Experience of Trauma

The number one reason why people seek psychotherapy is the experience of having lived (or living) in trauma. The shame we feel at who we are, how we feel and what has happened to us and why it has happened that truly brings us to seek help.  We may not immediately identify our problem as the result of trauma or neglect, that label may come later with more analysis and objectivity.  Instead, what you may identify is a difficulty with relationships, self-esteem, eating disorders, alcohol and substance abuse, or any compulsive behavior, self-sabotage and/or self-destructive behavior.  What’s important to remember is we are not born with self-loathing or low self-esteem we learn this from how others have and do treat us.

The goal of in-depth psychotherapy is to teach us how to identify our needs, our feelings and our experience of us and the world we live in.

Psychotherapy creates a relationship where the therapist and patient are able to understand and learn how we came to be who we are and to challenge some of those false beliefs we have learned about ourselves.  The relationship is an interactive one where hopefully the patient doesn’t feel alone exploring topics and feelings that may be frightening.  People with histories of abuse often don’t feel safe, have trouble trusting others and have limited tools for solving problems.

We learned coping skills in our homes and schools as children and these tools should grow and develop.  Adults, who have been abused or neglected, find their tools to be limited and have been taught to ignore their needs and wants.  It may surprise you to think of an addiction as a coping tool but think how it can soothe and calm our pain.  Anger is another coping tool as it gets people to back up and stand clear; if I am not feeling safe I want what is threatening me to back up.  Learning how to communicate I find that I only have one speed for getting angry and that mode of expression is not getting the results.  The goal of communicating is to have my message heard and understood.  I need to learn more effective tools so my anger is not just blowing everybody away.

What is abuse?

To define abuse isn’t about blaming but to understand why we may always feel like someone is blaming us, or out to get us.  We have our feelings in a context that makes more sense and gives us options to choose our behaviors and not just always reacting to things.  It helps us to understand why we may feel and think the way we do.

It’s a struggle to understand how those behaviors have affected us.  From the safety of our lives now we can look back and rethink our experiences.  We may minimize or distance ourselves from those critical comments, from being ignored, or being left to fend for ourselves.  A key to healing is acknowledging our treatment, understanding how it impacted our self-worth and forgiving ourselves for assuming the blame.

We then try to empower our past experiences, such as being a latchkey kid, by saying that it toughened us up, that it built our self-confidence or independence.  However, research supports that being left on your own actually causes us to doubt our perceptions, feelings, and thoughts and lowers our self-esteem.  Latchkey children were forced to grow up too quickly and take on too much responsibility, and they were not allowed to be afraid.  When children are left to figure out their feelings on their own the best coping skill they have is their minds:  you change how you think and feel about something a lot better than you are able to change why you have to stay alone.  Slowly you learn to override what you think and feel in exchange for getting along.  As you grow up and develop intimate relationships, you may find it is difficult to form close relationships.  Trust has been broken and there is a fear to depend on anyone else.  A fear of feeling let down and rejected the way you did as a child when no one was around.

Some definitions of abuse.

Physical Abuse:

Touching someone’s body without permission, hitting, punching, pinching, slapping, tickling, pulling hair, hitting with objects, banging the head, so that marks are left on the person.  Punishment that may go too far, or what is often referred to as corporal punishment.  Punching someone to the point of knocking them off their feet, slamming them into walls or hard objects, strangling or choking someone.  Intimidating someone with the treat of violence, punching walls or throwing objects.  Also, you might think that because some other member of your family was receiving the blows you are not a victim of physical abuse, but the underlying fear is, “when will it be me?”

Emotional Abuse:

An umbrella term for the following abuses:

Verbal abuse includes screaming, name-calling, teasing, ridiculing, sarcasm and witnessing someone else receive verbal or any type of abuse.

Social abuse includes isolating the child, not allowing friends to come over or not allowing the child to visit others.  Indirect social abuse occurs when the child chooses to not have friends come over because the child may be embarrassed about home, a parent’s behavior, or it might not be a safe environment to bring other children into and the parents have indirectly communicated this to the children.  Mother and father might have passed out on the couch, depressed, angry, or some other handicap that makes it uncomfortable to have outsiders to the family home.

Neglect and Abandonment – Are the child’s dependency needs met?

Remember the child cannot survive without a caretaker.  The impact of neglect and abandonment is often harder for people to comprehend.  They often express relief at being left alone, felt it toughened them up and they became better people.  In some ways it’s true but they didn’t get to feel taken care off or protected and don’t expect to find that in other relationships.  They actually find themselves getting very uncomfortable when they are taken care off, feel safe and nurtured, as it’s such unfamiliar to them.

Intellectual Abuse:

Were you told you were stupid?  Were you told that you would never succeed?   When the child is not encouraged or supported to think independently, told they were stupid or incapable, not taught to problem solve, how to be accountable for your actions and thoughts and how to communicate is abuse. It also includes not being taught a philosophy or belief system in life.

Sexual Abuse:

Whenever an adult is being sexual with a child, it is abusive to the child.  Physical abuse is bodily sexual activity with a child or touching in a sexual manner.  When the perpetrator is a family member it is called incest, and when it is a non-family member it is called child molestation.  To coerce or guilt another adult into sexual activity is abusive.

Inappropriate seductive behavior by a parent toward a child, or any adult toward a child, an adult sharing explicit sexual information with a child (which only serves the adult and not the child), teasing the child during maturation, and making the child into a surrogate spouse.

Many people, who have been molested or experienced incest feel responsible for what happened, feel that they caused it to happen or wanted it to happen. I have also heard clients express acceptance since it was the only kind of attention that they received.  You are not responsible and it is not acceptable behavior.  A child will not seek out sexual encounters except what may be age-appropriate sex play with other children.  It is the adult’s responsibility to set appropriate boundaries and protect the child.