LINKS BETWEEN TRAUMATIC CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES AND PERSONALITY TOLERANCE IN ADULT AGE

Abstract

The article justifies theoretically the problem of traumatic childhood experience and its connection with personality tolerance in adulthood. A childhood trauma has certain effects on occurrence of depression, anxiety, neuroticism, cognitive disorders, on a tendency to commit suicide or use psychotropic substances, as well as on worldview, relationships with other people and the quality of life in adulthood, which has been theoretically substantiated. The performed empirical study indicated that a significant part of the examined people had traumatic childhood experiences: lack of food; bullying and physical violence by adults or peers; loss of one or both parents; living with a person who had mental disorders; physical violence between parents or guardians; lack of love from parents or existing feeling of own uselessness; sexual harassment or sexual violence. In adulthood, these people were prone to trauma: humiliation, deprivation, betrayal, abandonment, injustice. Childhood traumatic experiences are associated with certain types of tolerance. The absence of one parent is associated with emotional instability; physical violence and bullying by peers correlates with intolerance to uncertainty; certain types of a parent’s addiction is linked with the child’s conservatism; an imprisoned parent is associated with the desire to make an individual’s partner comfortable to him/her, practical approach to partners; feeling of being unloved by parents correlates with detachment from others. Childhood humiliation, physical abuse by parents and bullying by peers are associated with uncertainty intolerance in adulthood. Experienced betrayal, feelings of unloved are associated with conservatism, detachment from others and the desire to make other people more comfortable for oneself. In general, a traumatic childhood experience can determinate a tendency to social anxiety, low self-esteem, tolerance for the peculiarities of others, many social fears, an inability to listen to oneself, pessimism, as well as an inability to forgive mistakes and detachment from others because of the fear to re-experience betrayal from a loved one.