By Graham Sterling, PhD, licensed clinical psychologist and former U.S. Navy psychologist
BLUF: If you grew up in a difficult household, you may have carried some of it into adulthood and started calling it your personality. You shut down when there's conflict. There's a harsh voice in your head that never lets up. It's hard to trust people, even the ones who've earned it. Those patterns started as protection, and protection can be updated. In a randomized trial of adults with PTSD from childhood trauma, twelve sessions of EMDR or imagery rescripting shifted those deeper patterns, and the change was still there a year later (Daniëls et al., 2025).
Where the patterns come from
Kids in unpredictable homes learn fast. Stay quiet and you stay safe. Expect criticism and it won't hurt as much when it comes. Don't need anything from anyone, and nobody can let you down.
In that house, those lessons work. The trouble is they keep running long after you've left. Later in life, you go silent with your partner instead of saying what's wrong. You talk to yourself in the voice you grew up hearing. You keep coworkers at a distance you don't need anymore.
That isn't a character flaw. It's an old solution still doing a job that ended years ago.
What the research found
Daniëls and colleagues (2025) studied 114 adults whose PTSD came from childhood trauma. Each person got up to twelve sessions of either EMDR or imagery rescripting. Neither treatment was designed to change personality. Both went after the memories.
The researchers also measured something called schema modes. These are the ingrained ways of reacting that grow out of early experience. After treatment, the unhelpful patterns dropped and the healthier ones got stronger, and the effects were large. Nothing changed while people sat on the waitlist, and the gains held at one year. EMDR and imagery rescripting worked equally well.
This finding matters to me because it speaks to the worry I hear most from people with this history. They'll accept that the memories might be treatable. But the patterns feel like who they are, so they assume those are permanent. This study says otherwise.
What this looks like in therapy
Treatment doesn't ask you to become someone else. We work on the memories and beliefs that keep the old patterns in charge. As those loosen, most people notice small things first. Criticism at work stings without wrecking the week. An argument at home stays an argument instead of turning into a shutdown. The voice in your head gets quieter and harder to believe.
Twelve sessions is what this trial used. It's not a promise for any one person. Childhood trauma is usually layered, and we go at a pace you can sustain. But the evidence points in one direction. Patterns learned under pressure can change once the pressure is treated as something in the past.
If you've been telling yourself this is just how you are, try asking a different question. Not "What's wrong with me?" but "What did I learn, and is it still protecting me?"
If that question hits home, reach out. We'll start wherever you are.
Key Takeaways
Shutting down, self-criticism, and distrust often start as protection in a hard childhood home.
In a trial of 114 adults with PTSD from childhood trauma, EMDR and imagery rescripting both reduced those patterns, with large effects (Daniëls et al., 2025).
Nothing changed while people waited for treatment, and the improvements held at one year.
Neither therapy targeted personality. Both treated the memories, and the patterns changed along with them.
What you learned to protect yourself can be updated. It doesn't have to be a life sentence.
Graham Sterling, PhD, is the founder of The Sterling Practice. He offers individual therapy and adjunctive EMDR by secure telehealth across Massachusetts and Maine, working mostly with veterans, first responders, and other adults dealing with trauma, PTSD, and burnout. Book at tspractice.com or call (617) 299-1296.
References
Daniëls, M., Meewisse, M.-L., Nugter, A., Rameckers, S. A., Fassbinder, E., & Arntz, A. (2025). Imagery rescripting (ImRs) and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) as treatment of childhood-trauma related post-traumatic stress disorder (Ch-PTSD) in adults: Effects on schema modes. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 16(1), 2454191. https://doi.org/10.1080/20008066.2025.2454191