“Unlike other forms of psychological disorders, the core issue in trauma is reality.”

(Bessel van der Kolk)

One of the biggest features of trauma is that it affects your body, not just your mind (if you read one book on the topic, make sure it’s The Body Keeps The Score). 

If only I had understood this sooner.

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is a major branch of our nervous system. The ANS controls many of our organs, muscles, blood vessels etc. and unconscious processes such as our heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, perspiration, saliva production, digestion and more. Basically, the ANS takes care of all sorts of important physiological jobs that keep us alive without us having to think about any of it.

Traditionally we think of the ANS as divided into the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The former is known as our ‘fight or flight’ system. Its job is to flood our bloodstream with adrenaline and cortisol and prepare the body for action. The parasympathetic nervous system - sometimes called the ‘rest and digest’ system - does the opposite, reducing activation and restoring calm. 

A good life is one spent predominantly in a low state of arousal.

Children living in safe and caring environments learn that it’s okay to feel high arousal in response to danger, and figure out how to use that energy surge to protect themselves. They also learn to switch back to ‘rest and digest’ as soon as the threat is gone. This ability to identify and manage stressful situations is an essential life skill that children pick up from those closest to them, through role modelling and co-regulation. 

Young victims of repeated abuse and neglect have a different experience.

Children exposed to constant danger live in semi-permanent fear and spend a disproportionate amount of time in high alert mode, i.e. sympathetic activation. Abused and neglected children have scarce access to ‘rest and digest’ - the state that enables playing, learning, and carefree interactions. The lack of safety for these young people is real, as the abuser is often the same adult the child depends on for basic needs such as food and shelter. The child can’t flee or fight back - in fact it is often safer for her to mask her distress no matter how strong it is. Most traumatized children also lack the presence of a non-threatening adult who can recognize the child’s anguish and restore a sense of safety. 

For these unlucky children the default nervous system mode becomes high arousal. With no means to escape or release the tension, children enduring chronic stress veer into new autonomic responses. There’s ‘freeze’ - think deer in the headlights, can’t-move-or-think type of state. When danger is too great or pain is too much there may be full on dissociation, i.e. the mind detaching itself from the here and now. Some victims attempt to defuse the threat by ‘pleasing and appeasing’ (a.k.a. the fawn response), a strategy by which they abandon their own needs and cater to the abuser instead. 

Living in chronic fear goes beyond a child’s day-to-day experience. Developmental Trauma (DT) eventually distorts a child’s baseline mood, beliefs and behaviors. Abused and neglected children begin to withdraw from what they perceive as a dangerous world. Freezing, fawning and dissociation are repeated and reinforced to the point of becoming the primary coping strategies in stressful circumstances, which they will unconsciously deploy again in their adult lives. DT survivors spend most resources worrying and scanning for threats rather than exploring the world with excitement and curiosity. They start expecting to be hurt and avoid others, because they simply do not know any different.

And so DT survivors begin adulthood with an inability to switch off their internal alarm system, and a skewed mental model of themselves and the world. They are enmeshed in hypervigilance, cautiousness, shame, isolation, and an inability to fully engage with the present. More importantly, young DT survivors lack a broader, more hopeful perspective on life, and a support network they can trust. 

I’m not gonna lie, it sucks. It’s extra hard to get anywhere in life when this is your starting position. But then again it’s just a bad outset, not a life sentence. Lots of other things determine how we live our lives, and the good news is that some of it is in our control. Developmental Trauma survivors can put in place new ways of thinking and relating to others so they can meet the world with openness, resilience and joy.

And some of them will even learn what it is to be happy.

 

Thanks for tuning in,

Adina