35 Childhood Traumas People Only Recognized As Adults


Sometimes it takes a moment for us to realize when something bad is happening to us or around us. Our awareness or understanding may be limited to the point that we don't even recognize the trauma we've been exposed to until hindsight kicks in much later. Recently, a Reddit discussion went viral after many adults got on board to discuss the traumatic childhood experiences they had that were normalised despite their disturbing nature. Folks reflected on how and why they didn't realise until well into adulthood that what they had gone through was actually pretty messed up.

#1

Image source: anon, Christian Bowen/Unsplash (not the actual photo) My grandparents used to kiss us on our private parts to show how much they love us. My parents was raised in this behaviour too so it was normalized within our family. I also used to do the same to my younger cousins when we were kids to show how much I adore them. Imagine the horror when we I got older and realized what this really is. I hate my grandparents.

#2

Image source: RsonW, A. C./Unsplash (not the actual photo) In fifth grade, we had a guest speaker talking about science. The speaker took a particular interest in me, he asked me if I would like to meet with him after school the next day because I had such great insights. My teacher overheard this and insisted that she be there as well. The meeting the next day was awkward and he left after a few minutes. I never saw him again. When I was hella h**h in my twenties, that came back to me and I realized "wait a minute, fifth graders don't have great scientific insights." Yeah, he wanted to f**k me raw. Thank you, Mrs Truman, for recognizing this and making sure you were there.

#3

Image source: LOUDCO-HD, Arron Choi/Unsplash (not the actual photo) 1980, Grade 10, I am walking home from school. Standing at a busy intersection waiting for the light to change, a kid ran by me, against the light and into traffic and gets hit by a car. I was only slightly aware of it happening, I heard the crash then turned my head to see him pinwheeling through the air. He landed perfectly upside down, with a sickening crunch, directly on his head. I ran over to him where he was facedown in the street, rolled him over and cradled his head in my lap, there was blood pouring out everywhere. I recognized him as a popular Senior who was on several sports teams, but I didn’t know his name. He was looking up at me from these incredibly blue eyes, with a mixture of shock and confusion. As I watched, his eyes went from bright blue to medium blue to dull grey as the life leaked out of him. His lips moved wordlessly, he made a gurgling sound then he went limp. Sometime later the EMT’s arrived and after quickly searching for a pulse, they announced him dead, and didn’t attempt resuscitation. When they picked him up to put him on a gurney, the back of his head opened like a trapdoor and some brain matter fell out into the pavement. The EMTs gave me some towels to mop up the blood I was covered in, the Cops took my statement and I was sent home. As I walked through the crosswalk where it happened, I saw the kid’s Adidas sneakers, laces still tied, one pace apart, not even knocked over. When I got home my Mom was initially mad at me for ruining my pants until I explained what happened. We never really spoke of it again, I largely forgot about it. No one got counselling in those days. 1994, 14 years later, my wife and I are watching Star Trek:TNG and there is a scene where Geordi is connecting some cables to Data’s head and when he clicks a button a flap opened on his head…….and I f*****g lost it. I was sobbing uncontrollably and I scared the s**t out of my wife. I needed multiple counselling sessions to handle the emotions surrounding the event that I never dealt with at the time.

#4

Image source: averquepasano, Mariano Nocetti/Unsplash (not the actual photo) The way my father taught me how to "swim" . He never wanted me! Parents divorced. He pushed me in the pool and walked away. My cousin went outside and luckily saved me. I can't wait to laugh, dance, and p**s on his grave. I told him as much the last time I saw him. F**k that guy!

#5

Image source: Bananas_are_theworst, Joseph Gonzalez/Unsplash (not the actual photo) Mother wasn’t nurturing at all. One time when I was 6, I accidentally slammed my hand in the car door and it locked (I’m old) and I was crying and yelling because it hurt so bad. Mom was mad that I was making noise. Once she went back around and unlocked the door, she said we still needed to get groceries so I should grab some ice from the seafood section and put it on there. There were multiple times where I’d fall rollerblading, bloody legs and crying, and she’d yell at me to get out of the house and not bring any dirt or blood in there. Never once hugged me after something like that. It came to light during therapy when my therapist was like yeahhh that’s not super normal, would you yell at a 6 year old instead of helping them when they’re injured? Oof. My dad is just realizing it now, decades later. He had a major surgery and can’t do much for himself. He said to me “your mother doesn’t have a nurturing bone in her body”……….yes dad, THAT is my entire childhood trauma in one sentence.

#6

Image source: Outrageous-Turn-4677, Getty Images/Unsplash (not the actual photo) Pretty much 95% of my childhood. First clue, basic training everyone was crying and missing their family... All I could think was no one is hitting me, and I have way less to do here than at home. Then when my MIL made food for my husband and hugged him I thought that's weird and creepy... Turns out parents do that for their kids, even after they're 8 years old. And well a lot more.

#7

Image source: JBlooey, Markus Spiske/Unsplash (not the actual photo) When I was 6, I saw my grandma fill a syringe with some sort of medication in a foil cap vial. She offered to give me some and said, "It doesn't hurt." Being a 6 year old kid, all I knew was "me no likey scary needles." Now as an adult, I regularly ask myself what the f**k she was trying to do to me. Mary Ann, you are not missed!

#8

Image source: Softconcrete579, Getty Images/Unsplash (not the actual photo) At my local YMCA they would get all of the little girls (5-10) years old and have us gather in a room before swim class. We had to stand in a circle and undress completely and switch into our bathing suits. There was always a man watching us doing it. He was part of the staff but he was not the swim coach. When I look back, it seems like a fever dream.

#9

Image source: dubgeek, Helena Lopes/Unsplash (not the actual photo) Didn't think twice about it because I didn't find out about it until I was in my 40s. When I was an infant my mom, who was single, would put me to bed in my crib then go out to bars leaving me alone. She claims she always dreaded coming home to find me dead or the apartment on fire or something, but it didn't stop her from doing it repeatedly.

#10

Image source: Perfect_Zone_4919, Rowan Heuvel/uNSPLASH (Not the actual photo) My dad’s friend drove to the house when I was home, told me he had a Nintendo in his car, and invited me to check. I told him no thanks. When my dad got home he said he had no idea who that person was and he didn’t have any friends come by that day. Forgot about it until my dad brought it up a decade later and realized that could have been a lot worse. .

#11

Image source: Bennington_Booyah, Rowen Smith/Unsplsh (not the actual photo) My creepy uncle loved to tickle me until I peed my pants. He did this so many times that I was afraid of him. The problem is that I was punished afterward, because I peed in the chair or sofa I was on! No one ever once said a word to him! This happened from maybe age 4 to 8, by the way. I know other people saw what he was doing but not one adult ever stopped it.

#12

Image source: queenofkitchener, Getty Images/Unsplash (not the actual photo) My mom used to make me shower with her boyfriends, i was like 8 .... for a few years she had a steady stream of different men in her life, and she'd had me go take showers with them.... i thought this was normal till i was in my 20s.

#13

Image source: anon, mohamad azaam/Unsplash (not the actual photo) My sibling was highly a***ive in every way. My parent chalked it up to sibling rivalry and I thought it was normal for your older sibling to wish you dead, even to attempt k*****g you because my parent would just brush me off all the time, even when I was 11 and told her my sibling tried to suffocate me with a pillow and then beat me for crying. I was always made out to be the dramatic one or the liar or the sneaky one. I didn't know what Golden Child was, we didn't have that term growing up and if we had, I wouldn't have thought it applied to my older sibling because they were punished for their misdeeds unless it involved a***ing me. I jokingly started talking about this to two women I was friends with that were siblings and they looked at me like I had grown an extra head.

#14

Image source: Key_Diet_8371, Adam Winger/Unsplash (not the actual photo) Teacher showed me her breasts. Didn't really register it at the time. It's like my little kid mind just ignored it. Remembered it the other day, I don't know how I feel about it. But does explain some things.

#15

Image source: Raincoat86, Nastya Dulhiier/Unsplash (not the actual photo) I had a doctor and a therapist both recommend that I start taking antidepressants and my mom talked me out of me, said that the idea of me taking them was 'scary.' I lived with pretty steady s******l ideation until I started taking anti depressants at age 34. I also had a Dr diagnose me with ADHD and write a scrip for Adderall. After taking it for a bit, my dad pulled me aside once and said "you may have your mom fooled with this ADD nonsense but you aren't fooling me, we both know you just aren't applying yourself and trying hard enough in school." So I stopped taking the meds cold turkey without telling anyone.

#16

Image source: Revolutionary_Sky889, Nikhita S/Unsplash (not the actual photo) Not sure if it's f****d up, but I didn't realize how strange it was when I was in high school. My school had a dress code, and my freshman English teacher was a stickler for it. He was so concerned about girls trying to conceal spaghetti straps that he would make us take off our jackets/sweaters to show him what's underneath. It didn't occur to me until I was older that we were perfectly covered, why did it matter what we had on underneath?

#17

Image source: Iridechocobosforfun, Natalia Blauth/Unsplash (not the actual photo) My dad kidnapped us when I was in 2nd grade. We were supposed to be going to visit my grandparents (my dads parents) halfway across the country for a week with our dad. After being there for a couple of weeks (which we of course didn't notice being kids on vacation) we were informed my parents were divorcing, and we would be staying with our dad in our grandparent's basement until it was over. What we didn't know is that my mom had NO idea he was doing this. He just... didn't bring us back. Then, she got served with divorce papers. The worst part is my older brother and I are technically his step children, and our sisters' half siblings, so he had no legal right to keep us from our mom. Somehow, nothing was done. We ended up being there for nearly a year while my parents duked it out in court, and my mom eventually won primary custody of all of us and we got to move back home. I didn't find out the whole story until I was an adult!

#18

Image source: coderedmountaindewd, Diana Light/Unsplash (not the actual photo) A few years back, my cousin and I were reminiscing about how we lived together when we were 4 in a rough neighborhood and our moms would have us play a game of “who can play on the floor”. It wasn’t until that moment I realized it was because there were gangs in our neighborhood and they wanted to prevent us from getting s**t.

#19

Image source: ckhutch, Caroline Hernandez/Unsplash (not the actual photo) Watched the handlebars of a 4 wheeler go through the chest of a rider when it flipped on top of him. I rode my tricycle home and told my mom I saw someone die. She didn’t believe me till the helicopter showed up.

#20

In Junior High during gym I was going to get "pops" (corporal punishment) for "talking during gym class" (I was an easy quiet mark). The 2 coaches made me strip n***d and go in their office with huge plate glass window so every student could see. And beat me with a paddle with 3 hard wacks. This was around 1980 in Texas. Male student/2 Male Coaches. This is f****d up isn't it??? Image source: Fury161Houston

#21

Image source: Maxhousen, Soroush Karimi/Unsplash (not the actual photo) I was 7 or 8 years old when my neighbour (a trusted friend of my parents) invited me over to "have a piece of cake" while his wife was out shopping. I was in his living room waiting for the cake when his wife came home early. He made me hide under the couch and told me to run home while he distracted her because she "hated little kids." I didn't even think about it until years later when my brother told me about how the guy would give him sweets for letting him touch his d**k.

#22

Image source: Subjctive, A. C./Unplash (not the actual photo) Not nearly as bad as a lot of people here, but I had to feed myself nearly everyday starting when I was around 15 or so. Family was well off enough but father didn’t care and stopped providing, mom was too tired all the time from working ridiculous hours saving up for the divorce that was coming. I taught myself how to cook in order to keep my sis and I fed, but for a while I didn’t have a car, only a bike, so it was hard to get groceries home. I ate at fast food restaurants most of the time. One night when I was about to ride my bike to the fast food restaurant near our house, mom snapped at me with something along the lines of “you can’t just eat out every single night, it’s not healthy!” I asked her who was making dinner that night then… she was so busy all the time she hadn’t even noticed she stopped cooking for my sis and I a couple years ago. At least now I have a huge passion for cooking, and everyone tells me I’m a pretty solid cook!

#23

Image source: MintyBunni, Nathan Dumlao/Unsplash (not the actual photo) I spent 8 hours a day locked in a dark closet for ~9 months when I was 6. Assumed it was normal punishment. (It wasn't my parents that did this, but the school they sent me to. My parents did not find out about this until years later).

#24

Image source: anon, Tahir osman/Unsplash (not the actual photo) We used to keep lip gloss in the car for when we visited my dad in jail so that we could kiss the glass and he would kiss where the lip gloss mark was. We called it “jail lipgloss”?.

#25

Image source: TerafloppinDatP, Braedon McLeod/Unsplash (not the actual photo) When I was 12 I stayed the weekend with some salt-of-the-earth, live-off-the-land, friends of my aunt and uncle in eastern Oregon (if you know the region, then enough said). They had many animals and all the animals had a job. The dozen or so cats kept the rodent population under control. There was one cat that apparently wasn't earning its keep and the dad had plans to k**l it. We went out with a rifle and caught it but unsurprisingly the cat freaked out and started clawing and biting and scratching the dad and all that and I watched while he proceeded to beat this cat to death by swinging it by the tail against a tree. I buried it with the son. Seemed like Farm Life at the time but it has found a way of creeping up in my thoughts later in life.

#26

Image source: ValuableSwimmer4940, Davor Denkovski/Unsplash (not the actual photo) 8 years old having to drive my father across a lake of ice via ice roads because he was too wasted to drive, thought it was awesome at the time but now that I have a kid of my own I would never have her do things like that 17 years old got in a fight with my father again and he threw a chair out the window and ran after me, never ran so fast in my life after that he had a three hour long rage fit inside his apartment until the cops finally showed up and tasered him. F**k alcohol.

#27

Image source: TemperatureTop246, Oleg Ivanov/Unsplash (not the actual photo) I thought only rich people had clean houses. because our house was filthy.

#28

Image source: Few-Parfait563, Brooke Cagle/Unsplash (not the actual photo) I used to have this creepy uncle who loved tickle fights so much he practically invented them. It was like a game show—“How long can you laugh before you start questioning your life choices?” He'd finish and somehow we would both end up n***d. I just thought he was being goofy. Now that I'm older, I realize.........

#29

Image source: RyanM77, Getty Images/Unsplash (not the actual photo) Went on holidays with my dad and fell and broke my arm in the first hour. Dad refused to take me to the hospital all day and only the next day took me to confirm. I had snapped my arm. At the time I thought it was my fault but looking back I realise it was abuse.

#30

I thought it normal to get heavily beat up for not achieving academic expectations set by my parent and that it was a form of discipline. Image source: thedumboooctopus

#31

Image source: Separate-Toe1067, Dele Oke/Unsplash (not the actual photo) When I was young my brother and I were at the bus stop. We got jumped. One of them was holding me on the ground while the other grabbed the biggest stone he could and was carrying it over to drop on my head. My brother fought them off until one had him in a bear hug from behind, and as I was wearing steel toed boots I ran over and kicked him right in the tailbone as hard as I could. We fought for a short while longer but then everyone left. At the time it was just another day as the ostracized kids. Now it is: They were going to k**l us but we fought like h**l and got out of it. Adrenaline kicks in even now thinking about it.

#32

Image source: Ravenrayxoxo, Windows/Unsplash (not the actual photo) Talking in chat rooms like club penguin or FarmVille on Facebook and realizing later I was clearly talking often to adult predators.

#33

Image source: RedditVince, Wes Hicks/Unsplash (not the actual photo) When I was 11 (1971) a man snuck up behind me while I was playing pinball at my favorite arcade. He was standing real close and kept putting down dimes so I could play more games. He asked me multiple times if I could feel that. I didn't feel anything except that it was strange he was standing so close behind me watching me play. every once in awhile he would press closer and ask again if I could feel that. (No idea at that time what that was supposed to feel as I could not actually feel anything) After some time I said It was my time to go home and he offered me a ride. As he dropped me off across the street from my house he asked if I wanted to go to disneyland tomorrow and to meet him at the arcade after school. As a good kid should I told my mom (Single mom 4 kids) about this nice man I met. She showed concern and told me that if I ever see him again to run away and come straight home. I was in my 30's when I thought about this one day and realized I was super close to being kidnapped by a stranger. I do wonder why he didn't since he had me in his car but I am thankful that for whatever reason he chickened out. I hope he never tried again.

#34

Image source: Ambystomatigrinum, Getty Images/Unsplash (not the actual photo) I was definitely being groomed by a teacher in high school, but I was so shy I avoided him. Not because I wasn’t interested, but because I was nervous I would embarrass myself and he wouldn’t like me anymore. Years later, at 42, he married a 22-year-old.

#35

Image source: VivaciousOliveBranch, Getty Images/Unsplash (not the actual photo) I have a sister who was constantly in and out of the hospital and jail. In and out of gangs. Constantly lying and stealing. Has bipolar disorder and would have manic episodes where my mom would tell us to lock ourselves in our rooms and call the police while my mom was working. Police would show up like, “alright where is she?” Because they knew us and visited frequently. One time my mom and sister were arguing in the kitchen and my sister threw a knife that almost hit me by a little bit. I thought this was normal until I got older and visited friends houses where it was constantly calm whenever I visited. Then I was just too embarrassed to bring it up to my childhood friends when I found out it wasn’t actually normal to have these experiences.