Comment by cfiggers

People overuse and overgeneralize the term "trauma" for sure. But it might be helpful to see real actual trauma as only one item in the larger set of "stuff from your past that impacts/has influence on you today, that you mostly aren't aware of, but that if you were aware/more aware of you'd be able to handle better."

The way our primary caregivers relate and respond to us when we're a) in our most rapid periods of development and b) completely dependent on them for everything absolutely has an influence on the way we turn out. How could it not?

So there's no such thing as Neutral/No Influence, there is only identifying what effects there are and learning how to lean either into or out of those influences on a situational basis. All of this definitely applies to childhood trauma, but it doesn't HAVE to be trauma for that logic to apply. Figuring that stuff out is a helpful part of maturing, and it doesn't have to be a critical or negative thing.

In many ways I've come to appreciate and love my parents even more as I've worked through the ways they raised me the best they could, given the resources they had, but in ways that I can now see preferable alternatives to.

I think it's the biggest "I Love You" in the world to self-consciously seek to grow beyond the limitations that were passed on to me, just like I want my little girl to outgrow the ones I consciously or unconsciously hand down to her.