the Unresolved Childhood Trauma
To improve adulthood’s mental health, childhood trauma should be treated seriously.
The formation of trauma
Childhood trauma is defined as an event that is dangerous or extremely stressful, impacting a child’s life negatively. The result of the trauma would often lead to physical or mental impairment of a child. The terror and desperation will stay inside a child’s mind for a long time, leading to dysfunction in daily life: unwillingness to speak to people, fear of going outdoors, and feeling of insecurity all the time, etc. Typical traumatic events are physical, sexual, or psychological abuse. The most damage a child could have is from family members because family members are the only people a child could trust before he/she went to school. Natural disasters, car or plane crashes, war, witnessing a death, murder or suicide, kidnapping, rape, shootings, incest, fires, severe neglect, hostage situations are other influential traumatic events. When situations such as natural disasters are inevitable, it could cause more horror and pain for children because they consider that the events could happen again that they have no control over it.
"Childhood Dream" by Ali Sabbagh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYBUY1kZpf8
Neglect in Children
It is one of the typical traumas that a child might receive from parents because they might not notice that they have harmed their child’s mental state. A child’s relationship with their caregiver—whether their parents, grandparents, or otherwise—is vital to their emotional and physical health(Morin, 2020). Neglect takes place when a child does not receive the comfort and nourishment needed in their early years of life(Staff, 2012). For example, when a child needs parents’ praise after he had done the required work offered by his parents, the neglect from parents--- when his parents might be having a conversation with guests--- could make the child feel disappointed. He might be confused and grieved because he expected his parents’ care as usual. The unstable caring will make his mind sensitive because he does not want to miss every chance of getting noticed. When a child did not receive enough care from his parents, his personality was influenced gradually by neglect: he might become more introversive or irritable, depending on his temperament. To prevent the harm from neglect, a child might stop the desire for wanting attention from parents, or he might also take unusual actions to attract parents’ attention. This trend could continue if parents persist in not paying attention to children. It is the reason for the adulthood maladaptation of daily life, that children who grew up from neglect from carers are unable to identify others’ emotions or care for others.
The cause of trauma
What causes a person to have a traumatic memory is more complex than how childhood trauma is formed, because given the same condition, different people might react differently towards the stimuli of the trauma. While some people understandably crumble after extraordinarily harrowing events, others, like Eugenie have an extraordinary capacity to rebound and survive(Bond,2015). Eugenie lived in Kinshasa, passively being involved in the war and being arrested because she was working with the political opposition of Democratic Republic of Congo. She was locked in a darkened room, being treated degradedly. Luckily, she was able to escape by the orientation of a woman who took her to hospital and contacted her family. Afterward, she found out that she was pregnant that she did not know if the child is by her husband or the man who raped her in the locked room. At the same time, she heard that her brother is also missing. Her sister had been killed. People who experienced trauma are harder to recover to normal life, let alone undeveloped children. Their lives can revolve around their symptoms, which include nightmares, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, disrupted moods or cognition, hypervigilance and irritability(Bond, 2015). If the treatments are not given to the people who experienced significant stress from the trauma, the negative effect from the trauma could even sustain for more than a half-century later.
Even though there will be adverse outcomes of traumatic events, people are managed to be more resilient than expected. When Wessely’s team asked 1,000 Londoners about their emotional state in the days following the suicide bombings on 7 July 2005, only one in 100 said they felt they needed professional help(Bond, 2015). They could recover quickly out of the catastrophe, despite the fact of the horror the traumatic crisis brings. They do not seem to have been influenced by the catastrophe they have encountered in the past. Rather, their minds can endure more challenging problems than before. The past disasters have been a stimulator for the growth of their mindset. They could live even better after traumatic events. Therefore, what makes the difference between people who are more resilient and those who are not? It seems the ones who respond best are able to re-imagine their lives in the most positive ways(Bond, 2015).
The solutions towards Childhood trauma
Before traumatic events, everyone seems to have equal justice. People who did not experience traumatic events are lucky because sometimes disasters can not be controlled by human beings. They were born to have the conditions for happiness, and they remain at an overall high happiness level throughout the lives compared to people who had experienced traumatic events. For less lucky people, especially for people who experienced horrific events during childhood, the traumas cannot be interpreted well because children’s minds had not developed maturely. Children might need a solution or explanation of the event so that their minds would be comforted that the event might not happen again in the future. They suffered from the memories because they could not give an appropriate reason for the event. This situation could lead to dysfunction of daily lives including autism and depression. It could be a vicious circle if the anguish children received were not treated carefully that the symptoms of depression or autism could draw more pain towards children’s minds and bodies. To reduce the pain to a minimum extent, adults who experienced childhood trauma need more courage to accept the difficulties the trauma produced.
There are various ways for adults who were given unfair treatment during childhood to cope with the devil in the past. Noticing the existence of trauma is the first step of the treatment, as some people might not realize that past childhood trauma had influenced them. Identifying and treating persons who have been affected by such experiences may have substantial value in our evolving efforts to prevent suicide(Dube et al,2001). Because of the nature of unpredictable events happening in childhood, accepting the events would be helpful to deal with the pain of not believing the events had happened. As the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl said: “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”, the key step to reducing the pain of trauma is to accept it. Social connection is another helpful method to cure the wounds of trauma. Social connection is an effective remedy not only because of the comfort it brings, but also because it can help people reach out beyond their own fear and discordance to something grander and more meaningful, a kind of self-transcendence(Bond, 2015). Hearing from different groups of people’s perspectives towards one event, survivors from past traumas would change their original cognitive thinking that they might treat the event more positively. For example, people who were once neglected by their parents when they were young might not want to rely on any other people. After hearing other peers’ perspectives who have the same experiences towards childhood neglect, their original cognitive thinking might turn to become more positive that they do not treat the past traumatic memories as seriously as before. As Baker et al(2009) mentioned, It will be important to establish collaborative partnerships among practitioners, community-based agencies, policymakers, and researchers to develop intervention strategies that consider the relationship between trauma and health. Sharing the experience will ease the pain of the trauma between both the sharers and listeners. Being patient is another key aspect of relieving the pain of childhood trauma. Because of different personalities among people, they need time to recover. When you’ve been seriously hurt as a child you develop out-of-control emotions, hopelessness, defense mechanisms and warped perceptions that are difficult to let go of(Staff, 2009). Even though adults might realize the meaning of childhood trauma and become less tortured, they might still become anguished after a certain period because of biological systems that worked inside their minds. Someone is able to endure the pain of the wounds, but he cannot avoid the pain when it comes. Therefore a period is needed to restore from the trauma.
Experiencing Childhood Trauma is Ordinary
Though several types of research indicated that childhood trauma could lead to the harm of adulthood mental and physical health, a person could maintain a healthy living state if he could change his mind to stay positive. Experienced adversity, whether it is recalled or not, increases the risk for poor physical and cognitive health at midlife(Reuben et al, 2016). It is inevitable to leave a dot inside the mind when a person experiences a trauma because the trauma can lead to a great amount of stress and pain, both physically and psychologically. Another study from Dube et al(2001) also found out that adverse childhood experiences dramatically increase the risk of attempting suicide. It is because the suicide’s pain might be less than the endurance of trauma memory while living. Even though it draws more challenges to a person’s life, what a person can choose when facing the traumatic events in the past is the attitude towards the present and future. An individual's perception of the past and present, accurate or not, plays a role as well, potentially influencing both prophecies of risk and their fulfillment(Reuben et al, 2016). It is not possible to change the truth of trauma that a person has encountered, but he could choose to maintain a more positive life. Generally, there will be a chance to maintain a healthy and active life if a person is willing to spend time practicing the listed methods above. It seemed unlucky that someone had encountered a childhood trauma when he was young, but it could be a road towards success if he could use the trauma to improve his perseverance of the difficulties he will face in the future.
Works Cited:
Baker Charlene K. et al. “Childhood trauma and adulthood physical health in Mexico” Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009, January 28, 2009
Bond, M. The secrets of extraordinary survivors. BBC Future. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150813-the-secrets-of-extraordinary-survivors. August 14,2015
Dube, Shanta R, et al. “Childhood Abuse, Household Dysfunction, and the Risk of Attempted Suicide Throughout the Life Span: Findings From the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study.” JAMA : the Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 286, no. 24, 2001, pp. 3089–3096.
Morin, Amy. “Treating the Effects of Childhood Trauma.” Verywell Mind. June 30, 2020. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-are-the-effects-of-childhood-trauma-4147640
Reuben, Aaron, et al. “Lest We Forget: Comparing Retrospective and Prospective Assessments of Adverse Childhood Experiences in the Prediction of Adult Health.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, vol. 57, no. 10, 2016, pp. 1103–1112.
Staff, Neglect, Abuse And Other Forms Of Childhood Trauma. Casa Palmera. September 17,2012. https://casapalmera.com/blog/types-and-effects-of-childhood-trauma/
Staff, 7 Ways to Heal Your Childhood Trauma. Casa Palmera. https://casapalmera.com/blog/7-ways-to-heal-your-childhood-trauma/ July 17,2009