HEALING CHILDHOOD TRAUMA
WHAT IS CHILDHOOD TRAUMA?
It is a powerful experience that leaves a deep mark on the child’s psyche, affecting their emotional and mental development. It can result from a variety of experiences – such as physical and emotional abuse, neglect, parental divorce, loss of a loved one, or growing up in a difficult environment. Each of these situations can lead to deep traces on the psyche, which can manifest themselves in adult life – even if they are unconscious – and cause various emotional problems and difficulties in relationships.
Childhood traumas examples
The effects of trauma affect how an adult functions in the world, copes with stress and builds relationships with other people. Long-term effects can manifest themselves on many levels – both psychological and physical. That is why it is so important to understand and properly treat childhood trauma.
SYMPTOMS OF CHILDHOOD TRAUMA
What do the symptoms of childhood trauma look like? The most common symptoms include various types of anxiety, difficulty trusting, depression, as well as sleep disorders, nightmares and chronic anxiety. In adult life, trauma can lead to long-term relationship problems, such as avoidance of closeness, self-destructive behavior, or emotional instability.
Types of childhood trauma
In children, symptoms of trauma can take the form of regression, concentration problems, excessive irritability, or withdrawal from social contacts. Adults, on the other hand, are more likely to experience difficulties in controlling emotions, mood disorders or compulsive behavior. It is important to understand that trauma can manifest itself in different, sometimes incomprehensible ways – both for the suffering individual and for those around them.
UNCONSCIOUS CHILDHOOD TRAUMAS
What are unconscious childhood traumas? We talk about this phenomenon when the patient does not remember a situation or does not directly connect it with painful experiences, but its impact on his further life is visible. This is due to the operation of defense mechanisms, such as denial or rationalization – they can make it difficult to notice and work through the trauma. The patient may unconsciously reject painful memories or find logical explanations for their behavior, not realizing the real, deeply hidden causes of the problems.
Denial of childhood trauma
The emotional and psychological effects of trauma can remain outside of consciousness, leading, for example, to the appearance of irrational fears, uncontrollable outbursts of emotions or difficulties in building healthy relationships.
HOW TO DEAL WITH CHILDHOOD TRAUMA?
How to work through childhood trauma? The healing process involves identifying the trauma, understanding its impact on life, and working on the feelings associated with it. Therapy sessions focus on safely exploring painful memories, managing difficult emotions, and introducing techniques that help with daily functioning. The relationship between the patient and the therapist is very important, which is based on trust and creating a safe space for open work on difficult experiences.
How to get rid of childhood trauma
Relaxation techniques, mindfulness or bodywork can also be helpful in how to deal with childhood trauma, which allow you to regulate stress in everyday life. It is also very important to have support from family or friends, which plays an important role in the treatment process of a person who, without such support, is not able to find an easy way to get out of childhood trauma.
How childhood traumas affect adult life
Trauma has a huge impact on the psyche, so working through it takes time and patience. Thanks to therapy, it is possible to free oneself from the burden of the past and function better in everyday life.
What happens to the personality after trauma
A lot has already been said about trauma. Most people know that they have experienced it. However, they are not always aware of the area of their psyche and emotionality that has changed after experiencing trauma or traumas. Let’s remember that the brain itself is quite malleable, so a complete loss of the ability to adapt and change, even one that is difficult to bear, is rarely possible.
The impact of trauma on personality development
To approx. At the age of 11, radial glia is produced, thanks to which brain cells multiply and build the brain, so that then the excess gray cells can degrade over a period of about 25 years.
A huge number of them are dying, but not as much as they were produced. It is worth knowing that adolescence and adolescence are the most sensitive for development, so it is necessary to take special care of the mind during this period, by gaining knowledge, developing interests, reading books, being in a developing peer group and avoiding all kinds of stimulants. Stimulants can also affect anatomical development. I often jokingly claim that many decisions, e.g. about relationships, should not be made before the age of 30. life, using a computer preferably only at university, alcohol after the age of 18 and drugs for the most interesting and persistent in this interest after 50.
Thanks to this, he loses less in his own development and is more in control and also has time to achieve various ambitions.
Dissociation as a mechanism of survival after trauma
However, let’s go back to the topic of trauma and personality after trauma. In order to survive trauma, crisis, breakdowns, violence, some kind of dissociation is needed, and there are many types of them. They also proceed differently and affect functioning differently.
By this I mean that dissociation is a state of dissociation from reality, consisting in a kind of distancing ourselves from what is happening or when we are aware of an unbearable reality. This manifests itself in being cut off from emotions, sometimes from the body, even the mind, sometimes even the loss of perception or memory and feeling. In some representatives of Jungian thought, the phenomenon of dissociation is considered to be widespread in children. Hypnotherapists, on the other hand, accept the theory that children live in a state of hypnosis up to approx. 7 years of age, but animals all the time. I mix this theory a bit to point out that there is probably a different state of consciousness in which children and animals function, observed by various specialists.
It is also possible that dissociation may be about the need to be in another time to redirect information and there may have been an assimilation of knowledge about the outside world. Thanks to this, children can learn to distance themselves from their parents and family. I consider the phenomenon of dissociation to be present in a healthy adult life, which can have a very positive effect, because it is enough to actually remain an external observer in some people without taking on a lot of emotions, which in turn can be “too helpless” in a given situation, it can also promote the ability to put oneself in the position of another person, extreme negatively it is a form of paralysis associated with the “fight or flight” system”, and this paralysis can have different effects (PTSD, shallow affect, hypersensitivity, generalized anxiety, phobias, paranoid states, depersonalization, memory disorders, etc.).
In a disordered person, dissociation lasting too long can increase memory and lack of contact with oneself. It can cause problems with concentration, anxiety, and in addition, there may be states such as derealization and depersonalization.
That is, as a result of persistent trauma (sudden, extreme and total, or long-term) through dissociation in extreme situations and the forced need to endure in an unfavorable environment, we can expect such disorders as:
- disociative disorders,
- anxiety disorders,
- depressive disorders,
- Depressive and affective disorders of various kinds,
- CHAD disorders, addictions, tendency to risky activities,
- personality disorders that now form a reference point for new understandings of the dark triad, Asperger’s syndrome, ADHD, autism, etc. Despite the fact that the etiology of these disorders is different (the aforementioned are labeled as organic and genetic, but the environment can also influence the activation of the spectrum of various types, we always keep in mind both genes and the environment activating genes),
- psychosomatic and somatic disorders.
The other face of such people, apart from diagnoses and experience with the effects of trauma, is the need for achievement and self-expression through art or at work or school (the problem here is when learning does not go very well, because there is nowhere to draw strength from).
Trauma and recovery: How does therapy help build a new personality?
Therefore, in the treatment of trauma and personality after trauma, it is worth using such forms of therapy as art therapy and music therapy. It is impossible to help without using some form of sublimation and transfer of affect because the tensions are too great, especially at the beginning of the therapeutic process and expression. It is also necessary to examine the fragility of the patient, to what extent redirects to fantasies and metaphors are safe at a given moment. This may only be possible after some time, when the therapeutic relationship becomes safe from the perspective of the patient, and not necessarily the therapist.
As psychotherapists, we should take the patient’s mind beyond the concrete and thus try to show the abstract and metaphorical level, and they may not be available for a long time. The best solution is art, various types of art therapy, where the tools for work are usually easy to imagine or realistic, it is definitely a safer form than Hellinger settings (however, it is not worth giving them up and learning a safer form of one-time deconstruction and construction of the world, experiences and traumas of the patient).
It is also worth not pathologizing everything related to the trauma experienced. Dissociations can also be treated as a survival tool, which should be tamed and named before certain diagnoses.
Types of personalities formed after trauma according to the IPSK method
The moment of expression of personality after trauma (through dissociation) shows values, beliefs and a certain personality structure. If we capture this at work, we can avoid very difficult diagnoses such as borderline personality disorder or others. A limitation for the therapist’s work for a very long time is the risk of external influences, such as a deficit and degenerating environment, which traumas have arisen or still persist. However, we have no influence on this. Then we can refer the patient to addiction therapy or psychodynamic therapy, CBT or compassion-based.
As a psychotherapist, I often wonder if we can moralize and make patients morally aware. Let’s take into account that the patient does not hear normal and health-promoting reference points, only rules and rigor that are incomprehensible to him. Maybe to some extent, naming examples and looking for standards is the optimal solution.
Returning to the personality after trauma, according to the IPSK method, there are several of them:
- Spiritual, that is, seeking protection of the self and ego in spirituality in an introverted way.
- People who react to violence through addictions and risky behaviors because there is a suicidal personality that can favor beliefs such as -> I have nothing to lose, or a social group over an individual because it is only about advantage and influence and those feelings that cement the group. Here we will find many people with the most severe bonding disorders and a life-threatening feature.
- Seemingly adapted personalities are people who are to some extent devoid of illusions and support. They try to survive in a space shared with people who are random and unbearable.
However, their self and ego are not always clear, they also need illusion and denial and rationalization to survive in what surrounds them because they cannot or cannot change anything. So they either remain silent and avoid, or seemingly adapt by establishing relationships with people they don’t fully trust. - Dissociative personalities (typically already excessively) manifest for a long time with fears and maladjustment to roles. Each personality of this type is a prepersonality that is suitable for building bonds safely afterwards.
On the basis of these 4 personality types after trauma, we can observe why certain structures and types and patterns of actions or addictive tendencies and a certain range of suicidality can be created (even these myths about the mother’s sacrifice for the child assume some form of self-destruction).
Paulina Kubś, MSc, author of the IPSK method