Developmental Trauma Quotes

Paradoxically, the more we try to change ourselves, the more we prevent change from occurring. On the other hand, the more we allow ourselves to fully experience who we are, the greater the possibility of change.

Developmental trauma occurs when “emotional pain cannot find a relational home in which it can be held.”1 In retrospect, I can see that this was the case for

Children are compelled to give meaning to what is happening to them. When there is no clear explanation, they make one up; the intersection of trauma and the developmentally appropriate egocentrism of childhood often leads a little kid to think, I made it happen.

The traumatic stress field has adopted the term “Complex Trauma” to describe the experience of multiple and/or chronic and prolonged, developmentally adverse traumatic events, most often of an interpersonal nature (e.g., sexual or physical abuse, war, community violence) and early-life onset. These exposures often occur within the child’s caregiving system and include physical, emotional, and educational neglect and child maltreatment beginning in early childhood - Developmental Trauma Disorder

Love that is conditional upon looks and performance is not love at all

It may come as a surprise that living life in a full and expanded way is one of the most difficult challenges we face as human beings.

In this climate of profoundly disrupted relationships the child faces a formidable developmental task. She must find a way to form primary attachments to caretakers who are either dangerous or, from her perspective, negligent. She must find a way to develop a sense of basic trust and safely with caretakers who are untrustworthy and unsafe. She must develop a sense of self in relation to others who are helpless, uncaring or cruel. She must develop a capacity for bodily self-regulation in an environinent in which her body is at the disposal of others' needs as well as a capacity for self-soothing in an environment without solace. She must develop the capacity for initiative in an environment which demands that she bring her will into complete conformity with that of her abuser. And ultimately, she must develop a capacity for intimacy out of an environment where all intimate relationships are corrupt, and an identity out of an environment which defines her as a whore and a slave.

Twenty years of medical research has shown that childhood adversity literally gets under our skin, changing people in ways that can endure in their bodies for decades. It can tip a child’s developmental trajectory and affect physiology. It can trigger chronic inflammation and hormonal changes that can last a lifetime. It can alter the way DNA is read and how cells replicate, and it can dramatically increase the risk for heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes—even Alzheimer’s.

When people look at a dangerous violent criminal at the beginning of his developmental process rather than at the very end of it, they will see, perhaps unexpectedly, that the dangerous violent criminal began as a relatively benign human being for whom they would probably have more sympathy than antipathy.

After years of neurofeedback, I no longer see these disorders as distinct, but as individual manifestations of overwrought, amygdala-driven and dysregulated nervous systems. Just as emotion

Eating disorders are prevalent among women who were sexually abused as children. They seem to have components of other symptoms such as obsessions, compulsions, avoidance of food, and anxiety, and they primarily include a distorted body image and feelings of body shame. For some women, eating disorders are related to the loss of control over their bodies during the sexual abuse and serve as a means of feeling in control of their bodies now. Eating disorders can also be indicative of the developmental stage and age at which the sexual abuse began. Women with anorexia and bulimia report that they were sexually abused either at the age of puberty or during puberty, when their bodies were beginning to develop and they felt a great deal of body shame from the abuse. By contrast, women with compulsive eating report that the sexual abuse occurred before the age of puberty; they used food for comfort.

Dissociative identity disorder is conceptualized as a childhood onset, posttraumatic developmental disorder in which the child is unable to consolidate a unified sense of self. Detachment from emotional and physical pain during trauma can result in alterations in memory encoding and storage. In turn, this leads to fragmentation and compartmentalization of memory and impairments in retrieving memory.2,4,19 Exposure to early, usually repeated trauma results in the creation of discrete behavioral states that can persist and, over later development, become elaborated, ultimately developing into the alternate identities of dissociative identity disorder.

However they coped, children are not wrong to have learned to do what they could.

In my practice I use neurofeedback primarily to help with the hyperarousal, confusion, and concentration problems of people who suffer from developmental trauma. However, it has also shown good results for numerous issues and conditions that go beyond the scope of this book, including relieving tension headaches, improving cognitive functioning following a traumatic brain injury, reducing anxiety and panic attacks, learning to deepen meditation states, treating autism, improving seizure control, self-regulation in mood disorders, and more.

Attempts to stop smoking or give up any sort of self-destructive addictive behavior such as drugs, alcohol, hypersexuality, overeating, or overworking, often fail because it is very difficult to give up a means of self-regulation even when it is unhealthy until it can be replaced with a better form of self-regulation.

humans suffer from an endless number of emotional problems and challenges, most of these can be traced to early developmental and shock trauma that compromise the development of one or more of the five core capacities.

Dissociation is the ultimate form of human response to chronic developmental stress, because patients with dissociative disorders report the highest frequency of childhood abuse and/or neglect among all psychiatric disorders. The cardinal feature of dissociation is a disruption in one or more mental functions. Dissociative amnesia, depersonalization, derealization, identity confusion, and identity alterations are core phenomena of dissociative psychopathology which constitute a single dimension characterized by a spectrum of severity. Clinical Psychopharmacology and Neuroscience 2014 Dec; 12(3): 171-179 The Many Faces of Dissociation: Opportunities for Innovative Research in Psychiatry

These individuals need to see that as long as they continue to choose to please others at their own expense, they will be trapped. They need to discover how they try to control other people’s responses by being the “good boy” or “nice girl” for them. They need to find the courage to give up that control by being frank and honest with people and allowing them to respond as they will.

Human contact and warmth bring expansion and aliveness to the body. Making contact and allowing expansion to take place at its own rate begins to melt the frozenness. As shock energy is released, the frozenness progressively melts and more aliveness is possible.

To make sense of the pain of their lives, they often become spiritual seekers trying to convince themselves that someone loves them; if people do not, then God must. These individuals are often extremely sensitive in both positive and negative ways. Having never embodied, they have access to energetic levels of information to which less traumatized people are not as sensitive; they can be quite psychic and energetically attuned to people, animals, and the environment and can feel confluent and invaded by other people’s emotions.

The price of freedom is eternal mindfulness. This is a book about restoring connection. It is the experience of being in connection that fulfills the longing we have to feel fully alive. An impaired capacity for connection to self and others, and the ensuing diminished aliveness, are the hidden dimensions that underlie most psychological and many physiological problems. Unfortunately, we are often unaware of the internal roadblocks that keep us from experiencing the connection and aliveness we yearn for. These roadblocks develop in reaction to developmental and shock trauma and the related nervous system dysregulation, disruptions in attachment, and distortions of identity. The goal of the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) is to work with these dysregulations, disruptions, and distortions while never losing sight of supporting the development of a healthy capacity for connection and aliveness. In this book we address conflicts around the capacity for connection and explore how deeper connection and aliveness can be supported in the process of healing developmental trauma.

For example, when children do not get the connection they need, they grow up both seeking and fearing connection. When children do not get their needs met, they do not learn to recognize what they need, are unable to express their needs, and often feel undeserving of having their needs met.

Developmental psychologists agree that praising a child’s effort is helpful and promotes self-esteem, while valuing the achievement only programs kids to keep seeking external approval—not for who they are but for what they do, for what others demand of them. It’s yet another barrier to the emergence of a healthy self.

Painful or frightening affect becomes traumatic when the attunement that the child needs to assist in its tolerance, containment, and integration is profoundly absent,”8 writes Robert Stolorow, a philosopher, psychologist, and clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, in his book about trauma. “One consequence of developmental trauma, relationally conceived, is that affect states take on enduring, crushing meanings. From recurring experiences of malattunement, the child acquires the unconscious conviction that unmet developmental yearnings and reactive painful feeling states are manifestations of a loathsome defect or of an inherent inner badness.

Anger is a life-supportive response intended to impact an unsupportive environment. For

grieving is an important element in the reconnection process. Grief is how human beings come to terms with irrevocable loss.

Shame reduces complex circumstances to simple solutions like “It’s all my fault” and “I must deserve this.

CONSENSUS PROPOSED CRITERIA FOR DEVELOPMENTAL TRAUMA DISORDER A. Exposure. The child or adolescent has experienced or witnessed multiple or prolonged adverse events over a period of at least one year beginning in childhood or early adolescence, including: A. 1. Direct experience or witnessing of repeated and severe episodes of interpersonal violence; and A. 2. Significant disruptions of protective caregiving as the result of repeated changes in primary caregiver; repeated separation from the primary caregiver; or exposure to severe and persistent emotional abuse B. Affective and Physiological Dysregulation. The child exhibits impaired normative developmental competencies related to arousal regulation, including at least two of the following: B. 1. Inability to modulate, tolerate, or recover from extreme affect states (e.g., fear, anger, shame), including prolonged and extreme tantrums, or immobilization B. 2. Disturbances in regulation in bodily functions (e.g. persistent disturbances in sleeping, eating, and elimination; over-reactivity or under-reactivity to touch and sounds; disorganization during routine transitions) B. 3. Diminished awareness/dissociation of sensations, emotions and bodily states B. 4. Impaired capacity to describe emotions or bodily states C. Attentional and Behavioral Dysregulation: The child exhibits impaired normative developmental competencies related to sustained attention, learning, or coping with stress, including at least three of the following: C. 1. Preoccupation with threat, or impaired capacity to perceive threat, including misreading of safety and danger cues C. 2. Impaired capacity for self-protection, including extreme risk-taking or thrill-seeking C. 3. Maladaptive attempts at self-soothing (e.g., rocking and other rhythmical movements, compulsive masturbation) C. 4. Habitual (intentional or automatic) or reactive self-harm C. 5. Inability to initiate or sustain goal-directed behavior D. Self and Relational Dysregulation. The child exhibits impaired normative developmental competencies in their sense of personal identity and involvement in relationships, including at least three of the following: D. 1. Intense preoccupation with safety of the caregiver or other loved ones (including precocious caregiving) or difficulty tolerating reunion with them after separation D. 2. Persistent negative sense of self, including self-loathing, helplessness, worthlessness, ineffectiveness, or defectiveness D. 3. Extreme and persistent distrust, defiance or lack of reciprocal behavior in close relationships with adults or peers D. 4. Reactive physical or verbal aggression toward peers, caregivers, or other adults D. 5. Inappropriate (excessive or promiscuous) attempts to get intimate contact (including but not limited to sexual or physical intimacy) or excessive reliance on peers or adults for safety and reassurance D. 6. Impaired capacity to regulate empathic arousal as evidenced by lack of empathy for, or intolerance of, expressions of distress of others, or excessive responsiveness to the distress of others E. Posttraumatic Spectrum Symptoms. The child exhibits at least one symptom in at least two of the three PTSD symptom clusters B, C, & D. F. Duration of disturbance (symptoms in DTD Criteria B, C, D, and E) at least 6 months. G. Functional Impairment. The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in at least two of the following areas of functioning: Scholastic Familial Peer Group Legal Health Vocational (for youth involved in, seeking or referred for employment, volunteer work or job training)

Many survivors of relational and other forms of early life trauma are deeply troubled and often struggle with feelings of anger, grief, alienation, distrust, confusion, low self-esteem, loneliness, shame, and self-loathing. They seem to be prisoners of their emotions, alternating between being flooded by intense emotional and physiological distress related to the trauma or its consequences and being detached and unable to express or feel any emotion at all - alternations that are the signature posttraumatic pattern. These occur alongside or in conjunction with other common reactions and symptoms (e.g., depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem) and their secondary manifestations. Those with complex trauma histories often have diffuse identity issues and feel like outsiders, different from other people, whom they somehow can't seem to get along with, fit in with, or get close to, even when they try. Moreover, they often feel a sense of personal contamination and that no one understands or can help them. Quite frequently and unfortunately, both they and other people (including the professionals they turn to for help) do misunderstand them, devalue their strengths, or view their survival adaptations through a lens of pathology (e.g., seeing them as "demanding", "overdependent and needy", "aggressive", or as having borderline personality). Yet, despite all, many individuals with these histories display a remarkable capacity for resilience, a sense of morality and empathy for others, spirituality, and perseverance that are highly admirable under the circumstances and that create a strong capacity for survival. Three broad categories of survivorship, with much overlap between them, can be discerned: 1. Those who have successfully overcome their past and whose lives are healthy and satisfying. Often, individuals in this group have had reparative experiences within relationships that helped them to cope successfully. 2. Those whose lives are interrupted by recurring posttraumatic reactions (often in response to life events and experiences) that periodically hijack them and their functioning for various periods of time. 3. Those whose lives are impaired on an ongoing basis and who live in a condition of posttraumatic decline, even to the point of death, due to compromised medical and mental health status or as victims of suicide of community violence, including homicide.

Traumatized individuals, which includes most of us to differing degrees, need both top-down and bottom-up approaches that address nervous system imbalances as well as issues of identity.

At the time, the Wikipedia page read, “Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD; also known as complex trauma disorder) is a psychological disorder that can develop in response to prolonged, repeated experience of interpersonal trauma in a context in which the individual has little or no chance of escape.” And then, a paragraph down: “C-PTSD is a learned set of responses, and a failure to complete numerous important developmental tasks. It is environmentally, not genetically, caused. Unlike most of the diagnoses it is confused with, it is neither inborn nor characterological, not DNA based, it is a disorder caused by lack of nurture.

The concept of resilience is used in our field. But if you look carefully at the biology after a traumatic experience-all the way down to the way genes are expressed-trauma will change everyone in some way. And those changes will be there even if they don’t result in any apparent ‘real life’ problems for the person, even if the person demonstrates resilience. A child may continue to do just as well in school, for example, but it takes much more energy and effort. Or we may find that a child is able to return to his previous level of emotional functioning, but changes in his neuroendocrine system may make him more likely to develop diabetes. This is, in essence, what the ACE studies have demonstrated. Adversity impacts the developing child. Period. What that impact will be, when it may manifest, how it maybe ‘buffered’-we can’t always say. But developmental trauma will always influence our body and brain.

We tend to think of the brain in terms of its other critical physical and chemical domains. But its plasticity, its ability to change and to learn, seems to lay primarily in its electrical, oscillatory properties—in short, in the way it fires. As

Regardless of age, Connection types, at some level, often feel like frightened children in an adult world. Because of their inadequate sense of self, they often try to anchor themselves in their roles as scientist, judge, doctor, father, mother, etc.

The stronger the constitutional factor, the more readily will a trauma lead to a fixation and leave behind a developmental disturbance; the stronger the trauma, the more certainly will its injurious effects become manifest even when the instinctual situation is normal.

Predictable, moderate, and controllable activation of the stress-response systems, such as that seen with developmentally appropriate challenges in education, sport, music, and so forth, can lead to a stronger, more flexible stress-response capability—i.e., resilience.

As a result of the earliest trauma, individuals with the Connection Survival Style have disconnected from their bodies, from themselves, and from relationship. Connection types have two seemingly different coping styles or subtypes: the thinking and the spiritualizing subtypes.

These roadblocks develop in reaction to developmental and shock trauma and the related nervous system dysregulation, disruptions in attachment, and distortions of identity. The goal of the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) is to work with these dysregulations, disruptions, and distortions while never losing sight of supporting the development of a healthy capacity for connection and aliveness. In this book we address conflicts around the capacity for connection and explore how deeper connection and aliveness can be supported in the process of healing developmental trauma.

In general, it is useful when working with chronic anxiety to look for split-off anger. On the journey toward reconnection with core expression and the life force, anxiety and anger are ultimately transformed into healthy self-expression, strength, and the capacity for separation/individuation.

To the degree that our biologically based core needs are met early in life, we develop core capacities that allow us to recognize and meet these needs as adults (Table I.1). Being attuned to these five basic needs and capacities means that we are connected to our deepest resources and vitality.

ADAPTIVE SURVIVAL STYLE CORE DIFFICULTIES The Connection Survival Style Disconnected from physical and emotional self Difficulty relating to others The Attunement Survival Style Difficulty knowing what we need Feeling our needs do not deserve to be met The Trust Survival Style Feeling we cannot depend on anyone but ourselves Feeling we have to always be in control The Autonomy Survival Style Feeling burdened and pressured Difficulty setting limits and saying no directly The Love-Sexuality Survival Style Difficulty integrating heart and sexuality Self-esteem based on looks and performance

There are not different disciplinary buckets. Instead, each one is the end product of all the biological influences that came before it and will influence all the factors that follow it. Thus, it is impossible to conclude that a behavior is caused by a gene, a hormone, a childhood trauma, because the second you invoke one type of explanation, you are de facto invoking them all. No buckets. A “neurobiological” or “genetic” or “developmental” explanation for a behavior is just shorthand, an expository convenience for temporarily approaching the whole multifactorial arc from a particular perspective.

Trust of others is in short supply for many adult survivors, as complex trauma generally involves major relational betrayal. It is, therefore, expectable (although paradoxical) that clients with these histories are predisposed to be mistrustful at the outset of therapy, precisely because of (and in proportion to) the actual trustworthiness of the therapist. When past experiences have thought hard lessons, namely, that one can least afford to trust the people who should be most trustworthy, it stands to reason that confusion about trust results. The therapist must understand and not take offense either personally or professionally and not react judgmentally or defensively. Practically speaking, this involves the therapist being prepared to patiently and empathically respond to active or passive tests or challenges to trustworthiness as legitimate and meaningful communication that deserves a respectful reply in action as well as in words.

In the case of the earliest Connection Survival Style, for example, focusing on changing distorted cognitions is particularly difficult because with early trauma, the cortex is not yet fully developed, and it is mostly the underlying bottom-up nervous system and affective imbalances that drive the cognitive distortions.

This is a book about restoring connection. It is the experience of being in connection that fulfills the longing we have to feel fully alive. An impaired capacity for connection to self and others, and the ensuing diminished aliveness, are the hidden dimensions that underlie most psychological and many physiological problems.

One of the hardest things to grasp about implicit bias and racism is that your beliefs and values do not always drive your behavior. These beliefs and values are stored in the highest, most complex part of your brain—the cortex. But other parts of your brain can make associations—distorted, inaccurate, racist associations. The same person can have very sincere anti-racist beliefs but still have implicit biases that result in racist comments or actions. Understanding sequential processing in the brain is essential to grasping this, as is appreciating the power of developmental experiences to load the lower parts of our brain with all kinds of associations that create our worldview.

Deprivation and attachment difficulties signal the baby’s brain and nervous system to implement life-protecting strategies. Depending on the severity and the duration of the nurturing disruptions, there is a progressive loss of the ability to attune to and express one’s needs. Along with the loss of attunement comes increasing autonomic dysregulation:

The coping strategies that initially helped us survive as children over the years become rigid beliefs about who we are and what the world is like. Our beliefs about ourselves and the world, together with the physiological patterns associated with these beliefs, crystallize into a familiar sense of who we are. This is what we come to view as our identity.

A person can also develop avoidant behaviors without making the direct connection to a traumatic cue from the past. This is often true when the abuse or trauma took place within the context of early caregiving relationships. If a child was abused in the context of an intimate relationship (by a parent, for example), they will find intimacy-emotional and physical closeness-threatening. They will often long to be connected but find themselves anxious, confused, or overwhelmed when they get close to someone. They will avoid intimacy in a relationship; if intimacy can’t be avoided, they will sabotage or undermine the relationship. This is one of the most common but least appreciated effects of developmental trauma.

When someone with a dismissive style starts to work on healing their insecure attachment, they must begin by no longer dismissing and distancing from themselves. This requires that they no longer deny their desires and needs, allowing the longings and wants for connection that have for so long been forbidden. When someone functioning from a dismissive style starts to allow their attachment system to come back online, it can initially be a very tender, raw and even overwhelming process. The skills that come with being able to identify your own feelings are part of a developmental process that takes time. The process of allowing feelings as they arise, learning how to self-soothe and establishing an inner trust that experiencing feelings is safe, cannot be rushed. For the dismissive style, the journey from insecure to secure attachment is one of returning to the body through bringing feelings and sensations back to life and learning how to be with oneself in this process. Once this is established, the risk of then leaning into others, revealing one's internal world, and dismantling the self-reliant exoskeleton through asking for help and care from others can begin.

The abused child has no choice but to depend on his or her caregivers. So in order to ensure that they will continue to be present and available, he or she takes their guilt upon himself or herself—much as Christ archetypally took upon himself the sins of the world and died in its stead. Abused children willingly take on the role of scapegoat and sacrifice themselves and their developmental potential in the interests of survival.

The Thinking Subtype As a result of early trauma thinking subtypes have retreated to the life of the mind and choose theoretical and technical professions that do not require significant human interaction. These individuals tend to be more comfortable behind a computer, in their laboratory, or in their garage workshops where they can putter undisturbed. They can be brilliant thinkers but tend to use their intelligence to maintain significant emotional distance.

The same question might be asked about the educational system. In 2016, an American professor and Fulbright scholar named William Doyle, just returned from a semester-long appointment at the University of Eastern Finland, wrote in the Los Angeles Times that for those five months, his family “experienced a stunningly stress-free, and stunningly good, school system.” His seven-year-old son was placed in the youngest class—not because of some developmental delay, but because children younger than seven “don’t receive formal academic training . . . Many are in day care and learn through play, songs, games and conversation.” Once in school, children get a mandated fifteen-minute outdoor recess break for every forty-five minutes of in-class instruction. The educational mantras Doyle remembers hearing the most while there: “‘Let children be children,’ ‘The work of a child is to play,’ and ‘Children learn best through play.’” And as far as outcomes go? Finland consistently ranks at or near the top of educational test score results in the Western world and has been ranked the most literate nation on Earth.[17] “The message that competition is appropriate, desirable, required, and even unavoidable is drummed into us from nursery school to graduate school; it is the subtext of every lesson,” writes educational consultant Alfie Kohn in his excellent book No Contest: The Case Against Competition: Why We Lose in Our Race to Win, which documents the negative impact of competition on genuine learning, and how

Individuals with this survival style will not allow themselves to be emotionally close to anyone because closeness stirs up feelings of dependency and triggers the fear of being controlled, as they were in early life. They will stay in a relationship as long as they feel that they are in control and can successfully dominate their partner. To this end they often choose Attunement types as partners: Attunement types are caretakers who are happy to serve while Trust types are more than happy to be served.

Trust individuals can work tirelessly to meet their goals of success and power, fearing that if they are not successful they will end up, as one client put it, “in the gutter.” Working to succeed compensates for the powerlessness and lack of control of their early life. The fear of ending up destitute and alone is a projection into the future of the helplessness they experienced as children. Underneath the image of power, they feel powerless, and since they cannot depend on others, they also feel totally alone.

are meant to distribute caregiving among the many adults in our “band”—our community. In a typical hunter-gatherer clan, for every child under six there were four developmentally more mature individuals who could model, discipline, nurture, and instruct the child. That is a 4:1 ratio: four developmentally mature individuals for each child under six. We now think that one caregiver for four young children (1:4) is “enriched.” That is 1/16th of what our developing social brain is looking for. That is relational poverty.

Ed Tronick, a pioneer in developmental psychology, teaches us, interpersonal rupture and repair is good for building resilience. These ruptures are perfect doses of moderate, controllable stress. Conversation, for example, promotes resilience; discussions and arguments over family dinners and mildly heated conversations with friends are—as long as there is repair—resilience-building and empathy-growing experiences. We shouldn’t be walking away from a conversation in a rage; we should regulate ourselves. Repair the ruptures. Reconnect and grow. When you walk away, everybody loses. We all need to get better at listening, regulating, reflecting.

... as Herman (1992b) cogently noted two decades ago, these personality disorders can be iatrogenic, causing harm to individuals as an inadvertent result of the social stigma they carry and the widespread (but not entirely accurate) belief among professionals and insurers that those with Cluster B personality disorders (especially borderline personality disorder[BPD]) cannot be treated successfully, cannot recover, and are a headache to practitioners. For example, the BPD diagnosis continues to be applied predominantly to women often, but not always, in a negative way, usually signifying that they are irrational and beyond help. Describing posttraumatic symptoms as a personality disorder not only can be demoralizing for the client due to its connotation that something is defective with his or her core self (i.e., personality) but also may misdirect the therapist by implying that the patient's core personality should be the focus of treatment rather than trauma-related adaptations that affect but are distinct from the core self. In this way, both therapists and their clients may overlook personality strengths and capacities that are healthy and sources of resilience that can be a basis for building on and enhancing (rather than "fixing" or remaking) the patient's core self and personality.

Under those conditions, chronic stress becomes so common that it seems normal. Individuals use denial and repression to protect the ego from disintegration. Living with both the constant unpredictability of the alcoholic parent and the detachment and/or anxiety of the codependent parent is difficult enough for an adult who has a fully developed defense system. For a child, surviving the regular assault of trauma requires massive amounts of energy. This puts the normal developmental process on hold; there is no energy left to invest in development. While other children are learning to play, to trust, to self-soothe, and to make decisions, children in addicted families are learning to survive. The end result is a child who often feels thirty years old at five and five years old at thirty.

They both believed that the therapist’s job was to break through a patient’s character armor—the psychological and somatic defenses—in order to release the painful emotions held in the body. Bioenergetics, for example, recognizes that deep emotion, conscious or unconscious, is held physically. It encourages clients to express their emotions through kicking, hitting, biting, and yelling, with the goal of discharging these powerful affects and in the hope that doing so will lead to greater emotional freedom and health. Reich’s and Lowen’s unique contribution was to recognize that defenses were held not only in the mind but also in the body’s nervous system, musculature, and organs. This significant breakthrough was ahead of its time and anticipated many current developments in the neurological and biological sciences.

It is as if time stops at the moment of trauma," Judith Lewis Herman asserts. The child becomes "fixated," or developmentally arrested at the age at which the trauma occurred, and even as an adult is stuck in a time warp of childlike helplessness. She continues to process emotions with a child's intensity and mobilizes only those defenses that were available to her at the time of the trauma. Rather than blame others for her problems, she views her pain through the magical thinking of childhood, convinced that she is responsible not only for what happened to her as a kid but all the subsequent problems that have befallen her. "Repeated trauma in adult life erodes the structure of the personality already formed, but repeated trauma in childhood forms and deforms the personality," writes Herman in her 1992 book "Trauma and Recovery".

The Polyvagal Theory is particularly useful to help us understand the Connection Survival Style. When there is early trauma, the older dorsal vagal defensive strategies of immobilization dominate, leading to freeze, collapse, and ultimately to dissociation. As a result, the ventral vagus fails to adequately develop and social development is impaired. Consequently, traumatized infants favor freeze and withdrawal over social engagement as a way of managing states of arousal. This pattern has lifelong implications. On the physiological level, since the vagus nerve innervates the larynx, pharynx, heart, lungs, and the enteric nervous system (gut), the impact of early trauma on these organ systems leads to a variety of physical symptoms. On the psychological and behavioral level, the capacity for social engagement is severely compromised, leading to self-isolation and withdrawal from contact with others, as well as to the many psychological symptoms

As children, Other-blamers were likely exposed to developmental or attachment trauma, such as abusive, shaming, rejecting, or neglectful parenting. Parents who are substance abusers or psychologically troubled often underfocus on a child’s needs. Parents may have exhibited narcissistic or Other-blaming behaviors that the child models. Another possible cause is parents who were permissive or conflict avoiding and did not hold the child accountable. Parents who overfocus on achievement or behavioral compliance can also encourage a fear of failure that may bring on Other-blaming tendencies. These experiences can cause children to feel unloved, unprotected, and inadequate. They may struggle to experience empathy for others and may develop an unhealthy hypersensitivity and overreaction to shaming experiences. While Other-blaming as a shame-management strategy may be adaptive in childhood, it causes difficulties for adult relationships at all levels, from presidential to personal.

With regard to complex trauma survivors, self-determination and autonomy require that the therapist treat each client as the "authority" in determining the meaning and interpretation of his or her personal life history, including (but not limited to) traumatic experiences (Harvey, 1996). Therapists can inadvertently misappropriate the client's authority over the meaning and significance of her or his memories (and associated symptoms, such as intrusive reexperiencing or dissociative flashbacks) by suggesting specific "expert" interpretations of the memories or symptoms. Clients who feel profoundly abandoned by key caregivers may appear deeply grateful for such interpretations and pronouncements by their therapists, because they can fulfill a deep longing for a substitute parent who makes sense of the world or takes care of them. However, this delegation of authority to the therapist can backfire if the client cannot, or does not, take ownership of her or his own memories or life story by determining their personal meaning.Moreover, the client can be trapped in a stance of avoidance because trauma memories are never experienced, processed, and put to rest. Helping a client to develop a core sense of relational security and the capacity to regulate (and recover from) extreme hyper- or hypoarousal is essential if the client is to achieve a self-determined and autonomous approach to defining the meaning and impact of trauma memories, a crucial goal of posttraumatic therapy.

Thus polyvictimization or complex trauma are "developmentally adverse interpersonal traumas" (Ford, 2005) because they place the victim at risk not only for recurrent stress and psychophysiological arousal (e.g., PTSD, other anxiety disorders, depression) but also for interruptions and breakdowns in healthy psychobiological, psychological, and social development. Complex trauma not only involves shock, fear, terror, or powerlessness (either short or long term) but also, more fundamentally, constitutes a violation of the immature self and the challenge to the development of a positive and secure self, as major psychic energy is directed toward survival and defense rather than toward learning and personal development (Ford, 2009b, 2009c). Moreover, it may influence the brain's very development, structure, and functioning in both the short and long term (Lanius et al., 2010; Schore, 2009). Complex trauma often forces the child victim to substitute automatic survival tactics for adaptive self-regulation, starting at the most basic level of physical reactions (e.g., intense states of hyperarousal/agitation or hypoarousal/immobility) and behavioral (e.g., aggressive or passive/avoidant responses) that can become so automatic and habitual that the child's emotional and cognitive development are derailed or distorted. What is more, self-integrity is profoundly shaken, as the child victim incorporates the "lessons of abuse" into a view of him or herself as bad, inadequate, disgusting, contaminated and deserving of mistreatment and neglect. Such misattributions and related schema about self and others are some of the most common and robust cognitive and assumptive consequences of chronic childhood abuse (as well as other forms of interpersonal trauma) and are especially debilitating to healthy development and relationships (Cole & Putnam, 1992; McCann & Pearlman, 1992). Because the violation occurs in an interpersonal context that carries profound significance for personal development, relationships become suspect and a source of threat and fear rather than of safety and nurturance. In vulnerable children, complex trauma causes compromised attachment security, self-integrity and ultimately self-regulation. Thus it constitutes a threat not only to physical but also to psychological survival - to the development of the self and the capacity to regulate emotions (Arnold & Fisch, 2011). For example, emotional abuse by an adult caregiver that involves systematic disparagement, blame and shame of a child ("You worthless piece of s-t"; "You shouldn't have been born"; "You are the source of all of my problems"; "I should have aborted you"; "If you don't like what I tell you, you can go hang yourself") but does not involve sexual or physical violation or life threat is nevertheless psychologically damaging. Such bullying and antipathy on the part of a primary caregiver or other family members, in addition to maltreatment and role reversals that are found in many dysfunctional families, lead to severe psychobiological dysregulation and reactivity (Teicher, Samson, Polcari, & McGreenery, 2006).

Kaffman (2009) described childhood victimization as a "silent epidemic", and Finkelhor, Turner, Ormrod, and Hamby (2010) reported that children are the most traumatized class of humans around the globe. The findings of these researchers are at odds with the view that children have protected status in most families, societies, and cultures. Instead, Finkelhor reports that children are prime targets and highly vulnerable, due principally to their small size, their physical and emotional immaturity with its associated lack of control, power and resources; and their related dependency on caregivers. They are subjected to many forms of exploitation on an ongoing basis, imposed on them by individuals with greater power, strength, knowledge, and resources, many of whom are, paradoxically and tragically, responsible for their care and welfare. These traumas are interpersonal in nature and involve personal transgression, violation and exploitation of the child by those who rely on the child's lesser physical abilities, innocence, and immaturity to intimidate, bully, confuse, blackmail, exploit, or otherwise coerce. In the worst-case scenario, a parent or other significant caregiver directly and repeatedly abuses a child or does not respond to or protect a child or other vulnerable individual who is being abused and mistreated and isolates the child from others through threats or with direct violence. Consequently, such an abusive, nonprotective, or malevolently exploitative circumstance (Chefetz has coined the term "attack-ment" to describe these dynamics) has a profound impact on victim's ability to trust others. It also affects the victim's identity and self-concept, usually in negative ways that include self-hatred, low self-worth, and lack of self-confidence. As a result, both relationships, and the individual's sense of self and internal states (feelings, thoughts, and perceptions) can become sources of fear, despair, rage, or other extreme dysphoria or numbed and dissociated reactions. This state of alienation from self and others is further exacerbated when the occurrence of abuse or other victimization involves betrayal and is repeated and becomes chronic, in the process leading the victim to remain in a state of either hyperarousal/anticipation/hypervigilance or hypoarousal/numbing (or to alternate between these two states) and to develop strong protective mechanisms, such as dissociation, in order to endure recurrences. When these additional victimizations recur, they unfortunately tend to escalate in severity and intrusiveness over time, causing additional traumatization (Duckworth & Follette, 2011). In many cases of child maltreatment, emotional or psychological coercion and the use of the adult's authority and dominant power rather than physical force or violence is the fulcrum and weapon used against the child; however, force and violence are common in some settings and in some forms of abuse (sometimes in conjunction with extreme isolation and drugging of the child), as they are used to further control or terrorize the victim into submission. The use of force and violence is more commonplace and prevalent in some families, communities, religions, cultural/ethnic groups, and societies based on the views and values about adult prerogatives with children that are espoused. They may also be based on the sociopathy of the perpetrators.

it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that a child need not be abused to be in trouble; he needs only to experience himself as abandoned by the mother.

Abusive experiences, mental illnesses and neurological deficits interplayed to produce the tragedies reported in the newspapers. The most vicious criminals have also been, overwhelmingly, people who have been grotesquely abused as children and have paranoid patterns of thinking,” said Pincus in his book, adding that childhood traumas can impact the developmental anatomy and functioning of the brain.

Adolescence is also a time when aggressive and other nonsexual drives intensify, which may play a role in the emergence of cutting. "There is something about that developmental phase, the biochemical changes that are occurring, that starts to activate all the structural damage in the brain that came from earlier trauma," says Mark Schwartz. It is at this age that abused children start exhibiting a number of acting-out and acting-in behaviors, from cutting and eating disorders to acts of outward aggression. Schwartz believes it isn't hormones alone that are responsible for this sudden upsurge in impulsive behavior but a complex interaction of the brain, the hormones, and the social environment.

...some adolescent survivors describe feeling special, powerful, and sometimes entitled. This is especially true of those for whom excessive attention was part of the abuse relationship by virtue any power they held over the abuser or members of the family - especially their mothers in some cases of father-daughter incest - and of any affection or sexual pleasure they experienced. All of these feelings can coexist with self-loathing and shame or might alternate with them. Some victims experience this power as personally affirming, resulting in feelings of grandiosity, whereas others believe themselves to be malignantly powerful and defective. As children, these victims may have developed the belief that they could willfully manipulate others and "make or break" the family or their peer group (or the broader community setting) with their terrible powers or the secrets they hold. In adolescence these largely implicit ideas no longer manifest mainly or only as the egocentrism associated with early childhood. A more pervasive form of narcissistic entitlement and power and an apparently callous indifference to and contempt for others can lead to conduct disturbances and the victimization of others. Many individuals with apparent sociopathic tendencies and conduct disorders were victimized as children. Such individuals at some point had the capacity for respect, empathy, and genuine social responsibility that was lost and corrupted in the struggle to survive, to make sense of, and to remove themselves from the receiving end of victimization. Identification with the perpetrator and the victimization of others is specifically included as a core feature of complex PTSD.

This book consists of the following chapters: 1- ‘The Turkish currency reform’: Naïve inflation, endowment effect, anchoring and the money illusion. 2- Towards a developmental economic psychology: A review of the literature. 3- Economic crisis as trauma and psychotherapy as the guardian of status quo. 4- On father attachment: a preliminary review. 5- Developing at a kibbutz context: a review on recent studies.

This is a common thread in our culture: We’re reactive; we prioritize convenient, short-term solutions; we’re risk-averse; and we use material things rather than relationships as rewards. Here, have a toy. Be good and we will give you a thing. Giving toys instead of calming touch is an outrageously misguided practice. It’s the result of developmentally ignorant, trauma-uninformed policies—and another example of the need to change our systems.

Children and adults with developmental trauma frequently experience chronic abdominal pain, headaches, chest pain, fainting, and seizure-like episodes—all very common symptoms related to a sensitized stress response.

have used the term “complex trauma” to try to capture developmental neglect and maltreatment, but I believe that lumps too many things into one box.

In Van der Kolk’s words, complex trauma occurs when a young person experiences “multiple, chronic, and prolonged, developmentally adverse traumatic events, most

Children who have experienced complex trauma exhibit a more pronounced deficit in developmental brain-aligned stress response systems. In other words, this trauma compromises these young people’s ability to self-regulate their behavior.

These crises (in addition to trauma endured during the war) led to identity issues, anger, depression, anxiety, physical illness, sleep and dream disturbance, neurological disorders, post- traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), addictive behaviors, eating disorders, attachment issues in personal and familial relationships, developmental delay, phobias, aggression, fear, gender dysphoria, self-harm, learning difficulties and disabilities, psychosomatic disorders, psychosis, and resentment for everything that they endured.

Individuals with the Connection Survival Style already see their lives as problems to be solved, so that if a therapist holds a primarily problem-solving focus, these clients’ vulnerable inner world can be missed.

Individuals with the Connection Survival Style often come into therapy with fears and even obsessions about death and disease.

In summary, to reestablish agency, a NARM therapist explores with clients how they are contributing to their own suffering—how they may be consciously or unconsciously instrumental in creating their own distress as adults.

For Paul, being angry meant that he was like his father and therefore “bad.” Splitting off his anger and rage reinforced a sense of powerlessness but also meant he was unlike his father and therefore “good.

In a healing cycle, connection to our body, emotions, and life force allows for greater connection with others, and in turn, connection with others supports greater connection to ourselves. The connection that has always been our deepest desire is now no longer our greatest fear.

As we experience the development of personal agency, we come to see that the rejection we fear from the world has already happened.

If their systems were flooded with stress hormones just like Sarah’s or the tadpoles’, it stood to reason that their bodies, including their blood pressure, blood sugar, and neurological functions, might react in similar ways; all could be seen as side effects of stress hormones. It made biological sense that a high dose of stress hormones at the wrong developmental stage could have an outsize impact on my patients’ downstream health.

Adaptive Survival Style Shame-Based Identification Connection Feel shame at existing, feeling, and connecting Attunement Feel shame when experiencing and communicating their needs Trust Feel shame when feeling dependent, vulnerable, or weak Autonomy Feel shame at their impulses toward self-determination, autonomy, and independence Love/Sexuality Feel shame about sharing their heart and relational intimacy

Religious trauma resides in our bodies and nervous systems in the same way that trauma from war, developmental trauma, or sexualized trauma live inside us. Though the triggers and environment of the original trauma may differ, how religious trauma lives in our bodies, on a physiological level, is the same.

The resolution of these core dilemmas is about learning to be authentic and at the same time be connected with others. The psychological concept of object constancy refers to the ability of an individual to feel both love and anger toward a person they are in an intimate relationship with. Holding that emotional complexity is an important capacity for healthy adulthood. For a child experiencing attachment and relational failure, it is simply too threatening to stay connected to themself while staying in connection to their caregivers. Yet for an adult, this relational capacity can feel liberating. New possibilities open up as one shifts from child consciousness into embodied adult consciousness, a process we refer to in NARM as disidentification

Connection: Reflect on a time you felt most connected—to yourself, to another person, to a pet, to nature, to God. Attunement: Reflect on a time you expressed your needs—and someone responded positively. Trust: Reflect on a time you depended on someone—and they came through for you. Autonomy: Reflect on a time you stood up for yourself in a relationship—and the other person did not reject you. Love-Sexuality: Reflect on a time you reached out with love—and it was reciprocated by another person.

For children experiencing chronic misattunement, staying connected to their own needs and feelings becomes intolerable and unsustainable. Children are unable to tolerate the distress that occurs in these painful situations. The only strategy they can use to survive is disconnecting from their authentic needs and feelings.

Embodied adult consciousness is a NARM term that refers to adults who experience themselves not just physically as adults but also psychologically and emotionally. They embody separation-individuation in the sense that they experience themselves as less dependent on others for their sense of self-worth. By so doing, they have greater capacity for authentic relationships. Their behaviors are not driven from adaptive survival strategies but emerge from connection to their authentic needs, feelings, and a sense of agency and self-activation. Being embodied in adult consciousness provides a secure platform to feel connected to Self and others without conflict between the two.

Transcendent human experiences that Einstein alluded to, like aliveness, spirituality, and love, are difficult to measure. They don’t fit well in modern psychological and scientific theory. There is a tendency to try to reduce complexity. We see curiosity as a pathway for supporting nuance within complexity. It allows us to exist, and delight in, the full spectrum of human experience. It frees us from having to figure anything out and instead supports us to have a direct, lived experience.

There are three types of “developmental adversity” that will predictably alter the CRNs and cause widespread problems. The first is disruption that happens before birth, such as prenatal exposure to drugs, alcohol, or extreme maternal distress (of the kind that can occur with domestic violence, for example). The second is some form of disruption of the early interactions between infant and caregiver; if these are chaotic, inconsistent, rough, aggressive, or absent, the stress-response systems will develop in abnormal ways. The third is any sensitizing pattern of stress. This can result from a host of circumstances, many of which we will talk about later in more detail; the basic idea is that anything that can cause unpredictable, uncontrollable, or extreme and prolonged activations of the stress response will result in an overactive and overly reactive stress response (see

Using the framework of the adaptive survival styles, we can begin to understand some of the adaptive strategies for avoiding feelings: Connection: A client may use avoidant strategies such as dissociating, splitting, intellectualizing, and spiritualizing. They may generally narrow their lives by limiting emotional awareness and social engagement. Attunement: A client may avoid attuning to their own emotions or may feel that they do not deserve to have their own needs and feelings. They may focus on being there to meet others’ needs and feelings at the expense of connecting to their own needs and feelings. Trust: A client may work to limit situations where they are not in control, including any situation where they are asked to be vulnerable with their needs and feelings. They may set up situations where they can avoid sharing their emotions. Autonomy: A client may avoid self-referencing and direct expressions of their authentic Self. They may avoid situations where speaking directly about their authentic feelings would be appropriate and useful. Love-Sexuality: A client may avoid authentic emotions by focusing on achievement and performance. They may avoid intimacy and other relationships where they might be invited to share their heart.

The intention of acceptance is to allow for complexity. As humans, we are faced with managing an extremely complex world. Preconceived knowledge, beliefs, and agendas are often used to manage the complexity of the therapeutic process, but they can also get in our way of being present and open to the direct experience with our clients. To truly understand another’s internal world, we have to free ourselves from what we believe we know, to the best of our abilities, so as to be able to make real contact. Once we can say “I don’t know,” we can be open to new learning and greater complexity. As philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti taught, “You can learn only if you do not know.”4 The reality is that we will never fully know our client’s internal experience, but we can continue to learn as we deepen into relationship with them.

Developmental trauma is about heartbreak. The resolution of developmental trauma is about heartfulness.

What we don’t use it for is to pathologize our clients. Levels of organization do not define who someone is, and we do not make judgments based on the scores.

Loneliness can be experienced as both frightening and liberating. When in child consciousness, adults may still experience the loneliness as terrifying. These clients often rely on adaptive survival strategies to manage and limit their lives. When in adult consciousness, adults may experience the loneliness as relief, expansion, and increasing freedom. These clients often report an increased sense of internal space and depth in which to meet the world. We track cycles of connection–disconnection in the service of disidentification. As identifications dissolve, people often experience increasing states of connection: expansion, freedom, hope, strength, and aliveness. One way we resource our clients is to reflect to them when they are able to stay in states of connection for longer periods of time. As people experience greater internal organization, they feel less compelled by old strategies of disconnection. Instead of relying on adaptive survival strategies to control their lives, they experience increasing agency and choice.

When we look a little deeper into the timing of developmental risk, a powerful observation emerges. The basic finding is that the experiences of the first two months of life have a disproportionately important impact on your long-term health and development. This has to do with the remarkably rapid growth of the brain early in life, and the organization of those all-important core regulatory networks

The experience of a secure sense of Self, grounded in healthy attachment and separation-individuation, leads to the ability to tolerate a wide range of internal states, including the sensations of distress that accompany environmental challenges. It also leads to the capacity to hold both frustrating and pleasurable aspects of life experiences simultaneously. This reflects increased psychobiological capacity, or what has traditionally been referred to as resiliency.

Complex trauma results from chronic, long-term exposure to relational and emotional trauma in which an individual has little or no control—in other words, experiences no self-agency—and from which there is little or no hope of escape—in other words, experiences helplessness. Relational and emotional trauma lead to profound changes in neurological development and functioning, which causes significant problems in a person’s life in such areas as family, relationships, education, and occupation.