“But nothing bad happened in my childhood.”

It’s something I hear quite often when I ask about clients’ younger years.

I know how much our past experiences can still impact us today, but for some people, it feels like a strange question to be asked.

After all, they had a stable home. They were fed, clothed and seemingly well cared for. They didn’t go without. In fact, they went on family holidays, had birthday parties and have some happy memories.

They may even describe their childhood as a ‘good’ one.

But these are the same people who find themselves struggling now – with anxiety, low self-esteem, overthinking, people-pleasing or difficulties in relationships.

They’re often searching for an explanation for how they feel, confused, because:

“Why am I like this? Nothing bad happened to me”.

We tend to look for the big things

When we think about childhood experiences affecting us as adults, it's natural to think about things that are clearly difficult or traumatic – abuse, neglect, bereavement, violence or other frightening experiences.

And those experiences can, of course, have a profound impact.

But we are shaped by much more than the big things that happened to us. We're also shaped by thousands of smaller experiences within our earliest relationships.

-What happened when you were frightened?

-Who comforted you when you were upset?

-What happened when you made a mistake?

-Was it okay to be angry?

-Could you disagree?

-Did you feel listened to and understood?

-Could you ask for help?

-Did you feel accepted when you were struggling, as well as when you were doing well?

This isn’t about deciding whether you had a “good” or “bad” childhood. It’s about understanding what you learned about yourself, other people and relationships while you were growing up.

Sometimes it's about what didn't happen

Some childhood experiences are easy to remember because something happened that stayed with us (good or bad). Others are much harder to recognise because they're about something that was missing.

-Perhaps nobody really asked how you felt

-Maybe there wasn't much affection or reassurance

-Perhaps difficult emotions weren't talked about

-Maybe you were loved, but didn't always feel understood

-Perhaps you learned that other people's feelings took priority over yours

-Or maybe you became very independent, very capable and very good at coping

When something wasn't there in the first place, we may not know it was something we needed.

We do the only thing we can do as children - adapt and keep going.

Children are master adapters

As children, we learn how to function within the relationships and environments around us.

-If being easy-going keeps things calm, we might learn not to make a fuss.

-If achievement gets noticed, we might work very hard and become afraid of failure.

-If someone around us is unpredictable, we might become especially good at noticing changes in other people’s moods.

-If expressing difficult feelings creates tension, we might learn to keep those feelings to ourselves.

-If other people's needs seem more important, we might become very good at looking after everyone else.

These ways of coping can make complete sense at the time.

The difficulty is that we can carry them into adulthood without realising we're doing it.

-Being sensitive to other people's moods can become constantly worrying whether someone is upset with us.

-Being “easy” can become people-pleasing.

-Being independent can become finding it almost impossible to ask for help.

-Working hard can become perfectionism and a fear of getting things wrong.

-Keeping difficult feelings to ourselves can become not really knowing what we feel or need at all.

What helped us adapt then doesn't always serve us now.

"But I have a lot of happy memories"

You can.

Acknowledging that some experiences affected you doesn't mean dismissing everything that was good.

Childhood isn't an either/or.

You can remember laughter, holidays and feeling loved, while also recognising that there were times when you felt alone, frightened, misunderstood or unable to express what you needed.

Both can be part of the same childhood.

Therapy isn't about finding something wrong with your past

Therapy shouldn't be about searching through your childhood until we find something “bad enough” to explain how you feel.

And you don't have to call anything trauma if that word doesn't feel right for you. It’s certainly a word I struggled with myself.

Mostly, we start with what's happening now.

-Why is criticism so difficult for me?

-Why do I worry so much about upsetting people?

-Why can't I say no without feeling guilty?

-Why do I need reassurance that everything is okay?

-Why do I understand logically that I'm safe, while something in me still feels on edge?

And then we become curious about those patterns. Not to find someone to blame and not to rewrite your childhood. But to understand you.

Because the ways we relate to ourselves and other people didn't appear from nowhere.

They developed somewhere, for a reason.

And sometimes understanding where they came from is the beginning of being able to do something differently.

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