Can trauma change your personality? In this video, we explore whether your personality is who you really are or if it is a coping mechanism you learnt to survive childhood trauma.

Fear is a powerful motivator. Repeatedly experiencing unpleasant or painful events signals an imminent threat to survival.

As a child, you have few options to deal with unpleasant events. You cannot physically get up and leave your home if your parents are emotionally abusing or neglecting you. So the only way to survive painful events is to withdraw- to disconnect emotionally.

This emotional disconnection often continues into adulthood and can look like using substances like alcohol or drugs to numb feelings. Or you may put all your energy and focus into your work to escape how you feel.

It’s easy to think negatively about how you learnt to cope when subjected to childhood trauma. But the first part of healing is understanding that those coping strategies helped you survive at the time. By understanding that they once served a necessary purpose, we can begin to let them go from a place of love.

The gift of being an adult is we’re not dependent upon others to meet our core emotional needs. We have within us what we need to heal, but to access this we need to slow down, make space and learn to connect to the love within us.