Recognition

Do I Have Childhood Trauma? | Part 1

Name: Do I Have Childhood Trauma? | Part 1
Uploaded: 2026-09-04
Duration: 10 min 45 s
Channel: Meredith Shuman
Description: Meredith Shuman explains how to spot signs of childhood trauma—ACEs scores, PTSD symptoms, and relationship patterns—in a trauma-informed way.

Three places to look for the clues of childhood trauma — your ACEs score, PTSD-like symptoms, and patterns in your relationships.

By Meredith Shuman, MSW · Founder and Executive Director

Quick answer

There isn't a single yes-or-no test for childhood trauma, but you can look for clues in three main areas: your score on the ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) test, PTSD-like symptoms such as flashbacks or emotional shutdown, and patterns in your relationships like chronic under-trust, over-trust, or an identity too tied to a romantic partner. Research estimates that anywhere from one in four to two-thirds of children experience a traumatic event, but these signs should ideally be explored with support from a therapist rather than self-diagnosed.

Key takeaways

Research studies estimate that somewhere between one in four and two-thirds of children experience a traumatic event, though the exact numbers vary widely by study.
The ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) test can be a helpful tool for understanding childhood trauma, but it should ideally be taken with support in place, such as in a therapist's office, because the results can be difficult information to process alone.
PTSD symptoms like flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, avoidance, jumpiness, difficulty concentrating, emotional shutdown, and loss of interest in enjoyable things aren't limited to veterans or refugees—they can also stem from childhood trauma.
Patterns in relationships, such as chronically under-trusting or over-trusting others, or tying one's identity too tightly to a romantic relationship, can be signs worth exploring in a safe therapeutic environment.
Framing healing around 'resiliency' can unintentionally carry shame, so the focus should be on dropping shame and taking concrete steps to overcome childhood trauma rather than striving toward an ideal.

Common questions

How do I know if I have childhood trauma?

You can look at three areas: whether your ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) test score reflects adverse experiences, whether you have PTSD-like symptoms such as flashbacks or emotional shutdown, and whether your relationship patterns show chronic under-trust, over-trust, or an identity overly tied to a partner. None of these alone is a diagnosis, and it's best explored with a therapist.

What is the ACEs test?

The ACEs test, or Adverse Childhood Experiences test, is a tool that gives a score indicating how much adversity someone experienced as a child. It's a helpful resource, but it should ideally be taken with support around you, since the results can be difficult information to process alone.

Can childhood trauma cause PTSD symptoms?

Yes. PTSD symptoms like flashbacks, distressing intrusive thoughts, avoidance, jumpiness, difficulty concentrating, emotional shutdown, and loss of interest in things you used to enjoy can stem from childhood trauma, not just from experiences like military combat or being a refugee.

Full transcript

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Does Childhood Trauma Have a Simple Answer?

I wonder if some of my responses in the moment are PTSD related, and is there a line that draws that back to my childhood?

Hi guys, Meredith Shuman here. Do I have childhood trauma? This is a question that many of us have, and so it’s actually pretty complicated to answer. It’s not usually just a yes or a no kind of thing. There’s a lot of layers to it, and certainly we’re not going to be able to address all of that here in this video, but we’re going to try to dig in a little bit and see how we do.

The Numbers Behind Childhood Trauma

One of the first things for us to question, as I was researching for this video, was: how many of us have experienced childhood trauma? The numbers are all over the map. Some research studies say one in four, some say two-thirds of children have experienced a traumatic event. And those sound like really big numbers to me. So the question that I would have after that is, if so many of us have experienced this, then how come some of us seem to just move forward with life and don’t struggle that much, and some of us are really challenged or debilitated or distracted by things that have happened to us in the past? At the very end we’re going to address that question.

Resiliency and Shame

I think one of the things that comes up for people is the question of resiliency. I want to build my resiliency, and that’s a fine word to use, but it makes it sound like it could be something that you attain, that you strive towards, and I think anything that we’re striving towards sometimes has the flip side of shame to it. Like, well, if I just work harder, I could be more resilient. Or if I was just a better person, I could be more resilient. And that is not what this is about. Childhood trauma is real. It’s a big hairy deal. It’s a problem. I know it’s something I’ve experienced. I know a lot of people that have. And I think the sooner that we drop some shame around it, the better. So instead of talking about resiliency, I’m just going to talk about the three big things that we can do to overcome childhood trauma. There are some questions like, do I have it? What do I do to overcome it? But let’s talk a little bit about some of the basics here.

The ACEs Test

There’s a test called the ACEs test, Adverse Childhood Experiences test. It’s a wonderful tool. It’s a wonderful resource. Feel free to Google it. I will try to share some resources on it as well. We’re going to do another video just on ACEs to give it some broader understanding. But the thing about the ACEs test is that if it’s administered — if you were to stop right now and go online and take this test — the challenge is that for some of us, when we get to the end of the test and we get a score that tells us how much we were traumatized as children, that can be really tough information. That can be like, oh my goodness, if I look at the research, that means that I have this much more likelihood of developing cardiovascular disease, or this much more likelihood of other physical ailments, or challenges, and medical issues, that kind of thing. And I think that can actually escalate our anxiety or escalate our depression, or make us basically feel worse about ourselves. So I think the ACEs test is a huge tool, a wonderful tool, but I believe it needs to be administered in the right kind of context, where there is support around. If this is like a psychotherapy lab, or a therapist’s office, or even some medical environments that are equipped to help patients or clients administer the test — they take the test, they see their score, and then they can know how to come alongside that person — that’s great. But the challenge with the ACEs test is it does give you an indicator of some of the things that you may have experienced; we just need to have support around whatever your score ends up being. So those are my thoughts, very quick thoughts about the ACEs test. I’ll explore it more in another video.

PTSD Symptoms and Childhood Trauma

Another thing to bring up is PTSD. A lot of times when we hear PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, we think of maybe army veterans or military, or maybe refugees, war refugees, that kind of thing. And all of that is very true. PTSD is also a thing coming out of childhood trauma. So sometimes there are signs that we have had childhood trauma that we can learn by our own PTSD-like symptoms. I’m on the University of Rochester website right here, and just some real basic symptoms of PTSD can include flashbacks, distressing intrusive thoughts, avoiding things that remind you of the trauma, feeling jumpy, difficulty concentrating, shutting down emotionally, and a lack of interest in things that you enjoyed before. So if we’re talking about PTSD, that’s just a really short, very broad list of some things that can help us to say, “I wonder if some of my responses in the moment are PTSD related, and is there a line that draws that back to my childhood?” And perhaps so.

Relationships: Trust

The other way that we can understand whether or not we have had childhood trauma is to look at our relationships. One of the things about relationships is it’s a great thermometer for how we’ve learned to interact with people. So let’s talk about trust first. We’re looking at the big picture here — have I had childhood trauma? We’ve talked about ACEs, PTSD, and now we’re talking about relationships. In the relationships category, let’s talk about trust. Sometimes we don’t trust people, and that’s a legit thing, and that’s normal. But sometimes, for some folks, trusting anyone is a real extra challenge, harder than what other people experience. This is really hard to measure, of course, but it’s like everything has been set up to be a really safe environment, and you’re still struggling to trust that person. It could be a therapist, it could be a parent, it could be a friend, and the trust is low in general for other people. In other situations, the trust could be really high. What I mean by that is maybe this person easily gives out trust and they just trust everybody, and they say, yeah, I’m going to get in a car with a stranger kind of thing. I’m not talking about Uber or any of that kind of thing, but they would take more risks when it comes to other relationships because they think, oh, it’s fine. A lot of that is normal, but some of it is like that person may be seeking a relationship in a way that will ultimately be unhealthy for them, and they’re over-trusting someone when they really should listen to their community or their intuition, which might be saying, I don’t know that this person has your best interests at heart. So if we’re looking at relationships, we can look at trust. Do I over-trust people, or do I under-trust people? Again, all of this is very challenging to measure, but these are just broad areas.

Relationships: Identity

The other thing about relationships we can consider is identity. Where does my identity lie? Is my identity so locked into being in a romantic relationship with this person that if that person were to hurt me in some way — in a normal way that relationships hurt from time to time — then I lose it and fall apart? And it’s less like a normal conversation, a conflict within a relationship, and more like, this is shattering my identity right now. All of these kinds of things are way better explored in a safe therapeutic environment. So take some of these things and filter it through the understanding that I am in no way going to diagnose you today, because that can’t happen over a video screen, and I’m not hearing from you unless I see your comments. So yeah, this is very broad, but relationships — we look at trust, we look at identity.

Coming Up in Part Two

This topic is particularly complex — do I have childhood trauma? So we decided to split this into two videos. Please make sure and click the link so you can follow on to part two, where trauma doesn’t get the last word.