Healing from Childhood Trauma: Understanding Attachment and ACEs
“Why does this even matter? It happened 20 years ago.” “I feel like I should be over it by now.” “It’s embarrassing to care about something that happened to me as a child.”
These are common statements I hear from adults navigating complex trauma and painful past experiences. While it can feel frustrating to carry old wounds, our early life experiences shape the way we see ourselves, relate to others, and experience the world around us. Understanding this connection is an important step toward healing and building healthier relationships.
How Early Experiences Shape Us
As humans, we have a natural drive to form strong emotional bonds with our caregivers. The care we receive in early life shapes how we view ourselves, relate to others, and experience safety in the world — a concept central to attachment theory, developed by John Bowlby and expanded by Mary Ainsworth. Attachment falls into two broad categories: secure or insecure. Secure attachment develops when a child experiences their caregiver as sensitive, attuned, and reliably responsive to their needs. Insecure attachment forms when a child perceives their caregiver as inconsistent, neglectful, or rejecting. Our attachment style influences many aspects of adult life: it affects how we communicate our needs, whether we feel comfortable being vulnerable, how we handle conflict, our approach to intimacy and connection, and more.
While attachment focuses on the ways early relationships shape our emotional and relational patterns, adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, highlight the broader range of stressful or traumatic events that can impact development. Experiences such as abuse, neglect, household instability, or exposure to parental mental health or substance use challenges constitute ACEs that impact our physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing as adults. These experiences are correlated with challenges including chronic illness, depression, disordered eating, and emotional or relationship instability.
Signs Your Early Experiences Are Impacting You
Some ways you might notice the impact of ACEs or an insecure attachment style:
Difficulty trusting others: You feel hesitant to open up or rely on people — even people you care deeply about.
Fear of vulnerability: Sharing feelings can feel uncomfortable or unsafe.
Challenges with intimacy: You struggle to feel close to others or fear getting too attached.
Difficulty communicating needs: You feel guilty asking for support or communicating boundaries. You may even avoid communicating your needs altogether, or prioritize others’ needs before your own.
Emotional ups and downs: You experience intense reactions, anxiety, or depression that feel out of proportion to the situation.
Relationship patterns: You experience repeating cycles of conflict, avoidance, intense anxiety, or people-pleasing.
What Next?
Trauma-informed therapy approaches such as EMDR, IFS, and Attachment-Based therapy can provide guidance and support as you begin to untangle these patterns. Trauma-informed therapy can help you recognize and change unhelpful patterns, process past experiences, and develop a deeper understanding of yourself and your needs. Healing is a gradual process, but with the right support, it’s possible to rewrite old narratives, feel more secure in relationships, and step into a life that feels safe, meaningful, and fulfilling.
If you recognize yourself in these behaviors, know that these patterns are not set in stone. Understanding how your early life experiences influence the way you show up today is the first step toward making conscious choices, building healthier relationships, and creating a greater sense of safety and connection in your life.
If you’re ready to begin your healing journey, I invite you to reach out and schedule a consultation. You don’t have to navigate this alone.
Sources
Bryan, R. H. (2019). Getting to Why: Adverse Childhood Experiences’ Impact on Adult Health. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners, 15(2). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nurpra.2018.09.012
Dunford, A. B. (2025). The psychological effects of childhood trauma on adult relationships. BYU ScholarsArchive. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/studentpub/400
Insecure Attachment Styles: From Childhood to Adulthood. The Attachment Project. (2025, March 3). https://www.attachmentproject.com/blog/insecure-attachment-in-childhood/
Levine, A., & Heller, R. (2010). Attached: the new science of adult attachment and how it can help you find--and keep--love. Jeremy P. Tarcher, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.
