It seems like these coping skills may have first started when you were between the ages of 6 and 10
Our level of insight grows as we age. As we grow we gain more insight. Sometimes we get stuck at a certain age level of insight if there was a trauma. Before we get into our teens we have polarized thinking. It’s either black or white, all or nothing and no gray area. So we think to ourselves when a trauma happens, “I will never let that happen again”. In our teens we are very egocentric, we only think of things as they affect us. As we grow, we are faced with more facts and gray area to make wiser decisions, but we tend to keep our polarized or egocentric thinking in emotional matters. Especially with thoughts that are triggered by the initial trauma/s. According to Erik Erikson, this is the stage of "industry vs, inferiority" where the virtue to learn is "competency". And if we do not learn these virtues they are expected to reappear as problems in the future.