Why Childhood Wounds Resurface in Adult Relationships

Posted on September 24, 2025 by Steven Thistle, One of Thousands of Relationship Coaches on Noomii.

What we learn about ourselves as children manifests in adulthood, streaming unconsciously until pain from relationships becomes acute, forcing us to awaken or drown in an unconscious sea of despair. Programming from childhood is deeply embedded in our psyche; algorithms were formed, shaping our self-perception, playing out like an actor on a screen. Roles defined when we are young become our personality—how we relate to others, and most importantly, to ourselves. Reading the script line by line, seldom veering from it, we wonder why we feel or behave as we do—unable to define what lurks below, deep in our unconscious.

Having written a book to survive my unconscious algorithms—needing to dive deep within and find the truth of my symptoms, I awoke to the illusions created when I was young. The truth was buried in ideas and notions stamped into my mind by parents who had personality disorders, caused by attachment dynamics when they were young. Like my parents, I unconsciously projected beliefs about myself as learned, cult-like beliefs forged in the fire of survival, not reality. These beliefs became law inside me: unquestioned, automatic, and enforced by shame. They shaped my identity not through truth, but through repetition and fear. And like all unconscious programming, they ran my life—until I began to dismantle them, one falsehood at a time.

Excerpts from “Mind Surgery, Consciously Healing Through Self-Enlightenment”

“Attachment Trauma & Self-Identifying Beliefs

When the devil came at me, enraged for the anger I caused, I blamed myself. Fearing death and feeling ashamed, false perceptions of my father’s monstrous rage made a movie, an algorithm in my mind. Based on my perceptions, the thoughts wrote the dialogue, creating pathological unconscious beliefs. Beliefs became windows through which I perceived life, and life became a warped reality. Programmed on firmware, I rarely challenged assumptions about myself. The pathological symptoms required reformatting, but I knew little about the workings of a complex system, the psyche. The hell I went through created a labyrinth of symptoms, and I could not find my way out of the maze. Unconscious, unaware, and ignorant of the reality of self, I carried unresolved pain like luggage, never wanting to look inside. I tried to lose the baggage at the airport, but it followed me wherever I went.”

Core beliefs about ourselves become windows through which we perceive ourselves, others, and life, true or not. If we believe we are unworthy, we will feel worthless and project that belief into every aspect of our lives, not just relationships. Self-identifying beliefs, born from painful or frightening childhood attachment trauma, become our guidance system, taking us down familiar streets, even when they lead to suffering. This can be painful and frightening because most don’t know how to break the cycle of unconscious patterns controlling our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, leading to a sense of hopelessness. We don’t know how to make the unconscious conscious, or how to heal the illusions born when we were young—illusions that remain alive in our minds and bodies as adults, until we heal.

The ego holds onto what we believe as if life depends on it, because a loss of identity feels like a loss of self, causing grief, which goes against the ego’s fundamental purpose: to protect by negating pain. The ego is full of “I am” beliefs, reinforced habitually, true or false. It is not a truth-teller, but often denies reality to protect us from suffering, creating stories and narratives meant only to keep our heads above water, so we don’t drown or suffer from the truth. The Twelve Golden Keys are designed to open the door to truth, slowly.

Excerpts from “Mind Surgery, Consciously Healing Through Self-Enlightenment”

“The ego’s job is to balance our emotions by managing our beliefs and the subsequent thoughts that follow. When I think I am stupid, I feel dumb. My ego navigates beliefs, choosing ones to help me not feel dumb, even if I think I am. A war within until self-enlightened, the ego confuses, producing unreal films. Magical, what a wizard the ego is. When my father raged, shocking my mind and body and causing an earthquake in my soul, my ego tricked my mind into believing falsehoods to maintain homeostasis. My ego unconsciously manifested beliefs, starting at two, contrary to reality, to calm the seas in my mind when storms raged.”

Breaking the Cycle—Begins with Awareness and Ends with Conscious Intervention

Applying the Twelve Golden Keys—of which the first four initiate the process of awareness—I began observing a lifelong symptom, depression, when it surfaced. Having experienced it on and off throughout my life, subtly or acutely, and after seeing countless talk therapists, I assumed it must be biological. What I found true for myself is that it is biological, but not caused biologically. It was pathological. And following that path to the root cause of feeling depressed enabled neuroplasticity, altering its course in a direction that no longer manifests depressive symptoms.

Excerpts from “Mind Surgery, Consciously Healing Through Self-Enlightenment”

“Acting Brilliantly to Survive

Like an actor, the trauma bond in childhood made me play a part in someone else’s movie to survive. I was an unconvincing actor because I didn’t believe in my character. It wasn’t me. It was a manufactured version of myself used to adapt to my father’s monstrous rage and my mother’s use of shameful messages to punish me. My father, the movie director, defined my role. I was the scapegoat responsible for his rage. As an adult, I continued to read the script exactly as written and projected beliefs about myself from the abuse. It was a movie, an illusion in my mind, where I believed others’ pain was my fault and responsibility. Understanding the difference between truth and illusion is critical to healing. Otherwise, the illusion will become an algorithm continually manifesting as written. To heal, I had to quit playing the role defined in childhood by observing how it manifested in adulthood. Consciously observing thoughts, bodily somatic energy, personality patterns, and beliefs in the present moment enlightened me about my childhood and why I created a fictional version of myself. Enlightened, truth heals.”

Aware, no longer dreaming—that is when awakening to my unconscious beliefs and subsequent patterns became painful. Truth heals, but becoming enlightened about hidden unconscious beliefs causing symptoms was painful. Self-enlightenment ends illusions, as it enables the reprogramming of beliefs that cause symptoms, and begins the process of grieving.

Excerpts from “Mind Surgery, Consciously Healing Through Self-Enlightenment”

Self-Enlightenment Heals the Ego’s Illusions

“Becoming consciously aware of the root cause of symptoms is painful because the truth hurts, which is why the ego loves to avoid it. The problem is that until we know the truth, we cannot heal. The unconscious algorithm will continue to manifest the same beliefs and emotional energy until we dive within to find real answers. To feel is to heal, and self-enlightenment is a form of healing because it enables us to release repressed pain, allowing it to surface and be processed. However, there is a problem and a warning. If you go where you have never been, deep within yourself, you will suffer as the mystery of your symptoms starts unraveling, showing you the truth.

Now for the good news. Once you have tapped into submerged pain or fear from the past, you can release it by reprogramming beliefs and grieving. However, reprogramming beliefs and grieving are problematic when pain and symptoms are complex. Beliefs are a complex and confusing mess, and our feelings are equally perplexing. Pain speaks of truth, but our ego protects us by negating it. And we fear knowing reality, even if truth heals, because that forces a shift in beliefs, which feels unsettling and scary to the ego. The ego is not pliable in most people. Beliefs are typically not fluid, changing on a whim. Instead, if one is stubborn like me, intense suffering is usually required to awaken and become self-enlightened about unhealed energy from the past.

Consciously healing through self-enlightenment is not fun when the truth speaks of pain. For instance, when I first became enlightened about how the shame beliefs in my mind caused shame energy in my body, I was (EXPLETIVE). I was full of rage as I realized that my parents had caused severe psychological damage by using shame to punish me. But when pain or fear speaks, listen, and I did. I heard the rage the little boy in me felt from being shamed violently. I felt how much self-hate I had towards myself, caused by believing the abuse was my fault. I realized how fearful I was of making mistakes in relationships and how responsible I felt for others’ emotions. As I became enlightened by the truth, I felt uncontrollable waves of grief that I could no longer repress. That is positive. Energy speaks the truth or eventually leads us to it. All we have to do is listen. It whispers loudly in our thoughts, emotions, and body somatically as symptoms like anxiety and depression.”

Follow Somatic Energy to the Source Code

The Twelve Golden Keys begin with awareness of somatic energy, the emotions, and sensations in the body at the moment. Over time, as we observe, label, and identify these symptomatic patterns, we follow the trail back to the thoughts—and eventually the beliefs—manifesting them. Some beliefs causing symptoms may be real: “I was victimized.” So, if they’re true, why reprogram them?

When we identify a false belief that causes anything but peace or joy, the process is more straightforward—we see the illusion for what it is. But even true beliefs, if harmful, need altering or reprogramming, or else the trauma pathology persists, causing us to unknowingly retraumatize ourselves repeatedly, despite the suffering it brings.

A coach in middle school once told me I had a “chip on my shoulder.” He was right. I felt deeply victimized and unloved as a child and throughout my teens. I carried that chip openly because I was attached to a perfectly true belief: I was victimized. My ego built stories and narratives around it, finding evidence to validate and reinforce that identity.

The only problem was that the belief manifested in harmful personality patterns, behaviors, perceptions, and emotions, causing repeated suffering. Whenever I felt unjustly treated as an adult, it triggered old pain. Hypervigilance, anxiety, depression, self-hate, resentment, and distrust were just a few of the symptoms born from clinging to a belief that, while true, created ongoing harm.

What is true? I was victimized. I was painfully victimized as a child and teenager, while my siblings were not. That is the truth. But it’s also true that by attaching to that belief—and wearing it like a badge—I projected a victim narrative that, although “I was victimized,” caused immense personal suffering. Until I woke up and saw the illusion for what it was: a belief I had fused with my identity, the illusion persisted, as did symptoms and attachment patterns from it. And that fusion made me unconsciously repeat the past—until the pain of it jolted me awake like a cold glass of water thrown on my face.

Grief is Complex

Creating awareness by labeling and consciously observing symptoms eventually led me to the root cause of lifelong depression. I labeled it depression, curious about its origins, believing there must be a cause, and that it was not purely biological. I continuously observed myself whenever I felt depressed. As the feeling surfaced, I tuned into it with increasing conscious awareness and re-labeled it sadness, since that description felt more accurate than simply ‘depressed.’

Habitually repeating the process—consciously observing and calling it out loud in my mind when feeling ‘sad’—I had an epiphany: “Is this grief?” As I allowed myself to feel this emotion, observing it from a curious, detached perspective, I knew it was grief when tears rolled down my face. That moment painted a perfect picture: my lifelong depression was unprocessed grief.

I no longer suffer from grief-induced depression because I found its cause, reprogrammed the beliefs attached to it, and finally grieved the energy trapped in my mind and body for a lifetime.

Excerpts from “Mind Surgery, Consciously Healing Through Self-Enlightenment”

“Grief comes in many forms because the dynamics that cause it are complex and multifaceted. For instance, when someone we love dies, grief differs from other forms of attachment trauma, like childhood grief from abuse or neglect. But even the dynamics of grief after losing a loved one vary from one individual to another. The suffering experienced after losing someone we had a healthy relationship with, compared to a problematic one, is quite different. The dynamics of grief vary depending on countless factors, including how we self-identify with what we lost. One person may feel despair because they lost their best friend. In contrast, another feels incredible sorrow for the losses they experienced in the relationship when that person was alive.

When experiencing loss, it is imperative to understand the dynamics of your pain, or it may linger. Feelings of grief differ depending on the type of loss and its complexity. It may be pretty simple or highly complex, depending on the dynamics. For instance, if you had a loving and healthy relationship with someone, you may experience intense feelings of emptiness because of the void the loss creates in your life. You may feel like a part of yourself is missing because that person was a significant part of your life. The joy, happiness, and love that person contributed to your life are gone, leaving a hole that can be difficult to escape. On the other hand, losing someone with whom you had a problematic relationship creates a different feeling of despair. Unfulfilled needs when alive may cause intense regret, resentment, and sorrow for what never was.

Loss can be traumatic, regardless of the circumstances surrounding it. Since we become attached and self-identify with most things in life, not just people, this trauma is commonly experienced. Grief from attachment trauma is complex if it includes someone or something important in our lives, especially in early childhood. The pain felt is often confusing and difficult to understand because trauma confuses the mind, making it difficult to understand and cope with grief. Unresolved, loss becomes a pile of puzzle pieces we cannot form a clear picture of because it is difficult to understand the dynamics of our sorrow.

For instance, the feeling of loss permeated every aspect of my life because I was unaware of the dynamics causing it. When I felt sad, I knew it was a result of something lost in my childhood, but that was about all I could determine. I knew my parents abused and neglected me, but I was unaware of how that caused me to repress grief. My childhood dynamics became apparent when I learned about narcissistic abuse, trauma bonding, and scapegoating. I suffered from repressed grief from failing hundreds of times to win my parents’ approval, which manifested as deep self-hate and acute depression. I unconsciously hated myself. Finding essential puzzle pieces enabled grieving because I could finally identify the dynamics causing me to feel loss frequently. Despite suffering from debilitating despair, I was clueless that repressed grief was the main reason I suffered from depression. After becoming self-enlightened that grief was the leading cause of my lifelong depression, healing began when I correctly identified the cause of somatic energy surfacing.

Recovery began when I became conscious of the negative energy, reprogrammed beliefs causing it, and grieved. Now, consciously aware that depression is unhealed grief, I cry when feeling sad, which releases dark energy from my body. After thousands of tears, I suffer significantly less from grief-induced depression because I correctly identified the cause of sadness and reprogrammed the beliefs causing it.”

As children, we form hard-wired, unconscious beliefs about ourselves that, if negative, become scratches on the lens through which we perceive ourselves, others, and life. These distortions weren’t your fault—they were inherited from caregivers who couldn’t love you properly because they didn’t know how to love themselves.

I’ve been through the dark forest of suffering—the depression, confusion, self-hate, and unconscious beliefs that once shaped my every thought. I know what it’s like to carry grief like armor, to mistake pain for identity, and to feel trapped in a reality you didn’t create. But I also know there’s a way out. Healing doesn’t happen overnight, but it begins the moment you become aware—and from there, everything can shift. If you’re ready to remove the scratched lenses of the past and finally see yourself clearly, consciously, book a FREE Discovery Session using the link above.

The Consciously Healing Online (CHO) method may be the way forward—and I’d be honored to walk with you.