TW: This article contains mentions of mental illness, eating disorders, self-harm, and more sensitive topics.

Many people may not realize it but childhood trauma can leave deep emotional scars that often reach and wrap themselves around your life up until adulthood. Many adults or older teens may struggle with depression, anxiety, and even relationship problems due to the unresolved pain and issues they have from past experiences or trauma in their life.

Although these issues are from when you were a child or just younger in general and a lot of people would say it shouldn’t affect you anymore because it’s “in the past” or it’s “not happening anymore”, in your adulthood is when it actually affects you the most. The thing about this is that it doesn’t just affect your mental health, it also affects your physical health in many ways that people have never really even thought of including weight gain and/or loss, different kinds of eating disorders, and even stuff people wouldn’t even think about like acne because of the amount of stress it can physically put you through. According to this article,https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/publications/health-matters/how-childhood-trauma-may-impact-adults, “In addition to affecting mental health and coping mechanisms, trauma has been proven to affect physical health as well.” It’s not just one thing they have to deal with and try to control, it’s multiple hard problems that they have to deal with every single day of their lives due to something that happened when they were younger.

There are many long-term effects trauma can have on you, this article, Childhood Trauma and Adult Mental Health, lists many examples of the long-term effects also saying how “childhood trauma can also increase the likelihood that a person will struggle with various cognitive, behavioral, and social challenges.” Imagine having your behavior, the way you talk to people, and more all be dictated based on something you can’t or feel you have no control over. There are so many impacts that happen to you when you have these types of trauma and these are the kinds of things that make life so hard for people with trauma or mental illnesses that are caused by trauma, because of this many people’s self-image and image of others can be heavily affected as well. All this trauma can lead to many bad things including depression, low self-esteem, anxiety, and more. According to, The impact of childhood trauma on children’s wellbeing and adult behavior – ScienceDirect, some people will also, “create a false self-image and engage in alcohol and drug misuse in attempts to prevent their traumatic experiences from impacting their life.” Research shows that adults with childhood trauma or who still have those unresolved issues are some of the first to run to substance abuse and inflict different forms of self-harm themselves. These people will also try to pretend they don’t have these issues and make a whole new personality trying to forget them or pretend they don’t exist in general.

Although there are ways to heal and move forward from this stuff it’s super hard. When you’ve been carrying this type of stuff with you for so long it’s hard to let it go. No matter the amount of therapy, counseling, sessions, and any of the stuff you think would help, it’s still gonna be a rough and long process. I’m not saying it’s impossible but it will take time and once you put that time in, it will all be worth it. It’s okay to heal and move on to be the better person you’ve deserved to be since the beginning. The past doesn’t define you unless you let it.