6 Reasons You May Struggle With the Term "Childhood Trauma"

Let me begin by saying that the terms developmental trauma, complex trauma, childhood trauma, and relational trauma can be used interchangeably.

But throughout my writing over the last nine years, I’ve predominantly used the term "relational trauma" versus "childhood trauma." This largely centers on the fact that it’s been a struggle for many people to see their lived experience as “counting” as a childhood trauma experience.

I talked about that in my last post but, I want to provide more psychoeducation here and share six reasons why you might struggle with the term “childhood trauma.”

First, let’s ground ourselves in what used to be considered a childhood trauma experience.

What "counts" as childhood trauma?

Historically, my field has used ACEs, or Adverse Childhood Experiences, to diagnose and understand childhood trauma/relational trauma. This framework, established by the landmark CDC-Kaiser study in the late 1990s, aimed to identify and categorize experiences that could be classified as childhood trauma leading to long-term health issues.

The study identified 10 types of ACEs: emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, physical neglect, mother treated violently, substance abuse in the household, mental illness in the household, parental separation or divorce, and having an incarcerated household member. Surveying over 17,000 adults, the researchers found a strong correlation between one's number of ACEs and negative health outcomes such as heart disease, diabetes, depression, and substance abuse. It was an incredible contribution to the traumatology field.

However, while the ACEs framework was and is invaluable for concretizing childhood abuse experiences and elevating the conversation in the field of mental health, the study still has limitations.

I’ll talk about those limitations but first, let's discuss the other dominant way most people historically diagnosed childhood maltreatment experiences which was through the definition provided by the World Health Organization: “Child maltreatment is the abuse and neglect that occurs to children under 18 years of age. It includes all types of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect, negligence, and commercial or other exploitation, which results in actual or potential harm to the child’s health, survival, development, or dignity in the context of a relationship of responsibility, trust, or power. Exposure to intimate partner violence is also sometimes included as a form of child maltreatment.”

I think that the WHO’s childhood trauma definition provides a more expansive lens than the Kaiser ACE’s study, but still, even after considering the ACEs checklist and the WHO definition, many people—including some of my clients—wouldn’t find their experiences in the definition of childhood trauma/relational trauma.

Why is this?

6 reasons you might struggle with the term “childhood trauma.”

In my clinical experience, I’ve found many reasons why people wouldn’t and couldn’t see themselves in the “classic” definitions of childhood trauma. And frankly, I include myself in this group because, until my mid-twenties when I began my healing work at Esalen, no one talked to me about how my experiences “counted” as childhood trauma.

The reasons why people wouldn’t see themselves in the definition of childhood trauma include:

1. The subtlety of certain experiences. For instance, being raised by a well-meaning but suicidally depressed mother may not be seen as “neglect” by someone. The gaslighting endured by someone raised by a sociopathic father may be hard to spot as “abuse” or something that created “harm to the survival” of the individual. (Because of such strong words in the WHO definition and Kaiser ACE’s checklist, many people are quick to write off their experience as “not counting.”)
2. Another reason? Because the mother was the abuser. This isn’t really accounted for in the Kaiser checklist. It frames the mother as the recipient of domestic violence, not the abuser toward her partner or children.
3. Along those lines, another reason people failed to see themselves and their experiences clearly was because the abusers may not have been guardians/parents, but instead siblings, organizations, or communities (think boarding schools, cults, or extremist religious groups) and parents didn’t actively harm, but they didn’t actively stand up for the child, either, leading to harm.
4. Piggybacking on that comment, another reason I've found why people couldn’t or wouldn’t see their experience “counting” as childhood trauma was that they viewed the privilege they had also experienced as a neutralizer of the experience: “Sure, Dad was always in a rage when he came home, but we had food to eat and summer vacations, so it couldn’t have counted as trauma, right?”
5. Beyond the personal gaslighting people would do to themselves, we can’t forget the gaslighting—the diminishing or dismissing of their lived experience—they might experience from family, which would lead them to doubt their experience: “Dad’s just being dad. It’s no big deal.” “What are you talking about? That didn’t happen.” “Your sister isn’t upset, it’s not a big deal, Get over it.”
6. Finally, there are the preconceived notions many hold about what “counted” as abuse or trauma, largely informed by those historical perceptions but also informed by the lack of “palatability” of seeing someone who was abused or came from trauma.

While I have a high ACE score—I found that out in grad school when I was introduced to the concept of ACEs—I still didn’t see an appropriate, expansive definition of trauma that reflected and/or could capture what I personally experienced. So, I started using the term "relational trauma" in my writing, defining it in a particular way, and, as far as I understand it and as far as the internet tells me, was one of the first to really use the term back in the early days of expanding the conversation online.

In my next post, I’m going to share my now-evolved definition of relational trauma and vignettes of what clients would express as lived experiences that they didn’t see reflected in more “typical” childhood trauma definitions.

For now, hopefully, by sharing this psychoeducation, you can see yourself and why the term “childhood trauma” might not always have felt palatable for you.