Friday, June 13, 2025

Coping Skills for Trauma from Childhood: The Dos and Don’ts

The impact of trauma can still affect your life today, even if the traumatic event happened many years ago. And this is even more true when you’ve experienced trauma from childhood. So when the pain of past trauma is still with you now, you seek out ways to cope, whether you know it or not. Many times, these coping skills for trauma from your childhood can really help. And unfortunately, certain coping skills can pile on the hurt even more. 

When ACEs Happen: Enter Coping Skills for Trauma from Childhood

Whether it happened directly to you or you witnessed it, experiencing a dangerous, stressful, or scary event in your childhood (ages zero to 18) is considered childhood trauma. These events are often called adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). The American Psychiatric Association (APA) refers to ACEs as disruptions to the promotion of safe, stable, and nurturing family relationships. Common ACEs may include:

  • Substance use in the home
  • Divorce
  • Witnessing domestic violence
  • Having an incarcerated caregiver
  • Neglect
  • Living with someone who has a mental illness
  • Emotional, sexual, or physical abuse

 

When you encounter trauma in your childhood, it disrupts your sense of safety. But research shows that its impact can also damage your development. You’re more likely to struggle with mental health challenges throughout your life, such as anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Cognitive, emotional, and social impairment are also more probable if you don’t get help. You also may have trouble regulating your emotions and struggle with low self-esteem. Adding all of this together, it’s easy to see why coping skills for trauma from childhood are commonly used as a way to salve any ongoing struggles. 

Healthy Coping Skills for Trauma from Childhood: The Do’s 

Developing trauma coping skills is key for sustaining your health on an ongoing basis. However, certain coping mechanisms for trauma are healthier than others. Some of the better childhood trauma coping strategies include:

Self-Care

Whether it’s one of your trauma coping mechanisms or not, pursuing self-care is an all-around good practice in your daily life. When you make your health a priority, you benefit emotionally, mentally, and physically. Self-care coping skills for trauma from childhood may involve eating healthy, exercising consistently, and getting quality sleep.

Community Support

Struggling with childhood trauma can be both isolating and lonely. You may fear opening up to others about your past. However, seeking support from people in your community is one of the key coping mechanisms for trauma from childhood you can adopt. Maybe it’s attending a support group or just opening up to a close friend over lunch. Regardless, spending time with others and sharing your struggles can facilitate healthy levels of intimacy, safety, and healing. 

Hobbies

Struggling with childhood trauma can lead you to making poor decisions, especially if you don’t have things to fill your day. Prioritizing activities and hobbies you love (or even trying something new) can help you cope with trauma in a healthier way. And these activities can also get you around other people, allowing you to build your support system. 

Therapy or Professional Treatment

Practicing coping skills on your own can help, but sometimes you need more help. If childhood trauma is debilitating and disruptive in your life, it’s a good idea to seek therapy or trauma treatment. Partnering with professional, trauma-informed therapy at a treatment center equips you to directly address your past trauma and overcome the hurt that it’s caused you day in and day out.

Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms for Trauma from Childhood: The Don’ts

Because trauma can affect your cognitive abilities and emotional regulation, it can lead you to make poor choices. This means maladaptive coping skills for trauma that can unfortunately lead to addiction, further worsening your situation. Here are some prominent examples of unhealthy coping mechanisms for trauma from childhood: 

Alcohol or Drugs

Addictive substances like drugs or alcohol can sadly become go-to childhood trauma coping strategies. While they may feel good in the moment, they only provide temporary relief, causing you to use them again and again. Once you develop an addiction, it only makes your trauma struggles even worse as you can potentially deal with co-occurring disorders

Sex or Porn

Similar to drugs or alcohol, you can seek out sexual experiences as a way to cope with childhood trauma. Because having sex, masturbating, or watching porn, for example, generates large amounts of dopamine in your brain, you can develop a sexual addiction or hypersexual disorder. In fact hypersexuality and trauma are often connected as people use hypersexuality as a coping mechanism for past trauma. 

Food

Ever heard of comfort food? Just as people eat to comfort themselves, you can use food as one of your main coping skills for trauma from childhood. This can lead to emotional eating or binge eating as you struggle through trauma’s lingering effects. As this persists, you can develop an eating disorder, requiring you to seek an eating disorder therapist in addition to trauma-informed care

Overcoming Childhood Trauma at Integrative Life Center

If the effects of trauma are ruining your life, you can finally find healing through comprehensive trauma treatment. And if unhealthy coping mechanisms for trauma have led to addiction, it’s imperative that you seek professional dual diagnosis treatment. At Integrative Life Center in Nashville, TN, we can help you heal both your trauma and any co-occurring addiction or mental health disorder. To learn more about our holistic, personalized treatment programs, contact us today

Unsure if you have adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in your past? Take our FREE childhood trauma test to find out if you may be struggling with the effects of unresolved childhood trauma—and get the clarity you need to seek help before things get worse. 

The post Coping Skills for Trauma from Childhood: The Dos and Don’ts appeared first on Integrative Life Center.



source https://integrativelifecenter.com/mental-health-treatment/coping-skills-for-trauma-from-childhood-the-dos-and-donts/

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