Developmental trauma: what happens when safety wasn't there from the start

“I didn’t have a bad childhood. Nobody hit me, and we had everything we needed.”

I hear this sentence often, almost always at the start, and almost always in defence of someone nobody has attacked. The person who says it usually comes for something quite different: because they keep ending up in the same loop in relationships, because a small criticism at work knocks them off balance for a whole day, because they can’t say what they feel, or because they have a sense that somewhere deep inside them something is wrong, without knowing what. And then, as we begin to piece the story together, it often turns out that the childhood really did contain everything money can buy. What was missing was something else — someone who noticed how they were.

This is what the term developmental trauma describes. It is not about one terrible event, but about the environment a child grew up in: there was not enough safety, comfort and attunement in exactly the years when the nervous system, the sense of self and expectations of other people are still being formed. In this post I will try to explain what developmental trauma is, how it differs from trauma after a single event, how it shows up in adulthood — and where the limits of the concept lie, because it can also be stretched too far.

Trauma that wasn’t an event

When we say trauma, most people think of an accident, an assault, a war or a natural disaster — something that happened and has a beginning and an end. I wrote about what happens in the body after such an event in How trauma stays written in the body. Developmental trauma is different. It has no date. It often can’t be told in one sentence, because there was no “that day”. There were years.

In 2005 the psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk and his colleagues proposed that the profession should recognise a separate diagnosis — developmental trauma disorder — for children who grew up with chronic fear, neglect or unpredictability within their relationships with the people who should have protected them. They had noticed that these children did not fit existing diagnoses well: they did not only have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, but difficulties regulating emotions, attention, the body and relationships all at once. The proposal was not accepted into the American diagnostic manual DSM-5, and developmental trauma is still not an official diagnosis today. As a description of an experience, however, the term has stuck, because it helps people put into words something they previously had no words for.

The essence lies in two phrases: early and in relationship. Early, because it happened while the child was still building foundations — before they had an adult mind with which to make sense of what was going on. And in relationship, because the source of distress was often the very person the child should have turned to for comfort. When the person who loves you is also the one who frightens you, or simply the one who isn’t there, a child can neither escape nor calm down. All that is left is to adapt.

What a child needs — and what they learn when it isn’t there

Attachment theory, developed by John Bowlby, explains that a child does not need perfect parents. They need a secure base — an adult they can return to when they are frightened and from whom they can set off again to explore the world. They need someone who notices their distress, understands it at least roughly and helps them settle. We call this co-regulation: a child’s nervous system calms alongside an adult’s calmer nervous system, until gradually the child learns to do it on their own.

Just how sensitive babies are to this was shown by the developmental psychologist Edward Tronick and his colleagues in the well-known “still face” experiment of 1978. A mother plays with her baby for a few minutes, then on a signal goes still for a short time and looks at the baby without expression. The baby almost immediately starts trying to make contact — smiling, pointing, vocalising. When that doesn’t work, the baby becomes restless, turns away; some cry or collapse into themselves. And when the mother comes back into contact, most babies recover quickly. This is an important part of the story: a brief rupture followed by repair does not wound a child; it teaches them that a relationship can be restored.

Developmental trauma arises when there is no repair. When the “still face” is a permanent state — because of a parent’s depression, addiction, violence in the family, their own unprocessed trauma, or simply an overload that leaves no room for the child. A child doesn’t conclude that the parent is exhausted. They conclude something about themselves and about the world.

How common it is

The largest study to open up this question was the American Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, led in the late 1990s by Vincent Felitti and Robert Anda. More than nine thousand adults, mostly employed, middle-class people with health insurance, answered questions about abuse, neglect and difficulties in the household they grew up in — a parent’s mental illness or addiction, violence against their mother, a family member in prison, divorce. More than half reported at least one such experience, and a quarter reported two or more. And the more experiences piled up, the greater the risk of depression, suicide attempts, addiction and a range of physical illnesses in adulthood.

Who these people were matters. Not a particularly vulnerable group, but ordinary adults who had come in for a routine medical check-up. Adverse childhood experiences are not an exception that happens to “other families”. They are common. That doesn’t mean everyone who went through them is traumatised — more on that below — but it does mean that anyone who recognises themselves in this post is not alone.

A research review published in 2016 by Martin Teicher and Jacqueline Samson gathered evidence that childhood abuse and neglect are linked to measurable differences in the development of brain regions responsible for detecting danger, memory and regulating emotions. The authors interpret this as adaptation: the brain of a child growing up in a dangerous environment develops to survive in a dangerous environment. The problem arises when the adult lives in a safer world, but their alarm is still set for the one from childhood.

How developmental trauma shows up in adulthood

People with developmental trauma rarely arrive saying “I have trauma”. They arrive with something they see as a personality flaw. What I notice most often:

• Difficulty regulating emotions. Reactions may be too strong for what triggered them — or barely there at all. Some people get angry before they know what stung them; others feel nothing where you’d expect sadness. I write about why both happen in The window of tolerance: why you sometimes flood and sometimes go numb.
• A deep sense that something is wrong with me. Not guilt about something I did, but shame, the emotion that whispers “there is something wrong with me”. A child who wasn’t noticed often makes sense of it by deciding they weren’t worth noticing.
• Relationships that feel both essential and dangerous. Closeness can feel like a trap, distance like abandonment. In people for whom the same parent was a source of both comfort and fear, this often shows up as disorganised attachment.
• Growing up too early. A child who looked after a parent or younger siblings often grows into an adult who can take care of everything except themselves. I wrote about this in The loss of childhood: when you had to grow up too soon.
• A body that doesn’t rest. Sleep problems, tension, digestive trouble, a feeling of always being slightly on standby, even when there is no reason.
• Gaps in memory. Some people remember surprisingly little of their childhood. That doesn’t mean something terrible is hidden behind it — but it can mean those years were survived rather than lived.

None of these points proves anything on its own. Most people recognise themselves in one of them. What matters is a pattern that repeats across several areas of life at once and that a person carries with them wherever they go.

Developmental, complex, “ordinary” — what’s the difference

These terms often overlap and confuse, so let me try briefly. Trauma after a single event (a car accident, an assault) affects someone who until then had relatively solid foundations; they can often return to a sense of how they were “before”. Complex trauma means repeated, long-lasting exposure with no way out — I write about it in Complex trauma: when it didn’t happen once, but for years, and there is a short explanation in the knowledge base under complex trauma. It can also happen to an adult.

Developmental trauma is complex trauma that happened in childhood, in the relationship with caregivers, and therefore reached into development itself. The person has no “before” to go back to. It isn’t a matter of forgetting something — it’s a matter of learning, for the first time, something that didn’t form back then. And because the wound happened in a relationship, healing mostly happens in a relationship too.

There is one more thing people often overlook: developmental trauma is not only about what happened, but also about what didn’t. Emotional neglect leaves no bruises, which makes it the hardest to recognise. The child was fed, dressed and taken to the doctor, but nobody asked why they were sad. Because “nothing bad” happened, the adult doesn’t take their own distress seriously — which is often just a continuation of what they learned at home.

A conversation that often comes up in some form

This is how a conversation with someone who is only beginning to ask questions about their childhood might sound (composed, not a real person):

“I don’t know why we spend so much time on my parents. They did their best.”
“I believe they did. Both things can be true at once — that they tried, and that something was missing for you.”
“But other people had it much worse.”
“That’s true. And still, you’re the one who can’t sleep for three days after every argument with your husband. What did you learn to do as a little girl when someone was angry with you?”
“Keep quiet. And then after a while do something nice so it would be all right again.”
“Did anyone ever come to you, to make it all right again?”
“… No. I don’t think so.”

This short excerpt contains something typical of developmental trauma: loyalty to the parents, comparison with “real” victims, and at the same time a very concrete pattern that repeats in the present. The work isn’t about blaming the parents. It is about a person noticing, for the first time, what they learned — and that it can change.

What helps

In her 1992 book Trauma and Recovery, the psychiatrist Judith Herman described recovery from prolonged trauma in three stages, which the profession still uses in various forms today. First safety and stabilisation: learning to regulate your own state and having enough support in your life. Only then processing memories and grieving for what wasn’t there. And finally reconnection — with other people, with yourself, with a life no longer organised around survival.

The order matters. A person with developmental trauma often doesn’t need to “go deep” as soon as possible, but first to build what they didn’t get in childhood: the experience that they can be safe in a relationship. That is why the relationship with the therapist is more than a frame for the work here — it is part of the work itself. I summarised the research on how security in relationships can be gained in adulthood too in Secure attachment can be learned.

Where I fit in, and when to look for a specialist

I want to be clear here. I am a marriage and family therapist in training under supervision, not a trauma specialist, and I do not practise methods developed specifically for processing traumatic memories. In relational family therapy, in which I am training, the focus is precisely what this post is about: how patterns from the family you grew up in repeat in your present relationships — with your partner, your children, your colleagues — and how, in a safe relationship, you can recognise and change them. For many people this is a good place to start. For some it isn’t enough.

If memories flood you, if you have nightmares, if you find yourself “switching off” and losing time, or if triggers knock you off balance every day, it makes sense to look for a psychotherapist with additional training in trauma work. Among the methods you’ll come across are EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing), which has good research support for post-traumatic stress disorder, trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy, and somatic methods, which work through bodily sensations and not only through the story. A short explanation of what the profession actually counts as trauma is in the knowledge base under trauma. When depression, severe sleep problems or addiction are also present, part of the path is a conversation with your GP or a psychiatrist.

The good news is that these paths don’t exclude each other. A person can process memories with a specialist and, at the same time, in couples therapy or family therapy, build relationships in which safety is an everyday experience rather than just an idea.

And one more thing: reading about childhood can open up more than you expected. If you are having thoughts of not wanting to live, or if you are in danger, don’t wait until tomorrow. In Slovenia you can call the Mental Distress Line on 01 520 99 00 (every day from 19.00 to 7.00) or the Samaritans helpline on 116 123 (24 hours a day). If you are experiencing violence, the SOS helpline for women and children who are victims of violence is 080 11 55 in Slovenia. In an emergency call 112, or the police on 113 in Slovenia.

Exercise: what I needed and what wasn’t there

This is a gentle writing exercise. It takes fifteen minutes. If you feel it pulling you somewhere too heavy, stop — that isn’t failure, it’s important information. In that case do something that brings you back into the present instead, such as the 5–4–3–2–1 grounding exercise.

1. Choose one everyday moment from the present when you reacted more strongly than you’d have liked — you withdrew, got angry, froze. Write it down in two or three sentences.
2. Write down what you needed in that moment. Not what you should have done, but what would have helped: someone listening, not having to apologise, someone staying.
3. Ask yourself whether you know this need from before. Was there someone in your childhood who gave you this? If not, what did you do instead?
4. Write down the sentence you learned back then — in the first person, as a belief: “I have to be good.” “Anger is dangerous.” “Better not to need anyone.”
5. Add one line from the present: who or what gives you, even a little, what wasn’t there back then? If you can’t find anyone, write that down too. It may be a reason to look for help.

The aim isn’t to explain everything to yourself. The aim is to connect a reaction in the present, for the first time, with the story it grew out of — and to see in it a sensible adaptation rather than a flaw.

Where this concept doesn’t apply — and why that matters

The concept of developmental trauma is useful, but it has limits that deserve respect.

Not every difficult childhood is trauma. Disappointments, a strict upbringing, parents’ divorce or a period when your mother was overwhelmed are part of many childhoods, and most children come through them without lasting consequences — especially if there was at least one reliable adult beside them. If we call every pain trauma, we lose the word for the pains that really were severe.

The number of adverse experiences is not a prediction. In 2020 Robert Anda, one of the authors of the ACE study, and his colleagues specifically warned that the sum of experiences is useful for studying groups, not for judging an individual. Many people with several adverse experiences live well, and some with none do not. That is also why I don’t trust quick online tests that hand you a number.

Memory is not a recording. In therapy we don’t search for “repressed memories”, and we don’t infer events a person doesn’t remember. We work with what is available: reactions, patterns, feelings and the story as the person knows it.

Parents are not necessarily “the culprits”. Most parents whose children grow up with developmental trauma themselves grew up without safety. That doesn’t make your wound any smaller. It only means that the question “whose fault is it” is rarely the one that helps you move forward. The more important question is what of all this you want to carry forward and what you don’t.

And finally: what you survived doesn’t automatically make you stronger. People with developmental trauma are often remarkably capable — but that capability often grew out of necessity, and it costs them more than it looks from the outside.

What to remember

• Developmental trauma is not a single event but an environment: there wasn’t enough safety, comfort and attunement in exactly the years when development was taking shape.
• It is often marked not by what happened, but by what wasn’t there — which is why people find it so hard to recognise.
• In adulthood it shows up as difficulty regulating emotions, shame, complicated relationships and a body that doesn’t rest — as an adaptation, not a flaw.
• Recovery goes through safety first and only then through processing memories; because the wound formed in a relationship, it heals mainly in a relationship.
• The concept has limits: not every difficult childhood is trauma, and no score predicts your future.