Recognizing childhood experiences as abuse, when you’re an adult, is a particular flavor of grief. Identifying, naming, realizing, a history of harm is a process. It is your process to begin, pause and end at any point. You determine the timeline and tempo. But you are not alone. Healing is non-linear, but it doesn’t have to be lonely. You can search for accessible therapists on Psychology Today. Support groups are listed on Our Wave’s resource page. And it’s ok too, if you’re not ready to unpack memories. Only you know your truth and what’s best for you. No one has, or ever had, the right to violate your body, story or energy. It takes tremendous courage to realize past experiences were unsafe and harmful. It takes tremendous courage to sit and process your lived experiences.
Survivors of harm often report low self-esteem, perfectionist tendencies and a powerful inner critic. Because of this, working towards healing may feel unfamiliar, uncomfortable, painful, angering…and liberating. Being an adult survivor of childhood abuse, you might experience memories, and/or emotional flashbacks – feelings like you are currently experiencing harm, when you are presently safe. You might have had a lifelong knowing, a sense, that your childhood, the story you tell about yourself, isn’t quite “right”. Maybe you’ve always felt like an outsider, an observer. Often, adult survivors of childhood abuse report feeling like an alien. You aren’t, though. There’s so much strength and honesty that comes with reckoning. It can be painful, excruciating. But there can be freedom in honesty. Survivors of past harm walk a tricky tightrope. You might know, deep in your gut or heart, or whatever part of you feels intuitive, that your past experiences aren’t “right”. And, as a survivor of harm, you might not feel like you have the skills or strengths to articulate what’s wrong, or advocate for yourself. You are not wrong. Trust that intuition. Trust that you can now, as an adult, keep yourself safe.
Sometimes adult relationships can trigger recollections. Sometimes, as an adult, feeling safe and trusting in a relationship might lead to a deluge of memoires. The opposite is also true. Negative adult relationships can lead to a deluge of memories. In the Survivor to Thriver manual, the authors’ note “many adult survivors find themselves in relationships that in some way parallel or resemble their childhood abuse scenarios.” (Survivor to Thriver Manual, 2015) There is nothing wrong with you if this is true for you. You are not damaged. Psychological evidence holds that the brain can have a tendency to try to “fix” past scenarios through current situations. “Many survivors are inclined to deny the abusive nature of their adult relationships, much as they once denied their childhood abuse.” (Survivor to Thriver Manual, 2015) These behavioral patterns are not prompted by the logical, adult, reasoning-prefrontal cortex of the brain, but are rather formed through memories, impressions and emotions encoded at the back of the brain, in the limbic system. The limbic system is connected to the vagus nerve which runs through a person’s core, which is why flashbacks can trigger somatic reactions (such as an upset stomach).
Recognizing life-long behavioral emotional patterns as trauma responses and not character defects, requires tenderness. “Most survivors never learn to self-soothe in childhood.” (Survivor to Thriver Manual, 2015) Experiencing flashbacks as an adult and not feeling equipped with the necessary tools to find comfort, can be destabilizing and painful. Resources like Adult Survivors of Childhood Abuse, and others on the Our Wave website, exist to heal from trauma. Healing doesn’t occur in a vacuum, recognizing abuse and reaching out takes tremendous courage. While healing can be supported by individual and group therapies, independent work through reading, journaling and meditation are powerful too. Combining multiple tools and techniques can be deeply enriching.
Psychotherapist Pete Walker writes about trauma-informed care with down to earth candor. He is noted in the field for identifying and articulating emotional flashbacks in adults and developing skills to mitigate them. He describes emotional flashbacks as “rarely visual. Instead, it is a painful reliving of the overwhelming feeling of being an abandoned child.” (Walker, 2017) Emotional flashbacks affect the entire body. The feelings that emerge “are accompanied by inappropriate and intense arousal of the fight/flight instinct and the sympathetic nervous system.” (Walker, 2017) This might mean sweaty palms, or again, a stomachache. Individuals in this state often become self-critical.
Walker has identified thirteen strategies for managing emotional flashbacks. The key feature of an emotional flashback is that it occurs when you are in a safe situation, but something triggers a past feeling of being unsafe. Maybe you’re at the grocery store and the sound of a slamming refrigerator. Maybe your boss gives you a look you find patronizing. Your brain, and the rest of your body, operate as though you are currently experiencing past abuse.
The first of Walker’s strategies is to say to yourself “I am having a flashback.” This will allow you to ground yourself in the present. Instead of immediately leaping into a trauma response (fight, flight, freeze, fawn). Staying present in the moment grounds you in your current, safe adult-body. Remind yourself that you are not in danger. An emotional flashback feels like you’re actually in danger. It is a feeling. Remind yourself that you are safe.
A challenge of recognizing past events as abusive, at any age, but especially for adult survivors, is the possibility of never having full closure, or all the puzzle pieces put together. According to Survivor to Thriver “Many of you who are in the process of recalling memories of your past may not yet have objective evidence of the abuse, and you may never find outside validation or corroboration of what happened.” (Survivor to Thriver Manual, 2015) What can be particularly painful as an adult survivor of childhood abuse are complicated feelings towards caregivers who neglected to respond to your needs. This is called emotional neglect. “The kind of neglect where no caretaker was ever available for support, comfort, or protection…such trauma victims learned early in life that no matter how hurt, alienated, or terrified they were, turning to a parent would actually exacerbate their experience of rejection.” (Walker, 2009) This doesn’t mean you can’t lead a full and life with enlivening relationships and find balance and wellness and heal. Pete Walker writes “as the theory goes, survivors are recovered to the degree that they relate the full story of their suffering – accurately, sympathetically, and with appropriate affect.” (Walker, 2017)
Whatever stage you find yourself in your path towards healing, know that you are courageous and that you are not alone. There are resources on Our Wave to support you. There are many folks like you sitting in, and processing, their truths.
References
The Morris Center for Healing from Child Abuse. “Survivor to Thriver Manual.” May, 2025. https://www.ascasupport.org/materials/manuals/SurvivorToThriverManual.pdf
Walker, Pete. (2017). Homesteading in the Calm Eye of the Storm. Azure Coyote Books.
Walker, Pete. (2009). “Emotional Flashback Management in the Treatment of Complex PTSD.” Psychotherapy.net. https://pete-walker.com/pdf/emotionalFlashbackManagement.pdf
