💔 What it means to have grown up with a traumatized parent
Growing up with a traumatized parent meant your parent's unresolved pain became the invisible blueprint for how you learned to navigate the world.
You may have witnessed normal kid behavior trigger outsized reactions in them, making you feel like you were constantly walking through an emotional minefield. Their jumpy reactions, emotional numbness, or intense fears became your normal, even though these responses weren't about you. You became fluent in their trauma worldview, constantly scanning for the same dangers they carried.
You might struggle to distinguish between authentic dangers and the inherited alarm system running in the background. Your threat radar is set to a frequency that long stopped broadcasting, making you overreact to certain triggers while missing genuine personal dangers. You carry a sense that the world is fundamentally unsafe—not from your own experiences, but imprinted before you had a chance to form your own worldview.