The Effects Your Childhood Traumas Have on Your Family Business
Photo by Aaron Blanco Tejedor
Before we begin ask yourself if you think your childhood had traumatic effects on you. Just let this question sink for a minute and write down the answer on a piece of paper. If you grew up in a business family, then I guess that you wrote down a “yes”. I can assure you, that you are not alone. I for one answer this question with a yes.
The dynamics in business families can be traumatizing for young children and these traumas will carry on into adulthood. In adulthood, the effects lead to certain behaviours and toxic dynamics in the family. This is an ever-ongoing cycle of emotional destruction, resulting in an unsafe environment. Some families do well on this front. In my personal experience though, I find that most are caught in this cycle. Breaking this cycle is easier said than done and requires knowledge about the issue and usually outside help of some form.
It has taken me years to realize that I suffer from certain traumas from my childhood and that it is ok. It is pretty normal to have these problems when faced with certain behaviours in the family while growing up. Once you realise this, the path to betterment is open to you. In this article, I will share with you, what I have discovered in my healing journey. And how I think business families can do better for their future generations.
Understanding trauma and working through it is the basis of broken families finding a way to come together again. Especially if you have a business or wealth as the last “glue”, which becomes a good reason for even more discord.
Understanding the Childhood Trauma Essentials
Understanding the essentials of childhood trauma forms the basis for improvement. To create awareness for yourself and in your family, it’s important to understand childhood trauma. We will have a look at what kinds of trauma there are, how they are formed and what consequences they have in adults.
What Are Childhood Traumas?
The term „trauma“ is often misunderstood. Maybe not in the professional field, but in society. Most people when they hear the word trauma think of things like sexual abuse or physical abuse. These events are known as primary trauma, resulting in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). When a person has had a tough childhood, due to non-present parents or due to an ongoing financial crisis in the household, most people would not think of it as a traumatic experience. However, those experiences are quite traumatic for a child and also result in primary trauma.
Abandonment from non-present parents is a classic in family businesses. In many families, business or wealth is the top priority. This results in both or at least one of the parents not being very present in childhood. The child will feel abandoned and not loved by the parent. And it doesn‘t matter if you tell your children hundreds of times that you love them. If you are not there your actions show the opposite and it is actions that count. Our intent is never perceivable to others, only to ourselves. Telling someone one thing but doing the opposite results in sinking trust levels. In society, we like to outsource our children, to nurseries, babysitters, and whatnot. The result is that our children feel abandoned and not loved.
Then there is secondary trauma also known as secondary stress disorder (STSD). Secondary trauma occurs if one is repeatedly exposed to details about the trauma experienced by others. Therefore, what will make these traumas worse, is that society does not see them as traumatic.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, childhood trauma is defined as: “The experience of an event by a child that is emotionally painful or distressful, which often results in lasting mental and physical effects.”
According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network: “Secondary traumatic stress is the emotional duress that results when an individual hears about the first-hand trauma experiences of another.”
By looking at the definition of childhood trauma, we can quickly see, that it is not the severity of the event, but the emotional pain or stress it creates. And for the painful or stressful event to become traumatic, it needs to have lasting mental or physical effects. This is a part where society often struggles. Emotional trauma can have physical effects. For example, your children end up having a host of food intolerances, ADHD, or other problems. These can result (and mostly do) from childhood trauma.
What Kinds of Childhood Traumas Are There?
There is a host of childhood traumas. The aspects differ with each kind of trauma; however, the basis is the same. As we covered above there are primary and secondary traumas. Primary traumas are directly experienced by an individual. Secondary traumas result from hearing about traumatic experiences or by seeing the traumatic behaviour in another. Primary traumas can be grouped into several types:
Physical abuse
Verbal abuse
Sexual abuse
Physical neglect
Emotional neglect
Alcoholic or addicted parent(s)
Victim(s) of domestic abuse
Family member(s) with mental illness
The disappearance of parent(s) – through divorce, abandonment, or death
A family member in prison
War refugee trauma
Postnatal trauma
Prenatal trauma
Take a minute and think about your childhood and if any of the above traumas have occurred. When I dipped my toes into the topic of childhood trauma it became clear to me, that several of the above apply. Just one of them is more than enough to influence you enormously. We often forget that for a child, especially below the age of 7, events that adults would perceive as a walk in the park can have traumatic effects.
A very good cue to see if you suffer from childhood trauma is to try and evaluate how many memories of your childhood you have. If it is very little, you likely suffer from childhood trauma. Memory impairment can last into adulthood. It will usually affect your long-term memory.
Additionally, to experiencing primary traumas you can gather secondary trauma through your caretakers. I write caretakers because in many business families the children are brought up not only by their parents but by other individuals given the task. Watching your caretakers endure hardship, can be highly traumatic for a child. Not only watching hardships but also watching your caretakers and their traumatic responses have an effect. Thus, their behaviour can inflict secondary trauma on a child. Going one step further, traumatising stories you are told by your caretakers induce secondary trauma too. Think back on some stories you have been told as a child, that are stressful experiences in the life of the storyteller. Do any of these stories make your hairs stand up, or come to mind again and again, then maybe you have been traumatised by them. Again, adults often do not realise that events they perceive as normal are traumatic for a child.
How Do Traumas Form in General?
Childhood trauma occurs when a person who has power over the child threatens or harms them. Threats and harm can be defined loosely, however. What makes a trauma form is that the child experiences fear as a response. In an environment that lacks a sense of safety for the child, fear takes over as the predominant emotion. Children up to a certain age are in general helpless beings. Nevertheless, it is on the caretakers to take care of the child and instil a feeling of safety. If this is missed, then the child will experience a feeling of helplessness.
What about traumas, which happen outside the family’s control sphere? Let’s take bullying in school as an example. Even if you can argue that the experience happens outside of the home, the way the caretakers handle it becomes important. Teachers and parents have a massive amount of influence on the formation of trauma. Children who come from a safe environment are less prone to suffer from bullying. If teachers and parents look the other way, it is like abandoning the child. Bullying is all around us also later in life, so it is paramount that we teach a child how to deal with it.
In the first 18 months of their life, children form something called “basic trust”. This is the most formative time of a person according to Erik Erikson. A baby is entirely dependent on its caregivers. Therefore, the interaction between a baby and its caretaker is of incredible importance. If a baby does not grow up in a safe environment it will develop intense mistrust (especially of its parents). It will learn that the only person it can depend on is itself. With this mistrust, it is not only difficult to trust your parents, but also anyone else in your life. Your romantic partners, business partners, sports colleagues and so on. The more the parents are present in these first 18 months the higher the level of basic trust that is developed. I had an external caregiver starting at the age of 3 months. Let me tell you, it is very hard to trust anybody growing up this way. And it will take a great amount of work and time for you to develop this trust later in life.
Three fundamental actions to ensure basic trust are:
Affection: Answering the cries of a child. A child communicates important messages through crying to their caregiver.
Comfort: Holding your child closely to you and securely provides comfort. Warmth and physical contact are central to building trust.
Food: Feeding a child when it is hungry is a key activity to building trust.
The first 7 years of a person’s life are where we develop our social norms. Children do these mainly by copying the people around them. Children are damn good at learning fast by copying others. You can tell a child as much as you want what standards your family lives by, if you do not adhere to them yourself, the child will see. The best way to teach children to be safe and to act appropriately is to show them. With your actions, not your words. If a child will grow up in an environment where boundaries are not accepted, where no communication happens, where fits of rage are a standard - the list goes on - it will believe that this is how it should behave. By watching this it will encounter secondary trauma and believe this is normal.
These two phenomena – basics trust and copying others - are key to explaining how traumas are formed in a child. And what effects they have on a person’s development and character. Traumas are essentially a child’s adaption to an unstable, unpredictable, and threatening environment.
Some examples of events and environments that induce trauma are:
Death of a loved one
Neglect by caretakers
Abandonment by caretakers
Bullying
Mental or physical abuse
Domestic violence
War and refugee
Constant discord between caretakers
What Are The Consequences of Childhood Trauma in Adults?
Childhood trauma has long-lasting consequences, which will impact your adulthood. We covered above the theory of how these traumas develop. In this part, we get more practical and will have a look at the repercussions.
Interacting with people, who trigger your traumas, can be like lighting a gun powder keg. Guess who we interact with a lot in a family business? You guessed right, people from our childhood, to whom we relate trauma. Just being in the same room with these people can cause emotional distress. What does it mean by “get triggered”? A trigger is a behaviour, place or person that usually – when we don’t have a handle on our traumas - sets off your fight and flight response. Growing up in a traumatising environment has taught us to expect danger at every corner. In this mode, your trauma takes over and you go into autopilot. Think of moments where afterwards you think “Why did I just behave like this? That isn’t me. Those moments are most likely the moments you have been triggered. Each kind of trauma has its specific effects. To keep things simple let’s list some consequences without much ado:
Emotional Consequences
Depression
Loneliness
Suicidal thoughts
Anxiety
Anger
Mental illnesses in general
Difficulty trusting people
Physical consequences
Physical health problems in general
Fatigue
Panic attacks
Insomnia
ADHD
High and low blood pressure
Behavioural Consequences
Difficulty in forming relationships
Hypervigilance
The urge to please others – people pleasing
Difficulty setting boundaries and accepting boundaries
Eating disorders
Compulsion
Substance abuse
Numbing in general
The list goes on. As our childhood is the most formative time of our lives, adverse events in this time have a long-lasting impact on us. Hardship and adversity do not necessarily destroy a child. What is essential is that the caretakers induce a feeling of safety for the child.
How to Notice Traumatic Stress in Children
There are a few good cues to notice traumatic stress in children. If you have children, this is a part where I advise you to pay special attention. If you have children in your wider family and some of these behaviours seem familiar to you, don’t look away. Looking away will induce regret in you when you are older. Or even shame. At least that is what I have been told.
Photo by Katherine Chase
How do you recognise trauma in a child? There are a few cues to look for, so here we go:
Emotional symptoms
Sudden fears
Anxiety
Anger
Depression
Sadness
Physical symptoms
Poor concentration (ADHD for example)
Sleep disturbances
Physically often ill
Lack of energy (lethargy)
Behavioural symptoms
Compulsion
Eating disorders
Impulsiveness
Isolation
Loss of interest in hobbies
The list of all the things to look for is much longer. You might have already seen that the symptoms in a child overlap with the symptoms in adults. As adults, we can work hard and change our behaviours ourselves. Children on the other hand have more difficulty and need the support of adults.
The Role of Childhood Trauma in Business Families and Family Businesses
Childhood trauma plays a huge role in business families. A lot of the toxic dynamics we see in business families find their root cause in childhood trauma. How the current generation in charge behaves and the Next Gen can mostly be attributed to their experiences in childhood. The more trauma there is, the less healthy the dynamics will be. Many families perceive toxic dynamics as normal and sometimes even cherish them. „It has always been this way“, „This is what makes a so and so“, „To be a man, you need this and that“ etc. are all phrases we probably know from our families in some way or another. When you hear these a lot, you can expect that there is childhood trauma at play. In the following part, we will have a look at the impact of childhood trauma and how to heal and mitigate trauma.
Photo by Jp Valery
The Impact of Childhood Trauma on Business Families and Family Businesses
The dynamics stemming from childhood trauma can strongly impact the family’s business (remember the three-circle model). Family members are often either owner of the business and/or employees in the business. The business has been part of each family member’s childhood in some way and can thus have trauma associated with it. On top of that, family members need to work with each other. Here again, trauma will impact the workplace dynamics and even impact non-family owners and employees. Especially when the ego takes over and irrational behaviour and decisions are displayed.
Three-Circle-Model of the family business system by Tagiuri and Davis, 1982
A well-functioning family business has financial wealth behind it and long-term thinking usually with it. However, the true competitive edge comes from the intrinsic motivation family members bring to the table and the social and emotional capital from the family. Childhood traumas directly negatively affect these aces and make them a disadvantage instead of an advantage.
If the business, places you grew up and family members end up being triggers, you will not have a healthy environment to function in. Thus, the family unit is destroyed and can become its downfall. Over 80% of wealth loss in families is associated with the behaviour of the family itself. I believe that nearly all the behavioural dysfunction in the family can be traced back to traumas that family members carry within them. The majority of these were probably induced in childhood.
To put it shortly: Childhood trauma can cause dysfunction in the family and at its worst impact, it is the cause of total wealth loss.
How to Heal Childhood Trauma
As a family member reading this, you will likely ask yourself how one can heal childhood trauma. It is a long journey and often a hard one. Why is it so hard? Because we need to start with ourselves and what problems we have. Once we identify our toxic behaviour we want to find and understand the root cause. Self-empathy and self-compassion are the keys here. Sadly, we often lack these skills when we suffer from childhood trauma.
Getting some outside help is needed, for if we cannot ask the critical questions ourselves, someone else should. As with everything, awareness is the first step, which you will already have taken by reading this article. Grab some more books or listen to some podcasts to further your understanding. When you deepen your understanding your progress becomes faster. You will also be better equipped to work with a therapist or on your own. For me engaging a therapist has been the most important step to take.
Healing from childhood trauma will require a lot of work, and this topic is worth an article. However, there are a few crucial steps to start with:
Get aware of your traumas and acknowledge them.
Accept that your childhood trauma is mostly the cause of traumatized caretakers.
Get educated on the matter. The following books helped me personally:
Man’s search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
The power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
How to do the Work by Nicole LePera
Identify the triggers. This can be places, people, or certain behaviours. I suggest keeping a journal for this. And work on not letting the trigger take control over you.
Get support on your journey. Pick the right one.
Realise that your trauma does not define you.
Set clear boundaries and try to reduce getting triggered. This includes the business and your family. Especially those! Setting boundaries also means enforcing them. Your parents will have a hard time accepting them; if they do so at all.
Get a good rest: Sleep enough. Enough may mean 10 hours. You are constantly in fight and flight mode throughout your day. This requires serious amounts of sleep to recover from.
Do physical exercise to externalize the emotional energy inside of you. Do things that give you energy. Things you enjoy. If you have nothing that comes to mind, start trying out things. There is more out there than the family business.
Remember that other family members most likely suffer from their childhood trauma. Recognize their behaviours and what triggers them. This way you can navigate around this.
These first steps should get you going in the right direction. Once you read into the topic, you will find more that you can do.
What Can The Family Do Collectively to Support the Healing of Childhood Trauma?
There are a few things business families can do to mitigate trauma in the next generation and to heal the trauma that is already present. We covered what you can do for yourself to heal. Asking for support to do your work is a good start. However, the biggest roadblock is that the family doesn‘t understand that there is an issue and will try to stop members from healing. As mentioned earlier, the traumatic state is often perceived as normal within families. Often there is an ongoing cycle of secondary trauma being passed on and becoming part of the family’s epigenetics.
Usually, it requires someone in the family to start the conversation on this. Someone prepared to change the toxic cycles. Sometimes this may mean that this individual will need to step away from the family and business for a time. Be a role model as such. Awareness is the first and most important step; in anything, we do in life.
Once the cycles are starting to break it is a good idea to set up a “health advisory board”. Depending on the funds that are available to you this can have different forms. Essentially you want to have a resource for family members to go to, to get help. Outside advisors will spot certain problems and make the family aware of them. They can also make proposals for what to do. Having professionals at your side will improve the process and the likelihood of healing in the family.
Families like to keep problems under the rug. Health issues do not exist. Changing this mindset takes work. What I found helpful for us is to gather up all the stories of problems. I went back 3 generations. Once you have gathered them up it makes a powerful story to confront family members with. Nothing works better than a narration of the family history.
Try to create a psychologically safe space to speak about problems. This is easier said than done, as the traumas people suffer from will mitigate exactly this. Mediators of some sort can help with this. With a mediator, you can foster productive discussions. Getting the issues out in the open is of paramount importance. It creates awareness.
Last but not least, the parents must take care of their children. However, this is in some cases easier said than done. Breaking cycles in families is hard work. And some members will not be able to do so or catch on later. Do not watch what is happening to the children of your siblings or cousins. I have no magic formula for what to do. I can only tell you, that doing nothing is not the right answer. Approach the parents of children with traumatic responses. Try to talk to them about it.
Conclusion
Childhood trauma is a major factor in family dysfunction. As thus it is one of the biggest risks to a family’s wealth, be it financial, social, historical, or emotional. The family itself is the trigger that sets us off into toxic behaviour. Therefore, it is a difficult issue to resolve. However, with the right mindset and the right support, it is manageable. It is by no means easy work. But doing the work is the way forward.
I hope this article has given you some helpful pointers. It has been a rocky road for me, and I wish to help other families mitigate the pain that childhood traumas can cause. At least, you can work on yourself and make sure that you don’t do this to your children. Break the cycle in your family. It is well damn worth it.
