Breaking the Cycle: Overcoming Depression Rooted in Childhood Trauma - Rachel Devine
You might be wondering why your life doesn’t seem to be as happy as you want it to be. You might be fighting depression and feelings of hopelessness and may not even know where these feelings are coming from. Unfortunately, our subconscious mind holds almost all emotions from everything that happened in the past and does unleash it’s negativity onto our lives in the present without any notice. It's increasingly recognized that childhood trauma and adverse experiences can have a profound effect on mental health later in life, often manifesting as depression in adulthood. The impact of emotional neglect, abuse, the loss of a parent, domestic violence, or other traumatic events can create long-lasting psychological wounds and negative core beliefs about oneself.
Let’s take a look at these inner child wounds and ways to recover from the negativity from the past to alleviate the depression that may be plaguing you in the present time.
You might be wondering why your life doesn’t seem to be as happy as you want it to be. You might be fighting depression and feelings of hopelessness and may not even know where these feelings are coming from. Unfortunately, our subconscious mind holds almost all emotions from everything that happened in the past and does unleash it’s negativity onto our lives in the present without any notice. It's increasingly recognized that childhood trauma and adverse experiences can have a profound effect on mental health later in life, often manifesting as depression in adulthood. The impact of emotional neglect, abuse, the loss of a parent, domestic violence, or other traumatic events can create long-lasting psychological wounds and negative core beliefs about oneself.
Let’s take a look at these inner child wounds and ways to recover from the negativity from the past to alleviate the depression that may be plaguing you in the present time.
How Childhood Trauma Leads to Adult Depression
Traumatic childhood events can lead to complex feelings from the past of shame and insecurity, and a lack of self-worth that persist long after the trauma occurred. Past inner child wounds can also cause depression, hopelessness and a feeling of self-loathing, just to name a few. This inner critic and negative self-talk increases vulnerability to anxiety and clinical depression over time. It’s important to recognize the inner negativity that may creep up on your day in the form of negative self-talk. The deep seated wounds are in the subconscious mind and drive your life. The key is to try to reverse the negative past to a positive present moment.
Healing Childhood Trauma to Overcome Depression
While the impact of childhood trauma runs deep, there is hope for healing and undoing the mental anguish and depressive symptoms rooted in the past. Again, the key is to work on the subconscious mind where the trauma is stored. Some powerful techniques include the following:
Inner Child Work—visualizations, inner child letter writing, and reparenting your inner child through work and internal family systems therapy—can rematrix core childhood wounds. Inner-child healing is possible with some effort. Nurturing your inner child is key to healing the wounds from childhood.
EMDR Therapy: Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is an evidence-based therapy using bilateral brain stimulation to reprocess and resolve traumatic memories.
Cognitive Behavioral Techniques: CBT helps identify and change negative thought patterns, core beliefs, and cognitive distortions stemming from adverse childhood events.
Trauma-Focused Therapies: Other top modalities include prolonged exposure therapy, emotion-focused therapy, and accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP), which foster emotional release and new experiences of feeling safe and secure.
Mindfulness Practices: Mindfulness meditation, self-compassion work, and practices cultivating self-love help quiet the inner critic and build emotional resilience.
Positive affirmations: Feeding yourself positive affirmations is a way to manifest change for the subconscious to a positive, which holds the trauma and negative experiences. Keep telling yourself you are worthy, you are loved, you are valued, and you are loveable. Saying I love you daily to yourself is a positive affirmation that is valuable to healing old childhood wounds of perhaps not feeling so loved.
Brainspotting: Brainspotting is a way to clear the subcortical brain, better known as the subconscious, of negative experiences from the past. Brainspotting can penetrate the subconscious and clear the mind of trauma from the past.
Somatic Therapy: Body-oriented approaches like somatic therapy can help resolve trapped trauma in the body. Breathwork, sensorimotor psychotherapy, massages and other mind-body practices promote healing.
It’s important to recognize that most depression has roots in childhood trauma and negative experiences. This awareness is crucial to inner healing. With patience, commitment to the inner work, and the right therapeutic approach, it is possible to break the cycle—replacing depressive core beliefs with self-compassion and self-love, which will assist in undoing the impacts of childhood adversity—to alleviate the depression and get back to being happy again.
Rachel Devine is the author of, Discover the Power of the Secret Within - Healing your Inner Child to Manifest your Dreams.
Take the Inner Child Quiz for Healing: Step by Step Audio Guide - Rachel Devine
Each one of us has something in life that keeps us from moving forward or perhaps negatively impacts our relationships, or keeps us hostage in our addictions or obsessions. This would include food addictions, as well as drugs and alcohol.
Inner healing starts with recognizing our inner child wounds. I can confidently say we all have some inner child wounds that fester within us, sometimes for many years. These inner wounds continue to cause negative patterns that are destructive to our lives. The key to healing is to know what you need to heal from. The inner child quiz has 12 pertinent questions that can help you access your own inner child wounds. Furthermore, each answer to the questions will give you a good idea on what area you actually need healing.
Each one of us has something in life that keeps us from moving forward or perhaps negatively impacts our relationships, or keeps us hostage in our addictions or obsessions. This would include food addictions, as well as drugs and alcohol.
Inner healing starts with recognizing our inner child wounds. I can confidently say we all have some inner child wounds that fester within us, sometimes for many years. These inner wounds continue to cause negative patterns that are destructive to our lives. The key to healing is to know what you need to heal from. The inner child quiz has 12 pertinent questions that can help you access your own inner child wounds. Furthermore, each answer to the questions will give you a good idea on what area you actually need healing.
Take the inner child quiz. This is the quiz on my website. Or you can take the inner child test with my audio guide below.
Once you take the quiz there are several ways you can start your inner healing. One way is to get my new book, Discover the Power of the Secret Within - Healing your Inner Child to Manifest your Dreams. You can get an instant ebook download. My book gives a step by step guide to inner child healing.
You can also consider my life coaching, full details on this link.
Or get my free guide to start your healing, How to Heal your Inner Child - 7 Step Video Guide.
And of course a good therapist that deals with inner child issues would be helpful.
The inner child quiz is on the audio link below. If you have any questions, please contact me.
The suggestions on this audio and in this blog are just that, suggestions. The author is not responsible for the outcome and always recommends therapy for those that need it.
Audio Excerpt of, Discover the Power of the Secret Within - Rachel Devine
My new book, Discover the Power of the Secret Within is changing lives. Perhaps you have no idea what it’s all about. Do you have 10 minutes to spare? I created an audio excerpt of the preface of the book in order to tell everyone what my new book is about. Take a few minutes to listen to how this book can transform your life!
Here are some very positive early reviews from those who have read it.
I was up past midnight reading your book, I couldn’t put it down. TB
This book is going to change many lives. DK
I lost two nights of sleep reading your book, but it was worth it. TK
My new book, Discover the Power of the Secret Within is changing lives. Perhaps you have no idea what it’s all about. Do you have 12 minutes to spare? I created an audio excerpt of the preface of the book in order to tell everyone what my new book is about. Take a few minutes to listen to how this book can transform your life!
Here are some very positive early reviews from those who have read it.
I was up past midnight reading your book, I couldn’t put it down. TB
This book is going to change many lives. DK
I lost two nights of sleep reading your book, but it was worth it. TK
Just click on the link below to listen to a short excerpt from my new book, Discover the Power of the Secret Within.
When you are done listening to the excerpt you can take the, Inner Child Quiz, to see access your own inner child:
Take the Inner Child Quiz - Rachel Devine
Taking an inner child quiz can be the first step towards identifying and healing emotional wounds from your past. Studies show that a surprising number of adults experience the lingering effects of childhood trauma and stress. Unresolved issues from our early years often manifest in adulthood through struggles like addiction, anxiety, depression, and relationship conflicts. However, most people do not correlate inner child wounds with present day issues like depression and addictions. Furthermore, most people don’t even believe in the inner child factor. This is unfortunate because so much clarity and healing can be revealed with some foreknowledge. Let’s look at this in a comprehensive manner before embarking on an inner child quiz.
Taking an inner child quiz can be the first step towards identifying and healing emotional wounds from your past. Studies show that a surprising number of adults experience the lingering effects of childhood trauma and stress. Unresolved issues from our early years often manifest in adulthood through struggles like addiction, anxiety, depression, and relationship conflicts. However, most people do not correlate inner child wounds with present day issues like depression and addictions. Furthermore, most people don’t even believe in the inner child factor. This is unfortunate because so much clarity and healing can be revealed with some foreknowledge. Let’s look at this in a comprehensive manner before embarking on an inner child quiz.
Finding the source of dysfunction
Addictions, anger issues, chronic fears, anger issues, and other adult dysfunctions frequently arise from childhood emotional wounds around topics like self-worth, security, and emotional needs not being met. Tracing back to the origins provides clarity and focus for unraveling these patterns. It sheds light on the actual patterns from childhood, helping one understand the root cause of their adult issues.
Statistics on Inner Child Wounds
Studies show 60% of adults of adults report experiencing abuse or other difficult family circumstances during
childhood. 26% of children will witness or experience a traumatic event before they turn four. About one-quarter of adults experience three or more adverse childhood experiences that can lead to emotional trauma.
A 2019 Harris poll found that 64% of American adults have inner child wounds that affect their happiness. The most common wound stemmed from emotional neglect, reported by 19% of adults.
These are just a few fascinating statistics on inner child wounds and their impact on adulthood can be more devastating than the original infraction!
Why Our Inner Child Impacts Our Adult Selves
Unmet childhood needs like connection, safety, validation, trust, and love often are the culprit behind our inner child wounds and resurface through some of the following issues:
● Addictive behaviors like alcoholism, drug abuse, gambling, and unhealthy attachments that fill a void or numb painful feelings from childhood on a subconscious level.
● Anxiety and depression result from core feelings of not being good enough, blaming oneself, and struggling with vulnerability.
● Anger issues are tied to growing up feeling unimportant, criticized, threatened, bullied, or powerless.
● Relationship problems due to difficulties with trust, communication, empathy, and respect—all learned in childhood.
These are just some dysfunctions that branch out of our early childhood. Identifying and nurturing your inner child’s unresolved wounds through self-discovery, counseling, therapy or support groups can help you form healthier, happier relationships and break detrimental, repeated cycles traced back to the past. The key to healing the inner child wounds is to recognize the patterns from childhood. The only way to recognize these patterns is to do the inner child work. The benefits of a potential healthy life without addiction or depression is far worth the work invested in your inner child healing. However, it all starts with awareness.
Benefits of Taking an Inner Child Quiz
Awareness happens with a little effort. If you take an inner child quiz you will have increased self-awareness. Understanding your inner child can help you recognize recurring destructive patterns that originated in childhood. An inner child quiz strips away rationalizations and makes you tune into core emotional triggers. It can also help you by pointing out your emotional wounds. Quizzes help uncover specific childhood events or dynamics that shaped your coping mechanisms and beliefs about yourself and the world. Identifying these root causes paves the way for healing. Living in an oblivious state and not understanding why certain core issues are coming from is unfortunate.
In closing, the key to happiness in life is to be aware of the origin of our present day issues. In understanding the patterns from childhood, one is empowered to heal from inner child wounds. The first step to any healing is becoming aware of the problem that needs to be healed. An inner child quiz is the first step to healing.
Take the inner child quiz here.
Rachel Devine is the author of a new inner child book called, Discover the Power of the Secret Within - Healing your Inner Child to Manifest your Dreams. This book is available now on Amazon.
Amazon review: The book really got deep on how our subconscious mind works and how important it is to not fall into the negativities and train yourself to think positive always . I really enjoyed it and it was very inspirational and really broadened my knowledge of how our minds work . I really recommend it ! Tina
Devine Intervention - Inner Healing Center.
If you have any questions, please contact Rachel Devine.