Punishment Trauma - How we were punished as children can effect our adult phycology

Ever wonder why you have social anxiety, tend to withdraw and struggle with intimate relationships and maybe you're always apologising or stay in a job, friendship or relationship that isn't good for you or make you happy, yet you’re too scared to leave. 

Maybe you struggle or can’t assert yourself as you are deeply afraid of being judged and criticised.

Essentially we live in a punishment rewards society, our parents used punishment to control and shape us into their perception of what a ‘good citizen' is, as did their parents to them and their parents to them, societies are created from this. When a human is born we are a free spirit and then we are programmed to become a society member. This is not always a bad thing. Please don’t get me wrong, most people have grown up healthy and happy so I’m not saying punishment is bad. We are more concerned with how our relationship with punishment is affecting our lives now. 

Most parents are doing what they can with what they have been told and believe, it’s very important not to get lost in the story, victim mentality and blame, shame spirals instead use it now as our keys to liberation. I believe this is a cultural issue and shows up as a collective wound that we now have a wonderful opportunity to heal within ourselves. 

We know trauma is the programs that get created in response to dealing with the event, the parts of our personality that get created to protect us. For example, if we receive punishment, verbal, physical or emotional when accidents happen or say, you didn’t do very well on the test or something else beyond our control, then this can be very emotionally and psychologically damaging for us as an adult.

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Symptoms of punishment trauma

Over apologising whether it’s your fault or not

One often takes on the habit of always apologising and being subservient as a direct response to always feeling wrong and in threat of punishment

Actions :

STOP apologising, literally catch the apology before it leaves your mouth and stop, take a breath and remain silent.

Learn to be ok with silence, this is a key piece if you are an over apologiser you probably have an unbalanced nervous system and will struggle with stillness and you tend to be on hyper alert. Use mindfulness to support you.

Self sabotage and procrastination

Fear of punishment may be installed if, as a child you were punished for being proactive, taking initiative, for doing something that wasn’t expected, or considered ‘normal’, or making a decision or having a different opinion or belief. You may have been ridiculed or laughed at and this feels like punishment as it's received as not being accepted or included. And now you have thoughts and ideas and beliefs that stop you from achieving.

Actions :

Mindfulness will help you see pattern when they arise and getting that space between thought and reaction can literally change your life, watch the thoughts rather than be them.

Social anxiety and self isolation

Sometimes what can happen is a person becomes overwhelmed by others, as there is an intense fear of being judged, and criticised by others, and the more people, the more possibility of this judgment and criticism, which this child learnt, led to punishment as usually a parent will criticise then punish.

A deeper part to this is that a personality part can be created as the 'protector.' It protects by leading the person to judge others so there is a constant background narrative of judgment. To make others wrong, bad or less than as a way to feel superior, which equates too feeling safe. “If I am better than them, then I don’t need to fear them.” What you might call a superiority complex, and this always comes with its twin, the inferiority complex where the person feels unworthy and less than. So now there is a constant movement between these two aspects, which causes intense anxiety and holds the person in fight or flight.

Actions :

Stop the judgment, take control back of the mind and every time there is the noticing of judgment, laugh at yourself and say to yourself; "I'm only judging you as I'm scared you’ll judge me, let us both be free."

Lying hiding the truth

When we learn that truth is not safe, we learn to lie. This can be as simple as saying ‘yes I am fine’ when we are not. This can also show up as manipulation, pretending to be someone or something we are not to avoid punishment like pretending to like soccer when we prefer ballet.

Actions :

Commit to always standing in and speaking the truth as you know it, no matter the fear, use compassionate communication and always tell the truth.

Blaming others

This is really an avoidance of responsibility because we’ve learned being responsible will need to be punished. We avoid responsibility and this can affect all areas of our lives and keep us small. One way of deflecting responsibility is to blame others and when we’re busy looking at others, we miss the golden opportunity to change ourselves.

Actions :

Take full self responsibility, remembering every time we point our finger outward there are three fingers pointing back at us.

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If, fear of punishment is the organising energy that is creating our lives then our lives are going to be far from centre and we need to dive deep, look at our past, be open to see clearly our beliefs and patterns and be willing to change. Often it’s not even logical as it’s all emotional and on a logical level we know our fears are not real yet they emotional body is running the subconscious mind and we are trapped

This is just scratching the surface so if this resonates with you, I invite you to journal on how you were punished as a child and how this has created your relationship to punishment. How do you fear punishment, how do you avoid it, how are you self punishing and of course how do you punish others.

If you want to dive deeper, coaching can really help uncover these patterns and support you in getting clear of them. To find out more on my coaching services you can go to ahisha.co.uk/coaching