How I'm Healing Childhood Trauma as an Adult Using Compassionate Inquiry

Healing Childhood Trauma | My Personal Journey

I wasn't planning to write a blog today, but after the insights I had this weekend, I felt inspired to share them while they're still fresh in my mind. If reading this helps even one person understand themselves a little better, then it will have been worth writing.

This weekend, YouTube suggested a podcast featuring Dr. Gabor Maté. His videos had appeared in my recommendations before, but I'd never clicked on one. This time I did—and I'm incredibly grateful that I did.

If you've never listened to Dr. Maté, I highly recommend watching a podcast where he's a guest or reading one of his books. He explains trauma in a way that completely changed my understanding of myself. His work explores how many of our emotional, psychological, and even physical struggles can be traced back to childhood—not because we are broken, but because we developed coping mechanisms that once helped us survive but now they are harmful and do not serve us as adults.

I already knew my childhood had affected the way I function as an adult. What I didn't realise was just how deeply pervasive those early experiences continue to shape my thoughts, emotions, and behaviours today.

The struggles I face as an adult are not character flaws. They are coping mechanisms that were created by a frightened, defenceless child trying to survive. The tragedy is that those same coping mechanisms that once protected me are now the very things holding me back from living as a healthy adult.

Fortunately, I have reached a point in my healing where I can respond to myself with compassion rather than criticism. Learning to speak to myself in a nurturing, reassuring way has taken years of practice because it wasn't something I consistently received growing up.

For that reason, the principles behind Dr. Gabor Maté's Compassionate Inquiry immediately resonated with me. While I am not trained in Compassionate Inquiry, learning about its approach inspired me to explore my own emotions with more curiosity, honesty, and compassion.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned from applying my basic knowledge of Compassionate Inquiry is just how incredibly complex our emotions really are. 

In the past, I've said that analysing your emotions isn't always helpful. I still believe that's true if you only examine the surface. Simply asking, "Why am I anxious?" rarely gets you very far. The real healing begins when you're willing to gently keep asking why until you uncover the root of the emotion.

Getting to that root is surprisingly difficult.

Our emotions are layered. Childhood memories are often buried because they were too painful for our younger selves to fully process. Our brains protected us by hiding them away.

This weekend, though, something shifted. Perhaps I've done enough healing over the years to peel back enough layers that I could finally see the origins of some of my emotional reactions.

I'd like to share two examples.

Example 1: Why Was I Suddenly Afraid of Driving?

My car was due for a service, so I planned to drive my husband's ute to work.

The problem was that his vehicle is much larger than mine, and I'm not naturally a confident driver. We spent the weekend practising, but I found it surprisingly difficult. The rear-view mirror blocked part of my vision when turning left, and for some reason I simply couldn't park the vehicle properly.

Because I leave for work before sunrise and have a fairly long commute, I began feeling uneasy about driving it the following morning.

On the drive home, my husband casually said:

"Maybe I should have just bought a manual instead. It would have been cheaper."

He meant that he had chosen an automatic so I could drive it too.

But I couldn't.

Later that afternoon something strange happened.

I suddenly became anxious about driving my own car—the same car I'd comfortably driven for years. My mind started telling me that maybe I couldn't drive safely after all.

The fear made no logical sense.

Fortunately, I've reached a place where I can comfort myself instead of believing every fearful thought.

So I gently told myself:

"It's okay to feel anxious. You've driven your own car safely for years."

Then another sentence came to me.

"You don't have to be good at driving your husband's car."

The moment I said those words, my anxiety disappeared almost instantly.

That made me curious.

Why had that sentence calmed me?

So I kept asking myself questions.

What exactly had I been feeling?

When had the anxiety begun?

Then I remembered the moment my husband mentioned he could have bought the cheaper manual.

I realised that somewhere inside me I had unconsciously interpreted his comment as:

"He's unhappy because of me."

And suddenly everything clicked.

As a child, I constantly felt responsible for my parents' unhappiness.

They struggled enormously after immigrating. They were under immense financial, emotional and physical pressure. They argued frequently, and I was criticised often.

Like many children, I believed that if only I could be a better daughter—more obedient, more perfect, less troublesome—they would stop fighting and finally be happy.

Of course, that wasn't true.

Their struggles were never my responsibility.

Children naturally see the world from their own perspective. As Dr. Gabor Maté explains, young children are developmentally egocentric, meaning they instinctively interpret events in relation to themselves. As a result, they often assume responsibility for the difficulties around them, believing that if something is wrong, it must somehow be their fault. A common example is when parents divorce. Many children believe that if they had behaved better or been a "good enough" child, their parents would have stayed together. In reality, the divorce has nothing to do with them, but taking responsibility can feel safer than accepting that the adults they depend on are struggling or unable to meet their emotional needs.

When my husband made that innocent comment about the car, my nervous system wasn't responding to him.

It was responding to my childhood.

The anxiety I felt wasn't really about the car.

What I was actually feeling was guilt. I felt guilty that I couldn't drive my husband's car, and I interpreted that as meaning he was unhappy and disadvantaged because of me. His unhappiness became something I felt responsible for, and that old belief surfaced again: "It is my fault."

The intensity of the emotion came from a much deeper place—the crushing feeling I carried as a child of believing that everything was my fault. It brought back the fear of being blamed, criticised, or yelled at, and the feeling of being unsafe in a home filled with conflict between my parents.

My adult mind knew that my husband's comment was harmless and that I was not responsible for his choices or his feelings. But the younger part of me—the child who once believed she had to keep everyone happy to feel safe—was reacting as though I was back in that environment again.

I don't think I could have made that connection a few years ago.

That's how hidden these emotional roots can be.

To release this childhood belief, I imagined myself as a child again who was shutting down emotionally simply because it was such a burden to take on the responsibility of her parents' happiness. I imagined standing strong beside her as she is being yelled at, as she is feeling guilty, and telling her "this is not your fault. They are extremely stressed and unhappy because life became much harder than they expected and they have no tools to help them. Your life will inevitably become good.  It will be ok."

Example 2: Why Does Taking a Day Off Make Me Anxious?

Because I didn't feel comfortable driving the ute, I decided to take annual leave.

Almost immediately I felt that familiar knot of anxiety in my stomach—the same feeling I experience whenever I take annual leave or sick leave.

Normally I would ignore it and just push it down.

But this time I became curious.

What exactly was I afraid of?

My first thought was that my manager might think I was lazy or making excuses.

The strange thing is that my manager is genuinely kind.

So why was I reacting as though I were in danger?

I kept asking myself questions.

Eventually I remembered something from childhood.

My parents worked unbelievably hard after immigrating. During those early years they often worked incredibly long hours simply to survive.

Because of that, I grew up believing that resting was wrong.

If I wasn't studying, helping, or being productive, I was often made to feel guilty.

Sometimes I was even told I was a bad person.

But that still didn't explain the fear.

So I kept asking.

Then I remembered another message I absorbed growing up from my parents. Though I can't exactly recall the words they said, but I remember the way I perceived them.

"If you were a bad person, people wouldn't like you.

And if people didn't like you, life would become incredibly difficult."

As a child, life already felt unpredictable and emotionally exhausting. I felt like I was walking on eggshells everyday. I simply couldn’t handle the thought of my life becoming even more difficult than it already was.

My nervous system learned that being disliked wasn't merely uncomfortable—it was dangerous.

Suddenly everything made sense.

Somewhere deep inside, taking a day off had become convolutedly linked with the fear that life would become unbearable. But this childhood belief, which had remained unconscious to me until now, was deeply pervasive throughout my life. It explained why I often felt anxious and afraid whenever I stood up for myself or chose a path that felt authentic to who I truly was. Deep down, I feared that if I disappointed people or if they didn't like me, I would somehow lose my sense of safety and suffer even more than I already had.

None of those beliefs were true anymore.

But they still existed within the frightened child inside me.

So I imagined comforting that younger version of myself.

I gently rubbed her back and told her:

"Even if someone doesn't like you, you are still safe."

"Your life doesn't become difficult simply because someone forms an opinion about you."

Almost immediately I felt lighter because I am at a point in my life where I know this to be true and believe it.

Healing Begins with Curiosity

These experiences reminded me that our emotional reactions are rarely about the situation we're facing today.

One thing I have learned through this process is that our emotional reactions often don't seem logical and does not match the context of what we are facing. It did not make sense to me straight away that I have fear and anxiety when taking a day off. On the surface I can say I was fearful because I was afraid my manage would judge me. But that also didn't make sense because my manage is very nice and wouldn't do anything to harm my career simply because I took a day off.

Instead of dismissing these feelings because they don't seem to make sense, we can become more curious about them. By being honest about what we are truly feeling and gently asking ourselves why we feel this way, deeper and deeper, we may uncover original wounds and beliefs that have been hidden beneath the surface. Our emotions can become a pathway that leads us back to the root cause of our struggles.

They're often echoes of experiences we had many years, decades ago.

That's why healing childhood trauma isn't simply about changing your thoughts.

It's about understanding why those thoughts developed in the first place.

Compassionate Inquiry has taught me that when an emotional reaction doesn't seem to make sense, instead of dismissing it, we can become curious.

Ask yourself:

• What am I actually feeling?
• What am I afraid might happen?
• When have I felt this before?
• What belief about myself was created in childhood?
• Is that belief still true today?

The answers may not come immediately.

Sometimes there are many layers to work through.

Sometimes your mind has hidden painful memories because it was trying to protect you.

But if you continue asking with honesty—and more importantly, with compassion—you may eventually discover that your strongest emotional reactions aren't irrational at all.

They make perfect sense once you understand where they began.

Healing isn't about blaming our parents or reliving the past.

It's about recognising that many of our adult struggles were once brilliant survival strategies.

Then, with kindness, we can reassure the frightened child within us that they no longer have to carry those burdens alone.

For me, that's what healing childhood trauma looks like.

Not fixing myself.

Simply understanding myself, one compassionate question at a time.