I don’t trust anyone. It’s not that I struggle to trust people. Trusting anyone other than myself just feels impossible. When someone’s kind to me, I act grateful, but inside, I’m cynical.

“How long is this kindness going to last?”

“One little falling-out, and we’ll end up worse than strangers anyway.”

So whenever I get involved with someone, I only ever have one foot in. Even that foot is barely halfway in, so I can pull out whenever I need to. Obviously, I can’t build deep relationships like that. It’s the same with friends and romantic partners.

“Why am I like this?”

After my father died when I was in middle school, my relatives and his friends changed completely. They turned a blind eye to us when we need help the most. My aunt’s husband had borrowed money from my mother, then tried to get o ut of paying her back because my father was no longer around. I had two uncles, but neither helped. My mother had never really talked to me about her life or asked me for help before. She must have felt so alone to turn to me while I was still in high school. So I got into a fight with him, swearing at a man I’d even respected for a while.

Did those experiences make me this way?
Or could something from when I was too young to remember have stayed with me as trauma?

Then I happened to read about Romania. After the dictator Ceaușescu’s regime fell, people found out how terrible the conditions in Romanian orphanages were. There wasn’t enough food. Hygiene was poor. There was hardly anyone to give the children individual attention. Apart from feeding and diaper changes, the children spent their time lying in cribs. Almost no one soothed them or talked to them. Researcher Nathan Fox explained that they may have started crying less because, time after time, no one responded. They spent so much of their time just being left there.

Some of those babies were later adopted abroad. Researchers followed them into adulthood and found difficulties with attention and social and emotional relationships. Something that happened when they were too young to remember could still affect them as adults.

There’s an experiment that shows just how much an adult’s response matters to a baby. A mother sits facing her baby, playing together. The baby smiles, and she smiles back. The baby gestures, and she responds. Then, suddenly, her face goes blank. She stops responding. She’s still sitting right there. The baby smiles again and reaches out, waiting for her to respond. But she doesn’t. The baby gets more and more distressed and starts crying.

That’s Edward Tronick’s “still-face experiment.” It doesn’t mean a short experiment causes lifelong trauma. It just shows us how much babies need a response from the person looking after them. UMass Boston Being held when you’re scared. Having someone come and check on you when you cry. Having someone look at you and respond to the little sounds you make. Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child explains that this back-and-forth helps the brain develop, and that having a supportive adult helps cushion a child’s stress response. Harvard Center on the Developing Child So holding a child does more than get them to quiet down. It’s being there in a way they want and feel comfortable with. Helping them through something they can’t handle on their own yet.

We’re like that as adults too, aren’t we? When you’re so shaken that your hands tremble, someone talking calmly beside you can help you settle down. When something sad happens, sometimes you only just get through it because someone listens. They don’t even have to have a solution.

So I wonder. When I cried or reached out, did no one come? Did no one hold me? Did that happen often enough that I stopped showing I needed comfort? Were the adults around me warm one moment and cold the next? Is that part of why I can’t let myself lean on anyone?

Still, I don’t think what happened in childhood has to stay with us forever in the same way. In research where Romanian children were moved into foster families, their symptoms improved, and some of those benefits lasted beyond adolescence. In the US, helping caregivers respond more warmly and sensitively to children’s signals also led to changes in how the children regulated their stress hormones. PubMed

So I hope we don’t put off showing affection to young children. When they come to you, look them in the eye. When they say they’re scared, listen. When they want to be held, hold them. We can’t get it right every time. But if we miss a moment, we can go back and try again.

And if you grew up without that kind of care, I hope you won’t blame yourself for still struggling.
If there’s someone like that around you, tell them:

“It’s not your fault.”