The Legacy of Childhood Trauma

Children learn how to respond to others from their parents, family members, and their environment. When they witness constant conflict, aggression, and violence in the home, they learn to deal with conflict by means of impulsiveness or violence.

A child’s response to a traumatic upbringing also depends on their gender. Young boys raised in a conflicted, violent home learn that they have to defend themselves from aggression. Their experience is that they live in a hostile world, so when they perceive a threat they act in order to guard against that threat. Situations they face as adults may not actually be dangerous, but their defensive “fight back” behavior is already well established. When a young boy learns this method of survival, his behavior as an adult is actually controlled by his central nervous system, which has been programmed to alert him to respond to what he perceives as danger.
In contrast, young girls exposed to similar environments usually learn how to dissociate from the violent experience and ignore it, as a defense mechanism to avoid emotional or physical pain. Since female role models are usually seen as victims of aggression, young girls learn to be quiet and to appease potentially violent individuals in order to reduce tensions. For a female, the possibility of confronting the conflict aggressively is usually seen as too dangerous.

- Dr. Ana Nogales