The Child, The Protector and The Adult
Why early trauma shaped my patterns, how survival kept me going, and how the healthy part is leading me home.
After writing about the three inner parts, which play a big role in how we behave, feel and react to situations, it didn’t feel done. This inner system includes three parts — trauma, survival and the healthy adult — and helps us to gain insight into our automatic patterns and to make more conscious choices.
In Three Parts, Three Cards, One Path, I said:
I’ve frequently said I’m my own harshest critic. I’ve chastised myself so much for so many years, feeling anger, and shame and guilt for my life, for the things I’d done, for all my mistakes.
Using De Fontein (or The Fountain) by Els van Steijn as my guide, with a focus on the inner system, I want to share more personal insights.
Activating and adding to the trauma part
I don’t doubt that the trauma part of my brain has been activated in my childhood, which means the survival part also came into play.
The question is: when was it activated?
One could say it only happened with the sexual abuse when I was nine-years-old, but I believe it started before then. I’ve written before that my parents were emotionally unavailable to us, and I believe that was because of the traumas in their younger lives.
I’ve frequently said that from around the age of five, I knew my parents were only staying together for us, their kids. Looking back now, I know that made me walk on eggshells, maybe because I felt responsible and hoped that by being ‘good’ my parents would always be together.
For the longest time, maybe forty years, I’d always said I suffered no trauma from what happened when I was nine. However, when I sat face-to-face with my brother for the first time in almost ten years, he mentioned I had changed at that age.
I withdrew into myself; ignored him.
I never felt seen, had no one to talk to. I never formed a trusting bond with a friend, because just as I started trusting someone, my parents moved again. No one could help me with the pain, so I hid it away deep inside. This was before the teenage pregnancy, and the consequent abandonment.
Because yes, that was the next trauma.
Not the pregnancy as such, but being abandoned by the father of my child. Of course, now we know it was all lies. Then, when I was eighteen and part of a student tour across the country, I was raped. It took me decades to say that out loud, now only two years ago.
Those two events added to the trauma part of my brain, as well as some other things which happened in my twenties, and strengthened the survival part.
For most of my life, I’ve easily felt triggered and frequently felt unseen. I cannot tell you how many times in my adult life, even into my early fifties, I’d gotten unreasonably angry and said: “I also want to want something, to decide something.”
I would say that when feeling powerless, feeling like everyone else could act like the adults they were, but I was denied that.
There were words for how I felt, but they eluded me because I didn’t understand those feelings. I’d gotten too used to the traumatic things hiding in dark corners, but I also wanted nothing more than to be understood; to find recognition for what happened. I craved healing, but even that I couldn’t bring under words.
The survival part protected me
In De Fontein, Els van Steijn talks about ‘walking heads’. Those are people who cover their primary emotions with secondary ones. They stay in their heads, rationalizing their emotions.
Even though I have only now learned this term, I had written about this phenomenon before: My Head Determines What My Heart Feels. This is what I said in that article from November 2022:
I’m hard on myself, and constantly in survival mode, which means my head has to help me feel what my heart doesn’t have the courage to do.
I’ve been in survival mode for most of my life. It was the survival part of my being that pulled me through all the bad patches in my life, and believe me, there’d been many. Not only those I mentioned, but also failed marriages, abuse, immigration.
I’ve always been a hard worker, trying to prove myself repeatedly, while ignoring my own boundaries because I tried to keep everyone happy, whether a partner, a family member or a boss. And when things were good, I would cynically wonder when it would go awry again.
My survival part — that strong inner child of mine — had helped me through so many rough patches. She was the one who helped me persevere, even against the odds. She was the one who protected me from the hurt, by shielding painful memories from my conscious mind. But the survival part also steered my life.
Early trauma shapes your inner “attitude”
Something I wanted more information on was:
If your trauma part became active at a young age, is there a bigger risk of experiencing intense things in your life?
The short answer to that: yes.
This happens because the trauma and survival parts unconsciously help to shape the life path, to no fault of the individual.
If a young child has to deal with emotional neglect, insecure attachment, carrying the burden of their parents (parentification), rejection, not being allowed to feel, or any kind of trauma (i.e. losing a parent, abuse), then the trauma part arises. That part puts on a certain pair of glasses:
👉 “I have to adapt.”
👉 “My needs don’t matter.”
👉 “I am responsible for the mood of others.”
👉 “Love = unpredictable or painful.”
Those glasses influence how you:
👉 see yourself (often inferior or invisible),
👉 choose others (e.g. partners who are unsafe or distant),
👉 set boundaries (often too little or too late),
👉 recognize danger (often not in time).
With the trauma part activated, the survival part also comes into play. The survival part wants to avoid pain at all costs, but often chooses recognition over healing.
You repeat what you know.
Despite having grown further, you can unconsciously attract situations in which the original trauma repeats, such as:
👉 Ending up in relationships in which you feel unsafe or unseen again.
👉 Letting your boundaries be crossed because you think it’s “normal”.
👉 Seeking recognition in places where it never really comes.
You don’t consciously choose to do so, but it happens because your system doesn’t know yet that it’s allowed to be different. You recognize unsafe situations too late, or confuse them with ‘familiarity’. Other people’s emotions feel like your responsibility, and you ignore your own signals. Situations that resemble the original trauma feel ‘normal’, but are unsafe.
This is not about blame!
This doesn’t mean you ‘attracted’ it, wanted it, or that it is your fault. Your brain and nervous system have adapted to and normalized circumstances you’d never chosen.
What you can choose to do — when you are ready — is to be aware of these patterns and transform them step by step.
When the healthy adult part gets stronger, you can see which patterns no longer serve you. You can feel what you could not feel as a child, and you can choose to deal with yourself and the world differently. It’s not a straightforward path, but definitely a liberating one.
Every small step in which you take yourself more seriously, respect your boundaries or are gentler with your pain, counts.
My healing journey
Learning that the trauma and survival parts unconsciously help to shape one’s life path was a revelation to me.
As quoted earlier, I’ve punished myself about my past, felt anger and shame and guilt for things I’d done; for all my mistakes.
No, I don’t want to ‘hide’ saying I did those things because of the trauma and survival parts in my inner system. What I want to say is that it helps me to understand. I’ve asked ‘why’ so many times in my life.
Why did you allow that to happen? How could you not see how wrong it was? Why were you so stupid? Why were you not as mature as your peers, who all made better decisions than you?
Yes, I definitely am my own harshest critic.
But, I understand better now. It makes me think of what I’d said to my former coach when we had lunch a few weeks ago:
“I want to thank my inner child for being so strong for both of us, for having protected me from the pain. I want to take her hand, to take her with me and say: I see you.”
I’ve been working on healing for years now, but still have a long way to go for my healthy adult self to be stronger than the trauma and survival parts. Writing about it helps to process all that had happened.
For instance, take the part above on how early trauma can shape your life. I’ve felt inferior so many times in my life, and it’s only in recent years that I know and feel I also matter.
Throughout my life, until I met my husband, I’d chosen unsafe partners — partners who I put on a pedestal, and who made me feel inferior. Setting boundaries and recognizing danger weren’t on my radar for the bigger part of my life.
Thinking of some experiences from the past, I flush with shame. I used to scold myself, put myself down, because I didn’t understand why I did some of those things. I know better now…
I’ve been through much. Something I said/say frequently: my life seems destined to be difficult.
However, I’m not living by that statement. I’m grateful for the optimism that’s carried me through dark times and will allow me to heal. I’m positive about that!
In closing
Week 26 of 2025 has been a remarkable one. It was so special that all I wanted to say about it had to be spread over three articles — this one, as well as:
The Night Our Family System Spoke — What two deeply connected dreams revealed about our family’s secrets — and the healing we didn’t know had already begun.
Three Parts, Three Cards, One Path — How a tarot reading echoed the trauma, survival, and healthy parts described in De Fontein, and something clicked into place.
As always, I write for myself first, because that’s the way I make sense of things, but I also stand by what I frequently say: if my writing about this can help one person out there, my work is done.
Also read this wonderful essay by
The Longest Day
At the wake, I memorialised my dad’s passing by drinking too much and eating little.