Effects Of Childhood Interpersonal Trauma And Related Topics
“It was as if her life had been brought to a full stop: she couldn’t look forward, couldn’t picture what tomorrow might bring.” Ragnar Jonasson, The Darkness Those suffering from Complex PTSD may live their lives as if there is, literally, no tomorrow. This might include spending all of their money as …
Most of us are already familiar with the concept of the ‘fight or flight’ response to perceived danger, namely that when presented with a threat our bodies respond by preparing us to fight against it or run from it. This response served our ancestors if they came face-to-face with a dangerous predator or encountered a …
We have seen that prolonged and repetitive childhood trauma can change a person’s core beliefs about other people, themselves, and how the world works in profound ways. Those who perceived themselves to be rejected and/or betrayed by their parents in childhood may, as adults, struggle with abandonment issues and feelings of worthlessness. They may, too, …
Sometimes, people who have experienced significant and protracted childhood trauma e.g. in the form of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse may become fixated on their traumatic experiences and unconsciously addicted to recreating them in their adult lives. For example, those who suffered sexual abuse may become prostitutes (e.g. Finkelhor and Brown, 1985), and those who …
Find out about ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES (ACES): Taking the ACE test can help us to understand which of our childhood experiences may have caused us the most psychological damage. This is important as gaining insight into the possible causes of our emotional difficulties is a vital first step in our healing journey. Learn about THE …
Severe Physical Symptoms Of Complex PTSD May Prevent Or Impair Talk-Based Psychotherapy : If such physical symptoms of Complex PTSD are severe and remain unaddressed there is potential for them to prevent or impair talk-based psychotherapy. For example, in my own case my physical symptoms were so bad that I frequently either could not attend …
According to Mobbs, the brain consists of two areas involved in how we experience fear as shown below : It is becoming increasingly recognized that overactivity in the brain’s fear circuitry may be of fundamental relevance to not only complex-PTSD and PTSD, but to many other psychiatric disorders as well and it clearly follows, therefore, …
FIXATION ON THREAT Those with complex PTSD frequently find it very hard to prevent themselves by over-focusing, sometimes to an obsessive degree, on perceived threats, particularly threats that remind them of their childhood adverse experiences. And, because of such fixation, complex PTSD sufferers may find it extremely hard to redirect their attention to necessary, everyday …
Infantile amnesia, sometimes referred to as childhood amnesia, refers to the inability of adults to consciously remember personal experiences that contain information about what happened, when they happened, and where they happened (referred to as EPISODIC MEMORY). This forgetting/amnesia/impairment of episodic memory is thought to be due to a lack of development in the infantile …
INTENSE EMOTIONS, TRIGGERS, AND RESPONSES IN INDIVIDUALS WITH BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER (BPD). A study conducted by Cardona et al.(2021) involved eight people who had been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) who were monitored (the participants recorded their emotional experiences in a diary). over a period of twelve weeks in order to determine. What types …
Survivors of severe and protracted childhood trauma often find it difficult to control emotions in later life and these feelings can be very painful and overwhelming. Such emotional dysregulation is likely to be particularly prominent if one, as a result of one’s childhood experiences, has gone on to develop devastating conditions such as borderline personality …
A study (Werner Ph.D.) was carried out to investigate factors that protect children from the effects of traumatic stressors. The study comprised 700 children who were split up into two groups: GROUP 1: Children identified as being at low risk of significant psychological problems in later life as a result of traumatic childhood stressors. This …
If we grew up with a parent who treated one, essentially, as an ‘object’ to be constantly evaluated (for example, some children propelled into early stardom by their parents) we may grow into adults who constantly self-evaluate and perpetually fear the evaluation of others. This leaves such individuals vulnerable to proneness to deep feelings of …
Frightening And Frightened Parents Most people are aware that if children grow up in an environment in which they are constantly made to feel fearful (for example, due to parental abuse or the frequent witnessing of domestic violence) their emotional development is put at risk. However, many people are less aware that it is not …
Severe and protracted childhood trauma can lead to diagnoses later in life of complex PTSD and borderline personality disorder. there is a very large overlap between these two conditions and a major symptom of both can be extreme emotional over-reactivity (referred to by psychologists and psychiatrists as emotional lability). Both conditions are so serious that …
I spent many years in a state of unremitting, merciless, tormenting and excruciating agitation so I am all too familiar with how devastating and utterly debilitating the effects of stress can be. Indeed, I was left almost totally unable to function, even in the most basic ways. Powerful psychiatric drugs and ECT failed to …
RECOVERED MEMORIES: FALSE, FACTUAL, AND NARRATIVE Recovered memories (i.e. memories that have been repressed due to their traumatic nature but later, often with the intervention of a therapist, breakthrough into conscious awareness (having previously been, in effect, largely buried in the unconscious. FALSE MEMORIES Unfortunately, ‘recovered memories can sometimes be false (this can happen, for …
THE PROCESSING OF NORMAL MEMORIES: Normal memories that have been fully processed have a temporal context that enables us to remember when, or roughly when, they happened. In other words, the memories have what is sometimes figuratively referred to as a ‘date stamp.’ The ‘date stamp’ is attached to the memory the part of the …
Holistic psychology views the individual as a whole, indivisible entity who is more than the sum total of his constituent parts and must therefore be treated in ways that not only address mind and behavior but also other factors such as relationships, social and physical environment, lifestyle, and physical health. Lewis, 2009, in a literature …
In order to write the articles on this site, which now number nearly 600, I have spent a considerable amount of time researching how borderline personality disordered parents can adversely affect the psychological development of their children. For this post, therefore, I thought it might be interesting to simply list some of the descriptions …
Pain has 2 components: a physical component a psychological/emotional component Whilst the brain does not process physical and psychological pain in precisely the same manner, experiments involving neural pathways strongly suggest that the experience of both types of pain have a lot in common. Indeed, similar brain regions are involved with the processing of both …
Intrusive thoughts can be very distressing and a source of great mental pain. Such thoughts may sometimes just arrive in the mind spontaneously, or they might materialize as a result of a trigger that has reminded us if past traumatic experiences. However, the good news is that how we interpret these thoughts and our attitude …