Childhood trauma, psychological distress, and somatic symptoms: exploring the indirect pathways of psychological flexibility, inflexibility, and resilience

Objective Childhood trauma has been consistently linked to depression, anxiety, stress, and somatic complaints, although not all individuals develop these difficulties. This phenomenon may be explained by protective factors such as psychological flexibility and resilienceMethod A cross-sectional survey of 626 adults (aged 18-57) assessed childhood trauma, psychological flexibility, inflexibility, resilience, psychological distress, and somatic symptoms via self-report measures.Results Correlational analyses yielded significant associations between all main variables. Path analysis revealed that psychological flexibility and inflexibility were linked to resilience, which was in turn significantly associated with psychological distress in both tested models and with somatic symptoms in the psychological flexibility model. Psychological inflexibility’s association ran more strongly through psychological distress, whereas psychological flexibility’s association ran more strongly through resilience.Conclusion The results suggest that childhood trauma is associated with somatic symptoms both directly and indirectly through lower psychological flexibility and resilience, and higher psychological inflexibility and distress, with psychological distress emerging as the most consistent link across both models. Counselling practices targeting psychological flexibility and inflexibility may serve as future research directions for addressing the needs of individuals who report recurrent somatic symptoms and heightened levels of psychological distress.