Adaptations To Trauma

Many behaviors that are classified as psychiatric problems, including some obsessions, compulsions, and panic attacks, as well as most self-destructive behaviors, started out as strategies for self-protection. These adaptations to trauma can so interfere with the capacity to function that health-care providers and patients themselves often believe that full recovery is beyond reach. Viewing these symptoms as permanent disabilities narrows the focus of treatment to finding the proper drug regimen, which can lead to lifelong dependence— as though trauma survivors were like kidney patients on dialysis.

• Book:  The Body Keeps The Score
• Author:  Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.
• Kindle Location 5179-5183)

Stress Leads To Body Issues

Having a biological system that keeps pumping out stress hormones to deal with real or imagined threats leads to physical problems: sleep disturbances, headaches, unexplained pain, oversensitivity to touch or sound.

The Body Keeps The Score by Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk

Never Felt Safe Growing Up

The quote below in Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk's book, The Body Keeps The Score, is by far one of my favorites.  For those who never felt safe growing up, this one is for you.  If you're one of these people, then you know firsthand how true these words ring.

I am one of these people that grew up in a home that was anything but safe.  If I could have filmed every second from the time I was born until I left home, it would most likely be a horror flick.  There was not "safe moments" in our house and if there were, they were far and few between in my life.

 I concluded that, if you carry a memory of having felt safe with somebody long ago, the traces of that earlier affection can be reactivated in attuned relationships when you are an adult, whether these occur in daily life or in good therapy. However, if you lack a deep memory of feeling loved and safe, the receptors in the brain that respond to human kindness may simply fail to develop. If that is the case, how can people learn to calm themselves down and feel grounded in their bodies? - Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score.

Having a safe moment here and there doesn't do much when the world you live in is chaos.  When a father screams or makes threats.  When a parent abuses or threatens abuse.  When a sibling treats you in the same manner they have been treated, it means there are no safe moments.  Included in all of this is when you watch the violence and abuse and screaming that is taking place.

Move Beyond Trauma

From The Book

Title:  "The Body Keeps The Score"

Author:  Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk

While we all want to move beyond trauma, the part of our brain that is devoted to ensuring our survival (deep below our rational brain) is not very good at denial.

This book is available for purchase on Amazon.com.

Silence Trauma and Abuse

It's too easy to live in a society and civilization where we just don't talk about it.  You know - "it"!  We all know trauma and abuse happens, but it becomes far too easy to talk about the football game, the latest political threat we see, or some celebrity news gossip of the day.

Of course, I know we can't go around and talk about trauma and abuse every day.  Our world would really suck if we did.  Please don't think that's what I am referring to when I say we silence trauma and abuse.

This quote by Bessel Van der Kolk, M.D. sums it up very well.

We don’t really want to know what soldiers go through in combat. We do not really want to know how many children are being molested and abused in our own society or how many couples— almost a third, as it turns out— engage in violence at some point during their relationship. We want to think of families as safe havens in a heartless world and of our own country as populated by enlightened, civilized people. We prefer to believe that cruelty occurs only in faraway places like Darfur or the Congo. It is hard enough for observers to bear witness to pain. Is it any wonder, then, that the traumatized individuals themselves cannot tolerate remembering it and that they often resort to using drugs, alcohol, or self-mutilation to block out their unbearable knowledge? - Bessel Van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score:  Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing Of Trauma.

We care about soldiers when they return home, but we turn our back on them in the days that follow.  As soon as their nightmares filled with demons begin to exhibit themselves, we turn to our own happy places.  We fail to see the anguish they go through and how difficult it is for them to deal with PTSD.  We long to help, but we don't know how.  We long to make things better for them, but we distance ourselves from their hidden pain and suffering.