A legitimate question, a common fear... and therefore, a necessary reflection.
Any Given Morning
The ticking of the clock echoed in her body.
Each second that passed made the task more frustrating.
Her two-year-old daughter —tiny but determined— was refusing with all her will to get out of bed.
Kicking. Screaming. Clutching the sheets with the resolve of an army...
Meanwhile, time moved forward.
Leaving late meant everything would fall out of rhythm: her other daughter would be late for school, meals would be rushed or skipped, arguments would erupt in the car, there’d be no time for the gym, and she’d arrive late to work.
The anxiety accumulated like pressure in a sealed pot.
And finally… she burst.
She picked up her daughter by force. Took her to the bathroom as the child squirmed, cried, kicked, resisted. Sat her on the toilet. Brushed her teeth. Got her dressed.
All at once.
All in anger.
Then they ran down the stairs. She yelled to her other daughter “Get in the car!”, strapped them in their seats, ignored the screaming, drove off, dropped one at daycare, the other at school… and went on with her day.
Later, back home and alone in front of her laptop to begin her job duties, the memory came flooding back.
And everything changed.
First it had been anger.
Now it was tears.
She blamed herself for losing control —and most of all, feared she had caused harm.
“I felt guilty,” she told me.
“Guilty about what?” I asked.
“What did you do wrong?”
That’s when she said it:
“I’m afraid I traumatized them.”
A Word We Carry Without Knowing
The word trauma has become omnipresent.
Like “depression” or “anxiety,” it’s turned into a catch-all term that contains everything —and sometimes… means very little.
“Maybe I hurt her… but honestly, I don’t know.
You see it all over social media: don’t traumatize your kids.”
“What is trauma?” I asked.
“A wound, right?” she replied.
That answer stuck with me.
Yes, trauma is a wound. But not every wound is traumatic.
And more importantly, trauma isn’t avoided by never contradicting our children. That would be negligence —and ironically, far more likely to be traumatic.
That’s why I decided to write this post.
Because when we use words without knowing what they really mean, when we carry the guilt of parenting without knowing what we’re avoiding or causing, we end up confused —and emotionally disoriented.
Also —if I’m being honest— this subject is personal.
My own story has its wounds.
And I’ve come to believe that trauma is one of the most revealing keys to understanding human experience —one of the clearest paths to understanding what it means to be human.
When we dare to look at it —despite the pain— we begin to understand not only what happened to us…
but also how we became who we are.
To explore that, I’ll be drawing on the work of Gabor Maté, particularly The Myth of Normal, where he offers a lucid and compassionate view of trauma.
From there, I want to reflect with you on what can become traumatic —and what doesn’t— in our relationships with our children.
And I emphasize can —because human emotion isn’t just mechanical.
It’s also —and above all— about meaning.
What Is Trauma?
Trauma is a fracture.
A break. A separation. Something that was once whole, and is no longer.
But unlike a physical fracture —like a broken bone—
trauma doesn’t happen in space, in an object or organ.
It happens inside us.
Inside what we are.
What breaks is not a part of us.
It’s the person.
So what exactly gets fractured?
In Maté’s words:
“A fracturing of the self and of one’s relationship to the world.” [¹]
As a result of trauma, we become disconnected from our bodies. [²]
We lose access to our needs —we don’t know how to name them or meet them.
We become strangers to our emotions —we don’t know what we feel. [³]
We lose flexibility in our behavior —we repeat the same patterns compulsively, even when we know they’re not working. [⁴]
We disconnect from the present:
We struggle to be here —with others, or with ourselves.
We live in hypervigilance. Always on alert.
A message left on read feels like abandonment.
A referee’s whistle, a personal attack.
A moment alone, a sentence of misery. [⁵]
We lose contact with our authenticity. [⁶]
We feel ashamed. [⁷]
We fragment.
We become numb, distracted, disembodied.
And we search for escapes:
Addiction. Isolation. Compulsion. Avoidance.
Not to live…
but to stop feeling.
What Causes That Disconnection?
Sometimes, trauma is caused by overwhelming events from which we cannot escape: physical or sexual abuse, extreme neglect, abandonment, exposure to violence, the death of a loved one, or a serious crash or accident.
The child —or adult— has no way to process it, no way to interpret it, no way to flee.
So they disconnect from themselves.
It’s a survival reflex:
“If I dissociate, it won’t hurt.”
But not all traumas are obvious.
There’s a quieter, more common kind of disconnection —and for that very reason, more difficult to see.
It’s the one we learn when, in order to be loved, we have to stop being ourselves. [⁹]
When a child feels that certain emotions, thoughts, or behaviors cause rejection, they begin to repress them.
To hide them.
To disown parts of themselves in exchange for affection.
Maté calls this the traumatic tension between attachment and authenticity. [¹⁰]
And it comes at a cost:
To keep the love, we lose the self.
We become functional children.
And later, disconnected adults.
Adults who don’t understand their own suffering.
Who don’t know why they’re angry.
Who don’t know why they cry for no reason.
And so, we shape our personalities. [¹¹]
Children begin to believe they are accepted only if they develop certain traits —intelligence, charisma, power, beauty. [¹²]
They strive.
They overcompensate.
They deny themselves to resemble whatever brought affection or validation.
They spend their lives reinforcing a limited version of who they are.
They don’t play to enjoy.
They play to win.
They don’t study out of curiosity.
They study to perform.
They don’t work from vocation.
They work to survive symbolically.
And they say they love what they do…
but in truth, they’re just addicted to it —because doing is the only way they know to deny who they really are.
What Would I Say to That Mother?
I’d say:
Your child is not going to be traumatized because you lost your temper one morning and forced her out of bed.
Trauma doesn’t come from one hard moment.
It arises when difficulty turns into rejection, confusion, and loneliness.
Children aren’t traumatized by frustration.
They’re traumatized when they begin to believe that their emotions are too much.
When they’re made to feel like a burden.
(Like when we give them everything they ask for, just to shut them up.)
When they start to believe that love must be earned.
Or when no one notices them.
When their needs are persistently overlooked.
Children need structure —yes.
But structure without love is neglect in disguise.
What they truly need is structure within visible, present, persistent love.
Love that doesn’t withdraw.
As Maté (citing Bessel van der Kolk) puts it:
“Trauma occurs when we are not seen or heard.” [¹³]
And how does a mother do that in the world we live in?
That’s another question.
A difficult one.
Because —as Maté also says— it’s not just the wound that hurts,
but the unmet need.
And that forces us to ask:
What do human beings truly need when they are children?
And how can we offer it?
And no less important: how the wound of trauma heals?
Answering that will require us to look beyond the domestic scene.
It will require us to look, too, at the world we inhabit.
But that will be part of another post.
References
* Gabor Maté and Daniel Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, & Healing in a Toxic Culture (New York: Avery/Penguin Random House, 2022).
[¹] p. 23
[²] p. 23
[³] p. 25
[⁴] p. 27
[⁵] p. 29
[⁶] p. 31
[⁷] p. 107
[⁸] p. 30
[⁹] p. 107
[¹⁰] p. 108
[¹¹] p. 96
[¹²] p. 109
[¹³] p. 23
