When Will I Get Over Traumatic Childhood Experiences

Question: I’m in my 60s, and still bothered by memories of traumatic childhood experiences. When will I get over this?

Response from Rhoda Olkin, PhD: I get asked this question often by clients. The short answer is that people don’t get over things so much as those things lose their power and emotional grip on us. Memories of previous traumas never completely disappear, they simply don’t get re-awakened as often or as powerfully. And, as studies attest, we get emotionally stronger and wiser with age.

These traumas inform our early schemas, i.e., core beliefs about ourselves, others and the world. Time and therapy both address schemas. Let me give an example: I was hospitalized at ages 1, 3 and 7, for up to two months at a time. One of my core schemas is that “I have to get home because the world is too dangerous for me to survive.” As an adult, I would always want to be the one to hold the car keys when I went on outings with other people so that when they disappeared on the face of the earth, I could still get home. Notice that this is an irrational and unhelpful belief. That is the power of trauma-related schemas—no amount of logic undoes them.

So, what pushes back against problematic schemas? Time and experiences—X happened and I survived; Y happened and I survived, Z happened and I survived. As I survive, the schema is weakened. Do I still want to hold the car keys? Truthfully, yes, but am not as insistent, and I am able to laugh at my automatic thought that others are going to disappear and strand me alone on earth.

Many facets of life that one is dealing with as one ages can reawaken memories of earlier times. For example, retirement—whether by choice or earlier than desired due to fatigue—is a powerful reminder of one’s frailty. Having worked so hard in the era of “use it or lose it,” retirement can seem like “giving in” to polio. Increased weakness can be a reminder that we overdid it when younger, as we were pushed to do.

Other issues also arise with age: being alone, facing mortality, losing significant others, financial strain, reduced mobility. Any new significant stressor is likely to trigger our underlying schemas. But with empathic help from friends, family and/or a therapist, schemas are weakened to a whisper. This is what it means to get over trauma.

Post-Polio Health (Vol. 34, No. 3, Summer 2018)