It is possible to experience childhood adversity and still feel good as an adult. In my most recent study of 310 successful men and women — featured in my latest book,The Adversity Advantage— 40% experienced child abuse, witnesseddomestic violence, or had an alcoholic/substance abusing parent struggling withaddiction. If you broaden the definition to include poverty, death of a family member, divorce, or mental illness, 60% experienced serious childhood adversity. In spite of these impactful childhood problems, this group of successful people reported a high level of life satisfaction as adults, much higher than the average in the population.

Many reported that things did not come easily for them, however. They grew up with poor role models for communication, conflict negotiation, self-esteem, forming relationships, and expression of anger. The abuse they experienced created many personal and work problems. Turning their adversity into successes required them to become students of factors that lead to success.

My research demonstrates the following skills as critical for overall well-being and to achieve success at work:

Many of the people I studied recommended the following to recover from their childhood troubles:

Recovering from childhood adversity is not easy. The impact of being a small child with parents who raged, abused, or neglected you leaves an indelible footprint that can make the rest of your life more difficult.

Nonetheless, I have seen many of these people recover and thrive in their personal and work lives. While it is not the purpose of the workplace to help survivors recover, work can be helpful. Having an overarching purpose and meaningful work in life provides a tree from which you can hang other “ornaments” that lead to recovery.

I recommend the following specific skills to integrate and move past your childhood hardships:

There are many resources that can be helpful in the recovery process. You may want to seek the help of a workplace employee assistance program, amental health counselorexperienced in the area of trauma recovery, support groups such as Alanon or Adult Children of Alcoholics, or attend The Meadows Survivor workshops.

One of the sad ironies of life is that as we age, often we are still who we were 10 or 20 years ago. Superficially things may have changed, but certain situations and people may elicit feelings and thoughts we had as a child.

Bio:Jude Miller Burke, Ph.D. has 20 years corporate management experience; is a psychologist, executive coach, and author. Her previous book, “The Millionaire Mystique: How Working Women Become Wealthy and You Can Too!,” is available on Amazon.com and is currently being released in Japan.

Our goal at Talkspace is to provide the most up-to-date, valuable, and objective information on mental health-related topics in order to help readers make informed decisions.

Articles contain trusted third-party sources that are either directly linked to in the text or listed at the bottom to take readers directly to the source.

Share0Tweet0Pin it0

Share0

Tweet0

Pin it0