Childhood is for development so that when you become an adult you have successfully gone through all of the developmental stages and are totally an adult emotionally. If you didn't get a need met, you are still stuck back there. Some of the needs/stages are trust, autonomy, initiative, competence, identity, intimacy (Erickson's stages of development). If you had some bad experiences you are really going to get stuck back there if you weren't able to process them soon after. Feelings are meant to be expressed not stored. If bad things happened to you and you couldn't express the feelings these things stay with you and keep you stuck at that age.