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This is the concluding post (PART 4 – see links below to 1st 3 posts) about how Trauma Altered Development (TAD) changes an infant-child abuse survivor’s reaction to ALL trauma.   Van der Kolk writes about posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the book, Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body, and Brain – Hardcover (Jan 2003, W.W. Norton and Co.) by Daniel J. Siegel, Marion F. Solomon, and Marion Solomon, chapter 4 (pages 168-195) written by Bessel A. van der Kolk:  “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and The Nature of Trauma.”

In his concluding statement of his chapter, van der Kolk writes:

“The rediscovery of trauma as an etiological [causing] factor in mental disorders is only about 20 years old.  During this time there has been an explosion of knowledge about how experience shapes the CNS [Central Nervous System, including the brain] and the formation of the self.  Developments in the neurosciences have started to make significant contributions to our understanding of how the brain is shaped by experience, and how life itself continues to transform the ways biology is organized.”

Again, in talking about infant-child abuse survivors, I would throw the term ‘mental disorders’ out the window.  (Yet how did my mother’s TAD lead her to be HOW she was in the world?]  Trauma Altered Development (TAD) happens at birth (and before) as these trauma experiences shape the CNS and brain’s formation and ‘the formation of the self’.

We cannot minimize, ignore, deny or under estimate the power early trauma has to affect an infant-child’s development.  Van der Kolk is writing in 2003.  Many advances in research and discovery about the impact early experience has on forming an individual have been made in these intervening seven years.  Evidence of early trauma’s power to change people is piling up around us.

“How life itself continues to transform the ways biology is organized” has to be considered in the light that certain of our developmental stages, once passed through in our early life, cannot later be redone under better conditions.  Science has to sort out which is which – which changes are permanent and which changes can be altered at a later age.

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Van der Kolk continues:

“The study of trauma has probably been the single most fertile area within the disciplines of psychiatry and psychology in helping to develop a deeper understanding of the interrelationships among emotional, cognitive, social and biological forces that shape human development.  Starting with PTSD in adults, but expanding into early attachment and coping with overwhelming experiences in childhood, our field has discovered how certain experiences can “set” psychological expectations and biological selectivity.  Research in these areas has opened up entirely new insights into how extreme experiences throughout the lifecycle can have profound effects on memory, affect regulation, biological stress modulation, and interpersonal relatedions [sic].  These findings, in the context of the development of a range of new therapy approaches, are beginning to open up entirely new perspectives on how traumatized individuals can be helped to overcome their past.”

OK, I will first take issue with the last statement van der Kolk makes in his conclusion.  We have to sort out those with Trauma Altered Development (TAD) due to adaptation to extreme traumatic stress during the critical windows of their development from those who did not suffer from trauma that changed them in their development.  I belong to the first group.  Now that I know that fact, I can understand that I will NEVER be able to “overcome” my “past” in any fashion such as this author is suggesting here.

This is a critically important point for TAD survivors to understand.  Our traumatic infant-child experiences changed how we formed so that both the trauma experiences and our physiological responses to them are built into our body!  We cannot, obviously, leave our trauma changed body in our ‘past’, and any suggestion that we should or can do is worse than ludicrous.

I do not believe that any ‘help’ for me can start with PTSD in my adulthood.  For reasons pointed out in my previous posts on this topic (see below) I am no longer convinced that I even have PTSD.  I never had a pretrauma state from which to measure a posttraumatic state against – nor do I have a pretrauma state (or condition of my body) to return to.

Maybe it would help me understand myself better if I rework van der Kolk’s words so they make more sense to me as a TAD survivor:

“The study of trauma …[can help us] to develop a deeper understanding of the interrelationships among emotional, cognitive, social and biological forces that shape human development.  Starting with … early attachment and coping with overwhelming [malevolent, traumatic] experiences in childhood, our field has discovered how certain experiences …[form a developing infant-child body so that] psychological expectations and biological selectivity [are profoundly affected and permanently altered as a result].  Research in these areas has opened up entirely new insights into how extreme [traumatic] experiences throughout the lifecycle can have profound effects on memory, affect regulation, biological stress modulation, and interpersonal …[relations – but most definitely and profoundly when these experiences happen during development and change it so that all life experiences, including any later trauma experience, is processed in a different way]  These findings… are beginning to open up entirely new perspectives on how traumatized individuals [changed from birth cannot] …be helped to overcome their past.”

We cannot overcome our past.  We can begin to learn about the changes that happened to us so that we can begin to learn how to live well in spite of them.

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Interesting website my sister sent me the link to – am exploring it – has really COOL TRAUMA CHARTS!  Take a look at them, especially the third one which about describes how I feel all the time — and the way I felt for the entire first 18 years of my life — minus the hostility and rage because I did not have the luxury of that experience.  It is important to remember that depression is considered ‘an anxiety disorder’.

The experience of all these experiences related to trauma built themselves into our body through early infant-child maltreatment from our beginning.  The top right cluster of experiences on that bottom chart are ‘hyper’  or ‘GO’ sympathetic arm responses of our Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) and the lower left ones are the ‘hypo’ or ‘STOP’ parasympathetic ones (remember, like a ‘pair a brakes’).  Fundamental changes in how our ANS formed happened to us through our Trauma Altered Development (TAD).

Again, I have to consider this information through my Trauma Altered Development (TAD) severe infant-child abuse survivorhood filter – I do not have an ‘ordinary’ non-trauma built body – my nervous system does not have a safe, secure calm set point……I am different…..so how does this information apply to me/us?  We have to figure this out…..
Somatic Experiencing Foundation for Human Enrichment — Mission Statement

The Foundation for Human Enrichment – FHE is a non-profit, educational and research organization dedicated to the worldwide healing and prevention of trauma. We provide professional training in Somatic Experiencing and outreach to under served populations and victims of violence, war and natural disasters.

What is Somatic Experiencing® (SE)?

”Somatic Experiencing® is a body-awareness approach to trauma being taught throughout the world. It is the result of over forty years of observation, research, and hands-on development by Dr. Levine. Based upon the realization that human beings have an innate ability to overcome the effects of trauma, Somatic Experiencing has touched the lives of many thousands. SE® restores self-regulation, and returns a sense of aliveness, relaxation and wholeness to traumatized individuals who have had these precious gifts taken away. Peter has applied his work to combat veterans, rape survivors, Holocaust survivors, auto accident and post surgical trauma, chronic pain sufferers, and even to infants after suffering traumatic births.

This is the primary website for the SE training, support of health professionals in Somatic Experiencing® and connecting trauma victims to the approximately 5,000 SE® Practitioners across the globe.”

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FROM MY POINT OF VIEW — considered from the above:

“SE® restores self-regulation, and returns a sense of aliveness, relaxation and wholeness to traumatized individuals who have had these precious gifts taken away”

TAD survivors cannot be restored or returned to anything like what these presenters are describing.  “These precious gifts” were taken away from us from the time of our birth — or even before!!  We have to understand what this means to us — nobody is going to do it for us!!  I never had a ‘sense of aliveness, relaxation or wholeness’ ever formed into my body in the first place — or any ‘ordinary’ ability to self-regulate (formed into our body-nervous system-brain fundamentally through our caregiver attachment experiences before the age of one).  Nobody can give me back what I never had.

So, how do I FIND these ‘precious gifts’ for myself NOW?  My Trauma Altered Development is a consequence I have suffered from my entire life as a result of having had my Human Rights as a Child stripped from me and violated through 18 years of abuse, torment and trauma.

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This post follows:

From December 2, 2009 +PTSD AND SEVERE ABUSE SURVIVORSHIP – PART THREE

from November 30, 2009 +PTSD AND SEVERE ABUSE SURVIVORSHIP – PART TWO

from November 28, 2009 +PTSD AND SEVERE CHILD ABUSE SURVIVORSHIP – PART ONE

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PLEASE NOTE:  Do not take anything I say as a reason to alter any ongoing treatment, therapy or medication you are receiving.  Consult with your provider if you find something in my writing that brings questions to your mind regarding your health and well-being.

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OK, and this for FUN?

President Obama and ET?  “The Vatican Astrobiology conference from November 6-8 , for the first time legitimized discussion of extraterrestrial life and its implications for the Catholic Church.”

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