How Our Childhood Trauma Impacts our Motherhood.
Becoming a mother often reactivates unresolved childhood trauma because the role brings intense emotions, relational patterns, and stressors that mirror earlier life experiences. We have this little baby in our arms that can easily flood us with memories of our own childhood experiences. This often happens because we are put into this position to keep this little human alive, so as we think about how to raise our little baby, we usually reflect on our own childhood. What happened or didn’t happen that we want to repeat? Or don’t want to repeat? What do we want to make sure to keep our child safe from? How were we protected or not protected?
If we grew up in chaos, abuse, neglect, or with emotionally immature parents, having a baby and walking the journey of motherhood can be filled with painful memories and triggering experiences.
However, it doesn’t have to remain that way. We truly can learn to differentiate our pain and triggers from our child. As we work through these deep wounds, triggers, and trauma responses, we have the ability to heal ourselves even more through motherhood. Just like being in a romantic relationship can help heal attachment wounds we couldn’t heal without learning to securely attach and allow someone in, motherhood can allow us to grieve and heal childhood wounds that we might not have without our new role of motherhood..
If you are on this journey, please know you are not alone and I truly believe the best is yet to come.
First, let me highlight some areas where our pain, attachment wounds and trauma get triggered and brought to the surface during pregnancy, birth, postpartum and beyond.
How trauma is triggered in motherhood:
Relational echoes: Your baby’s dependency, crying, neediness, or rejection can replay dynamics with caregivers you experienced growing up. This might trigger fear of abandonment, neglect, or enmeshment. We often start to replay our childhood with our caregiver, as well as the trauma, neglect, and hurt experienced.
In some situations, mothers can struggle with flashbacks/PTSD symptoms, dissociating, feeling numbness, and intrusive thoughts. Some women struggle with thinking of past abuse that happened to them, to happen to their baby. It can feel hard to separate the current situation from what was experienced growing up.
You might also feel fresh hurt and pain over what harm you experienced as you see the innocence and dependency of your baby/child. You might question your worth or how and why they would cause you harm, thus continuing the cycle of shame, self-blame, confusion, pain and more.
Loss of control and overwhelm: Pregnancy, postpartum, and motherhood can be exhausting. It’s a season full of changes that are often out of our control, including body/identity, relationships, our duties, living situation, and so much more. If control is a way that we’ve coped with anxiety in the past, lack of control can feel overwhelming and have ripple effects in several areas of our life as a mother. We also experience sleep deprivation, constant responsibility, and bodily/identity changes that reduce coping capacity, making old survival patterns resurface (fight/flight/freeze). When we start to experience loss of control and overwhelm with less ability to lean into our healthy coping skills, it’s easy to lean into unhealthy coping skills that add to the stress.
Mirror and projection: A child’s behavior or temperament can mirror a caregiver’s behavior, provoking strong reactions tied to past hurts. Meaning, if we see an attribute in our child of someone we find triggering, it can be difficult to not feel triggered, upset, or respond emotionally to our child. We can experience shame and guilt when we feel this way towards our child.
Boundaries: When we become a mother, the need for boundaries comes up repeatedly, in all areas with almost all people. If we struggle with setting boundaries, this can feel exhausting and overwhelming. It can feel like constant work, especially in the beginning. Which can feel extra stressful if we have unhealthy family dynamics in our family system and people push our boundaries.
We can also struggle with physical boundaries, feeling touched out, exposed, and constantly surrounded by people, including our baby. For some women it can feel overwhelming to never have physical distance, including from their baby.
Intimacy/partner dynamics: Increased reliance on a partner for support can re-trigger attachment wounds or abuse dynamics from childhood. We can feel vulnerable as we need additional support during this time, especially from our partner. This has the ability to trigger relationship fears and old relationship wounds.
Physical reminders: Pregnancy, childbirth, medical interventions, or sensory cues (touch, smell, sounds) can recall past physical or sexual trauma. If we’ve experienced physical or sexual abuse in the past, medical examinations and even breast feeding can feel intrusive and triggering. This can increase shame, anxiety, loss of control, and feeling exposed/vulnerable.
What this might look like in a mother’s behavior:
Intense, disproportionate anger, shame, or anxiety around parenting tasks
Hypervigilance about the child’s safety or excessive control
Emotional numbing or dissociation during caregiving
Intrusive memories or flashbacks linked to caregiving moments
Avoidance of bonding or withdrawal from the baby
Overprotectiveness or anxious attachment behaviors
Difficulty trusting others or asking for help
Practical steps to cope and decrease triggers/stress:
Challenge shame and guilt, and know you are not alone if any of this resonates with you. There are reasons for this behavior. Give yourself kindness and compassion.
Pause & label: When a strong reaction arises, pause and name it (“I’m feeling scared/angry or this feels like old pain”). Labeling downregulates the emotion and the emotions/trigger loses some of its power.
Grounding techniques: 5-4-3-2-1 sensory check, deep breathing, feeling feet on floor to return to present, or do something where you can feel a bodily sensation to ground you. This could include a stress ball, water on hands or face, grass beneath your feet, or on a rug.
Create micro-breaks: Identify in advance, safe short breaks to assist with the intensity of emotions, triggers, and how you are feeling. This could look like asking your partner to take the baby so you can be alone, take a shower, and disconnect safely to calm your mind and body.
Plan for high-risk moments: Anticipate triggering situations (night feedings, tantrums) and have a co-parent/support plan. Equip yourself with safe ways to disengage, manage the behavior, and ask for help. It’s ok to admit it’s hard. Asking for help isn’t a weakness. It’s a strength to acknowledge it and ask for help. WE ALL have these moments, trauma or not.
Self-compassion: Remind yourself that reactions are survival responses—not moral failures.
Build predictable routines: Structure reduces overwhelm and gives the nervous system stability. Identify a simple routine you can have in a typical day (not too much, because that might have the opposite effect). Simple routines, such as 2-3 windows of time throughout the day.
Limit isolation: Regular social contact reduces stress and normalizes parenting struggles. Find simple ways to get out. Go for walks, meet a friend 1x per week, or facetime someone.
Therapeutic options: Reach out for professional support. A trauma informed professional to assist you with better understanding what you are experiencing and how to work through it.
Group therapy or peer support: Reduces shame and provides practical coping skills to help you not feel so alone.
Medication: It’s not a weakness to utilize medication if needed. Talk to your doctor or find a psychiatrist that works with women’s mental health. Medication doesn’t have to be longterm, although it can and there’s nothing wrong with that! Let’s normalize support in all areas.
Do self-care for yourself. It’s easy to feel guilt to take a moment for yourself, but you doing things that help you feel like “you” or this new version of yourself, will help you not feel lost in this new identity. It will also help you have an outlet to cope and manage stressors.
Identify simple and practical mood boosters and things that feel “good to you.” It’s easy to have all or nothing thinking, but the simple things add up and can significantly improve our overall mental health.
Talk to people. Share how you are feeling. Let people in. The more we isolate ourselves, the more our shame, fear, and anxiety can grow.
And please remember….
If you are on this motherhood journey or thinking about motherhood, but struggling with fear and concern of how your own childhood trauma will impact it, you don’t have to do it alone.
If you’d like individual support, I’d love to walk through this healing journey with you.
Click HERE and we can discuss if I might be a good fit for you.
If you’d like to walk this journey with other women in similar situations as they learn to heal and show up as the mother they want to be, click HERE to learn more about The Securely Her Collective. A weekly women’s group for mother’s learning to do relationships and motherhood different they grew up in.
Or if you have any other questions, please reach out. This is truly my heart and passion, and I’d love to make sure you get what you need as you move forward.
With Love,
Jessica
Securely Her