26 "Normal" Childhood Experiences People Later Realized Were Incredibly Traumatic
Note: This story discusses physical, emotional, and animal abuse.
Our childhoods may seem normal to us because we lived it. Yet, when we tell others about our experiences, we may receive a different reaction. So when Reddit user randinicole831 asked: "What’s a 'normal' childhood experience you later realized was actually traumatic?" so many people shared their very vulnerable stories. Here's what they said below:
1."The silent treatment. I still assume that someone is angry when they’re quiet. I’m 70."
"Yeah, all aggressive silences get to me. It was difficult to explain to others that my mom could angrily fold laundry at me."
2."Waiting for my dad to be in a good mood to ask him something."
"Holy shit. I didn't realize that wasn't a normal experience until reading your comment.
I've been in therapy unpacking a lot this last year. I'll add this to the list."
"My mom used to send me to my room depending on what mood my dad was in when he came home from work. She'd look out the window, and if he had a face on, she'd tell me and my sister to go into our rooms. He would take out his shitty mood mostly on me. Due to this, I was alone a lot, and I became very comfortable being alone and isolated. Even today, I prefer to stay home, and I have no problem entertaining myself. I have plenty of friends, mostly long-lasting, and I'm very social when I go out, but I prefer to stay home because I have a low tolerance for dealing with people's bullshit.
I have a great relationship with my dad these days. I came to realize that he was just young with the pressures of supporting a family and dealing with his own unaddressed trauma from his parents. He did have a temper problem, but that's not my fault; that's his. I refuse to blame myself for his actions, and that's how I dealt with it. It doesn't mean that getting whacked with a belt wasn't traumatic, but that's what he got from his dad. I actually felt bad for him as I got older and put the pieces together.
I never hit my kids, and I never will. That cycle is broken. Be the parent you needed as a kid. I'm all about hugs, love, and support."
3."Constantly walking on eggshells to avoid making my dad angry."
"I've mastered the fake smile and always second-guess myself when something difficult happens in my life. It's like I'm unable to process my emotions properly because I always have to be on guard and feel on edge for such a long time. Ughh, mentally exhausting!"
"I still have really vivid memories of my dad screaming at me until he was red in the face, all because I had let a friend borrow a DVD that he wanted to watch. I didn’t even know he wanted to watch it. He came and asked where it was very politely and was even smiling, and when I told him I’d let my friend borrow it for a couple of days, he suddenly, like a light switch, went to screaming Hulk rage."
4."Being told ‘Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about’ — like, oh, cool, emotional suppression unlocked at age five."
"My parents always told me to go cry in my room and come out when I’m done because nobody cares or wants to see it.
Really difficult to process in your mid-30s why your husband would feel offended that you keep your emotions to yourself and hide when you feel off. Because it’s not normal, lol."
5."Never receiving any hugs from my parents — or valuable advice. Not even when I cried/was hurt physically. Comfort was quite absent, too. I only realized a few years ago when I saw a 17-year-old teenager leaning against his dad and telling him about his struggles with an upcoming big decision. Never have had that level of support and comfort, and it still makes my eyes water when I think about it in weak moments."
"My parents have never told me they love me. They’ve never said I’m proud of you, or we love what you’ve done with your life. I didn’t realize this was strange until I had my daughter. She’s only THREE, and I’m so, so proud of her all the time. I tell her I love her all day long. When she goes on to tackle challenges and face the world head-on, I’ll be her biggest and loudest supporter.
I don’t know why my parents don’t feel this way or why they don’t communicate it."
6."Thinking that I’m inherently a mean, evil, broken person at age like eight or nine. When I watched Inside Out 2, it honestly shocked me that Riley thought she was inherently a good person, lol."
"Religious trauma really messed me up with this one.
I have a love/hate relationship with the Inside Out movies. They’re SO good, but they make me so dismayed realizing how bad my mental state is."
7."My father passed when I was like four or five, then my older brother passed on when I was like six or seven. Back then, I just knew people died, and it's normal, but looking back, coming to terms with the inevitability of death, that young might not have been normal."
"I absolutely resonate with this. My parents had me when they were older, and I attended so many funerals for family and family friends. I was surprised to know some of my college friends never went to a funeral home until their teens."
8."Being a parent's therapist. You shouldn't be talking someone out of suicide when you're 12."
"Or confiding in your 10 year old about your affair."
9."Having my hair chopped off because I wasn’t taking care of it to my mother’s standards. I was six and had very long, very curly hair. Of course, I struggled to take care of it!"
"My mom did the same thing with getting incredibly frustrated with me for not being able to take care of my hair as a child. Like, YOU’RE the parent, right? It’s your job to make sure your kids look presentable for school."
10."'Talking back.' Turns out they just wanted me to be silent and have no opinion or feelings. My mother and stepfather used to constantly say how I was mouthy and constant talked back. Well, yeah, how else am I supposed to communicate? Smoke signals?"
"Or if you answer a question in what you think is a normal tone, then your parents get angry for 'being rude.' And you try to plead that no, I wasn't rude."
11."My mom yelling at me when I was hurt or sick instead of being nurturing. She has bad anxiety and doesn't handle stressful situations well. This has lead me to crave a ton of sympathy/attention when I'm sick as an adult."
"My mom was similar but it’s led to the opposite. When I’m sick, I don’t want people to touch me and to just leave me alone. Same when I’m injured, I don’t even want people to acknowledge it or talk to me to see if I’m ok. Just let me shake it off, or I’ll let you know if we need an ambulance. I never really put it together that it’s probably a response to her yelling.
It’s also wild how the same stimulus affects kids differently because my brother seeks attention and assurance when sick likely because of this."
12."Really mild, but my pulse still shoots up whenever I hear my mother walk or breathe heavily, since that's what she did before what we kids called a 'cleaning rampage,' in which she angrily and bitterly cleaned my two little sisters' messes while blaming me and my big sister for it. I used to dig through the trash to retrieve the things of mine she threw away because she hated 'junk' and 'I wouldn't even notice.' I thought I was a bad, messy kid. Nope, turns out she had impossible standards for cleanliness with four little kids running around, and she's so much happier now that she's accepted she cannot maintain that."
"My mother would throw away my 'junk' (which was often things I loved, still used, needed, etc...) while I was at my father's house for the weekend. I would then feel so many negative emotions about the stuff that disappeared.
I needed a lot of therapy to not become a full-blown hoarder. I semi-hoard (i.e. full closets, lots of stuff stored in the garage) but because of the therapy, I've been able to keep myself in check and do clean outs before it gets overwhelming and starts taking over and impeding the use of the rooms in my home."
13."Waking up to find my guinea pig gone one morning after I wasn’t able to understand some of her behavior and started complaining. My father likely put her out in the woods and let her become food for a predator. I didn’t say anything because I knew it wouldn’t have mattered to my dad. Later, I always felt such guilt and thought that if I just kept my mouth shut, she wouldn’t have had that done to her."
"If it helps, my stepdad found a little guinea pig in the woods, took it home, and it lived a long and happy life. Someone might have found your pet and done the same."
14."Getting teased and/or made fun of for liking certain things as a young child. My older sister often teased me for the TV shows I liked to watch and made fun of my drawings when I created my own Pokémon, for example. Same thing in school. I still remember every single instance of it in detail. To this day, I don't like to share my passions with people and suppress strong displays of positive emotions around others."
"I seriously have such a hard time showing people my ‘embarrassing’ interests, even as an adult. I spent so much time trying to curate my image and interests as ‘cool’ when I was young, and that really made it hard for me to be real sometimes even now.
I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by people who are a thousand times nerdier than I am who would never even care if they knew some of my interests and yet I’m still not comfortable sharing.
I have a feeling I’m going to be working through this for a long time."
15."Every time I had knee pain and told my mom I wanted to go to the doctor, I always got 'You think that’s bad? You wanna hear about all of my problems?!' That was until my cartilage broke off, and it was floating around under my skin by the time I was in high school."
"My mom said I had 'low pain tolerance' as a kid, so she didn't believe me when I was 16 that the sore throat I had for days was excruciatingly painful, and she didn't take me to the doctor 'til I hadn't eaten in like four days or had any water for over a day and a half (we lived in the desert, that's hella dangerous).
We finally went to my pediatrician and they took one look at my throat and called an emergency on-call ENT to see me right that second. I had a massive abscess on the back of my throat, blocking half my airway, and my tonsils were swollen, almost closing my throat entirely. They were amazed I wasn't delirious. I wish I could remember how much fluid they drained from the abscess, it'd to have been 10 mL or more. Then, they scheduled me to have my tonsils removed the following week. It was so awful."
16."I wouldn't say I'm traumatized from it, but I realized I'm a people-pleaser because my father never showed me that he was proud of me when I was younger. His attitude towards my achievements would lead me to believe they were expectations more than things to be proud of. It was an internal conflict I struggled with throughout my teen years and into my early 20s, but I'm glad to say I've been working on it since recognizing the root cause of my people-pleasing."
"Compulsive people-pleasing is a trauma response called fawning. Something doesn't have to be an unspeakable horror to be traumatic. Emotional neglect is enough to result in people-pleasing or chasing external validation as an adult."
17."There is a difference between normal sibling fighting and abuse. I always thought the things that happened to me was normal sibling stuff. I would even tell friends they were the weird ones when their experience was different. I went to therapy, told a little story. My therapist said, 'That’s called torture.'"
18."Falling asleep under my bed instead of in it because it was safer down there, and I wasn't allowed to wake my parents up if I was scared."
"That totally unlocked a memory. When my brother would have all-out fights with my parents (11 years older), my sister and I would hide under the bed. She was nine years older than me, and we would play games. I realize now she was attempting to shield me."
19."Being told that a boy trying to kiss/touch me in school and making me very uncomfortable/scared was just because he had a crush on me."
20."Unintentionally traumatic: 'They're just bullying you because they're jealous of how smart/pretty you are!' Oh cool, make me feel ashamed of my positive traits AND that it's my fault for getting bullied for existing. Win-win!"
21."Being told we have nowhere to live at the end of the month. Everything being hand-me-downs and smelling like other people; you never feel settled, like you’re in a stranger's house, bed, and clothes. Poverty, real poverty in general. Don’t have kids if you can’t afford a great life for them."
"I feel this. I remember being taken out of school in grade school to some place that just let me pick out clothes and stuff like that. I thought everyone got to do that. Nope, it was just the really poor."
22."Always getting ‘constructive criticism’ instead of praise. Draw a picture? 'That looks weird; you should fix the eyes on that.' Make a painting? 'You chose weird colors. I wouldn’t have done it like that.' Get a 95% on a school project? “Why didn’t you get 100%?” It created people-pleasing tendencies, which led to never feeling like anything I do is ENOUGH. I’m grown and married to a man who thinks sunshine radiates from my pores, yet I still often feel that my best isn’t great."
"If my father mentioned something and he didn't immediately praise it, I knew it was a criticism. 'Oh, is that a new hairstyle? It's very different.' 'You made this in school? It's sure interesting.' 'You sure are singing a lot today!'
It really makes it hard to not take literally every statement everyone makes as criticism, and now, I'm marrying an autistic guy who LITERALLY has no meaning or intention behind his statements other than what's on the box, and I still have a hard time not immediately stopping whatever I'm doing as soon as he mentions it."
23."I don’t know if traumatized is the right word, but the way nobody expected anything good out of me. Growing up, I was always told 'you’re not ready' or 'how are YOU going to be able to handle that,' especially when it came to big dreams or life milestones (telling everyone I’d never be ready to drive or I’d never be able to keep a job yet they’re the only ones who kept me from those things). It really did a hit on my self-esteem, and it’s still nearly impossible to do things that feel too 'big.'"
"Wow, this one. I’ve never thought about, but you’re completely right. My entire life, I’ve felt like a fraud, like I’m an imposter in my own existence."
24."This is a little different than some of the other responses, but being told, constantly, that I was the best, the smartest, the prettiest, that I could do no wrong, and that the world was mine for the taking. Always and repeatedly throughout my entire childhood. Fight with another kid? It was always the other kid’s fault. Something not going my way was because of some unjust conspiracy and not because of any flaws with me. Coming to terms with all of those things not being true was a process, and I will be full of sorrow, forever, about the people I hurt before I really understood and developed a realistic humility. I know that my parents were trying their best, but they created a narcissist."
25."Not wanting to wake my dad up from his naps. Learning to tell people’s footsteps apart from one another. Being super sensitive to other’s emotions or perceived feelings and tanking your own mood because of it. Being rejection-sensitive is another one I have. Also, a huge trigger for me is being prevented from leaving and/or grabbed. It really kicks in the fight/flight response, for me, something wild. Growing up is realizing that you take on shit from having emotionally immature parents, especially when one of them has relied on you heavily to emotionally regulate them despite being a literal child. Thanks, dad, lol."
26."Anytime I brought up something my mom did that I didn’t like or was uncomfortable with, I was told that it never happened. In fact, she still does it. It’s really messed with my memory because now I have a hard time remembering what actually happened, what I was told happened, and what I was told didn’t happen. They are all sorta mixed up in there."
If you experienced something in your childhood that you thought was normal but later realized it wasn't, tell us what it was and why in the comments below if you feel comfortable doing so.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-888-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.
If you or someone you know is in immediate danger as a result of domestic violence, call 911. For anonymous, confidential help, you can call the 24/7 National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or chat with an advocate via the website.
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, you can call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) and find more resources here.
