About Trauma – Abts Family Counseling

What is Trauma?

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Trauma is the lasting emotional response after experiencing a harmful event/events.
Experiencing a traumatic event can harm a person’s sense of safety and security, self-
esteem, independence, and the ability to navigate healthy relationships and emotionally
regulate. Long after the traumatic event occurs, people with trauma can often feel
shame, helplessness, powerlessness, and intense anxiety.

There are three main types of trauma: Acute, Chronic, or Complex

- Acute trauma results from a single incident.
- Chronic trauma is repeated and prolonged such as domestic violence or abuse.
- Complex trauma is exposure to varied and multiple traumatic events, often of an
  invasive, interpersonal nature.

Risk factors for attachment disorders include:

- Prenatal exposure to alcohol or drugs
- Abuse (sexual, physical, or emotional)
- Parental anger issues or psychiatric conditions
- Neglect or deprivation

“The stress of living in a chaotic or neglectful environment (i.e., an orphanage, a dysfunctional birth home, etc.) creates a brain more vulnerable to stress.”

Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2001.

Trauma victims experience hypersensitivities to sounds and feeling vibrations that no one else seems to feel; not wanting to go into crowded places….their nervous system is tuned to detect a predator. Their nervous system is in a neuroceptive state that has a great advantage in detecting a predator, but is totally compromised in being social.

Stephen Porges, PhD

“Trauma is something that happens deep in the core of our brain and our body. When a person is traumatized, almost nothing feels safe. Trauma happens in the body. Our body gets stuck in either preparing for defense. We do all kinds of things to defend and protect ourselves; the body does this instinctively and innately.

Peter Levine, PhD

MORE ABOUT TRAUMA

Traumatized kids tend to get frozen, upset, and are easily hyperaroused. They lose their sense of rhythm with other people; their sense of ease and how their bodies interact with other people. –Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.

The brain allows us our humanity. Our brain’s functioning is a reflection of our experiences. New experience is filtered through past experience…..the first step in therapeutic work is brain stem regulation. The most effective intervention process would be to first address and improve self-regulation, anxiety, attention, arousal, and impulsivity before the cognitive problems of self-esteem and shame. – Bruce D. Perry, M.D., PhD

A poorly regulated child in an alert state will look like he has attention problems and appear resistant in an alarm state. When you try to get him to comply he will become oppositional and defiant. If you are in an alarm state or higher, the limbic system distorts information coming in. This disrupts their ability to process cognitive information and manage their behaviors. With the best of intentions, we

can still cause a child to escalate if we don’t understand the process. – Dave Duvuroy

Children with histories of trauma are like deer. Deer flee in an instant when frightened. Deer are hypervigilant – always wary of their environment. Traumatized children operate in a similar fashion. Psychologically, they quickly enter a state of “fight” or “flight,” even when others see no visible threat or demand. – Arletta James