system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do childhood memories cause trauma if you can't remember them?
gpt
Do you remember the first time you spoke the word "candy"? 

I bet you don't.

But you remember that you liked candy when you were a child, don't you? Even though you don't have the first memory, you still have a sensation about the word.

We don't remember every thing that happens to us when we're a small child. But some events do cause us to form impressions that are good or bad about certain things. 

We might lose the memory over time, but we don't lose the impression that it caused. So it might result in, say, a fear of dogs if we were bitten by a dog, even if we don't remember it. Or it might make us nervous to be around someone older that's friendly, because (sorry, this will be sad) someone older that was friendly abused us when we were a small child. 

Not all of impressions might have been accurate. But they were enough to create a reaction that could last many years, from something as trivial as not liking a certain type of food, to something as severe as crippling anxiety about certain situations.