go into uh

regression when we're there we go for Christmas dinner and we fall into our childhood roles and you're expected to be the the role that your family or parents have uh defined for you and you may also feel very childlike when you're around them and so that leads you to accept some of the inappropriate parent they may want to do with you as an adult parenting ends at 18 I didn't say people stopped having parents at 18 but parenting ends in other words you're not going to put me in the corner certainly parents can provide some

wisdom some experience some advice some support some financial help all those things are appropriate even after 18 but parenting is another matter and if that's happening then you probably had a damaging childhood another sign that your childhood was extremely damaging is that you're struggling to understand who you really are what you really think how you really feel the reason why that can be a sign is that if we don't have that sense of self then probably we did did not get a good beginning of being our own selves growing up and there may have been

trauma abuse dysfunction toxicity narcissistic parents could be any number of things that would have supressed knowing who you really are what you really think what you really want what are your preferences all of those things so we may want to look at maybe my childhood may have had some damaging things going on in that and we may want to get some help for that I would strongly recommend that if a number of these items you find yourself experiencing I would get some coaching or some therapy I would also recommend that you join the free training

that I have build the true self you were never allowed to have that's mentioned down below absolutely free 84 minutes I want to just give it away to you and to help you begin on a journey of healthy self-differentiation Please Subscribe like comment on this video thank you for joining me have a great day and be wise