People sometimes revert to childlike behavior to cope with trauma, stress, severe illness, or mental health disorders. Age regression can be unconscious (involuntary) or conscious (voluntary) behavior.
When trauma impairs your ability to develop full emotional maturity, this is known as arrested psychological development. Trauma can “freeze” your emotional response at the age you experienced it. When you feel or act emotionally younger than your actual age, this is known as age regression.
Trauma-related immaturity refers to the ways in which trauma can impact a person's emotional and social development. As we mentioned before, trauma can often result in behavioral problems or emotional difficulties that make a person appear immature or developmentally delayed.
Trauma and Health are Linked
Older adult trauma survivors are especially vulnerable as their trauma history can result in high rates of physical, mental, and cognitive decline.
Emotional regulation, consciousness, and memory, distorted perceptions of perpetrators of abuse, difficulties in relationships, low self-esteem, and a weak outlook on life are all known factors in adulthood that occur from childhood trauma.
Young Children and Trauma. Children can experience trauma as early as infancy. In fact, young children between the ages of 0 and 5 are the most vulnerable to the effects of trauma since their brains are still in the early formative years.
Childhood trauma can cause adults to have a difficult time managing stressful situations. As a result, it is common for people to turn to food, drugs, or alcohol as a coping mechanism. They use these substances to help them deal with their strong emotional responses to triggering people or situations.
If you have recently experienced a highly stressful or traumatic event, you may have noticed that your skin has flared up badly. It could be very dry, scarring more easily or you could find yourself with acne or rosacea.
Delayed responses to trauma can include persistent fatigue, sleep disorders, nightmares, fear of recurrence, anxiety focused on flashbacks, depression, and avoidance of emotions, sensations, or activities that are associated with the trauma, even remotely.
Emotional Responses
Children who have experienced complex trauma often have difficulty identifying, expressing, and managing emotions, and may have limited language for feeling states. They often internalize and/or externalize stress reactions and as a result may experience significant depression, anxiety, or anger.
People sometimes revert to childlike behavior to cope with trauma, stress, severe illness, or mental health disorders. Age regression can be unconscious (involuntary) or conscious (voluntary) behavior.
Many possible reasons point to why you might be holding onto immature behaviors, including being rewarded for being immature, being surrounded by other not-so-mature people, having an abusive upbringing, or not having mature role models while growing up, says clinical psychologist John E.
If you often feel as though your life has become unmanageable, this could be a sign that you have some unresolved emotional trauma. Emotional overreactions are a common symptom of trauma. A victim of trauma might redirect their overwhelming emotions towards others, such as family and friends.
Regression: A popular but frequently forgotten defense mechanism is a regression. When things get too difficult and a person feels vulnerable, defense mechanisms kick in as a way of self-preservation. Regression is a return to childlike behavior as a way to avoid adult-like reality and responsibility.
Before the age of twenty-five, many people feel older than they are. However, after twenty-five, the reverse happens and people start to feel 20% younger than their age, especially after they turn forty. The study theorizes that this is because of a defensive age-denial mentality and the stigma against the elderly.
Traumas like physical and emotional trauma often lead to PTSD which on average, affects roughly 8% of Americans. PTSD can typically be a lifelong problem for most people, resulting in severe brain damage.
Intrusive memories
Recurrent, unwanted distressing memories of the traumatic event. Reliving the traumatic event as if it were happening again (flashbacks) Upsetting dreams or nightmares about the traumatic event. Severe emotional distress or physical reactions to something that reminds you of the traumatic event.
fear, anxiety and panic. shock – difficulty believing in what has happened, feeling detached and confused. feeling numb and detached. not wanting to connect with others or becoming withdrawn from those around you.
New research by Welsh academics shows that a patient's pupils can reveal if they have suffered a traumatic experience in the past. Post-traumatic stress disorder can occur when a person has experienced a traumatic event such as a car crash, combat stress, or abuse.
It's quite another to commit to discussing it with someone else. The truth about trauma therapy is that it may make you feel worse at times. Trauma shatters a person's sense of safety, so it's vital to find a mental health professional you feel comfortable sharing with and trust to lead you through the healing process.
Childhood trauma in adults also results in feeling disconnected, and being unable to relate to others. Studies have shown that adults that experience childhood trauma were more likely to struggle with controlling emotions, and had heightened anxiety, depression, and anger.
Without treatment, repeated childhood exposure to traumatic events can affect the brain and nervous system and increase health-risk behaviors (e.g., smoking, eating disorders, substance use, and high-risk activities).