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There is absolutely no one who can do for us what we need to do for ourselves to accomplish our degrees of healing as survivors of extremely traumatic infant-childhoods.  While I occasionally receive comments on this blog written by survivors who do not want their comments published, I encourage everyone to consider what reasons they have not to speak their own truth where others who have suffered similar early fates can read it.  Although nobody else can heal us, we all have something to say that can assist someone else who is making a healing journey that is similar to ours.

This morning I have been thinking that just as I say that it isn’t the specific details of our actual terrible and traumatic infant-childhoods that truly matters — because in the end what damaged us MOST is the altered physiological development that changed the very body-brain we grew in the middle of the hells we lived in — it must also be equally true that it doesn’t actually matter so much what actual ‘diagnosis’ could be given to those who harmed us, either.

Most often, if not always, our perpetrators suffered Trauma Altered Development in the midst of the hell that was their infant-childhood, too.  What I say we are looking for are the PATTERNS that remain in our altered-development body-brain.  Those patterns ARE physiological.  That does not mean that we can’t work to change how those patterns are affecting us in our adulthood.  It does mean that we need to learn as much as we can about how the terrible stress on our developing little body RESULTED in us having a different body-brain than we would have had if we had been born into a safe and secure early attachment home.

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When people ask me for a book to read that might help them all I can say is that there are books you can find by Google searching, but I don’t believe the information about Trauma Altered Development yet exists for the lay public.  That information does exist en masse on this blog and can be found by Google searching combinations of “stopthestorm” AND whatever words you might think of related to what you most need to know.

It is important to realize that all severely traumatized infant-children suffer altered physiological development IN COMBINATION with ‘saving factors’ or ‘resiliency factors’ that existed in their early lives.  These factors consist of PRIMARILY safe and secure relationships with someone in our earliest years that was able to love us appropriately.

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While I do not advocate a specific ‘return’ to an abusive early life to search out traumatic memories, I do recommend that survivors work to create what I call a TIMELINE of their early years (and on into adulthood when helpful).  The Disorganized-Disoriented insecure attachment pattern that many survivors end up with is CONTRASTED with the organized insecure attachment patterns.

There is a BIG difference between these two ‘versions’ of insecure attachment.  What is commonly called ‘Dismissive-Avoidant insecure attachment’ is an organized insecure attachment pattern.  The insecure attachment ‘disorder’ commonly called ‘Preoccupied’ is also an organized insecure attachment pattern.

While I see that all the insecure attachment patterns usually include degrees of dissociation, it is the Disorganized-Disoriented insecure attachment pattern that I believe is most closely tied with BODY-BASED feelings of panic, anxiety,and a reoccurring sense of overwhelming confusion and loss.

I also believe that all of the insecure attachment patterns-disorders (all being a direct result of unsafe and insecure early infant-caregiver attachment relationships, primarily with the mother) exist in combination with physiological changes that happened in development in response to trauma.  And I believe that all insecure attachment patterns also involve SOME degree of interference with the development of the SELF.

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Creating a TIMELINE of our early life (the best we can) begins to create a bridge over which we can walk back and forth so that we can make better sense of how we are and how we feel in our adult life.  Just as a smooth, happy, clear and positive connection with our SELF was tampered with during our earliest years, so also was our ability to tell a coherent life story/narrative of our self in our own life.

I think we end up being trapped in our adult life with an overlap of powerful, if not overwhelming feelings from our earliest life that continually contaminate our present experience of being alive in our body.  Part of how this continues to happen is that our body-brain did not grow itself with an ordinary sense of TIME built into it.  Trauma does that to us.  (Google search “stopthestorm peritrauma” to find related posts here.)

If we can begin to consciously create a sense of ‘ordinary time’ for ourselves we can begin to teach and instruct our body-brain that there is such a thing as a PAST-PRESENT-FUTURE time reality that nonsurvivors automatically know about — and our body-brain DOES NOT.  Creating a TIMELINE of our earliest life helps bring this more ‘ordinary’ sense of time into focus for us.

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I had the advantage of my mother’s letters that, as I transcribed them, at least gave me some points in time that could be matched with factual experiences.  A severe early trauma survivor’s life happens in the midst of trauma — which is the same thing as saying it happens in the midst of chaos.  CHAOS does not contain an ordinary pattern of the passage of time.

Dissociation is, I believe, directly connected to a sense of time-passing that is in shambles.  Nothing but overlap and contamination of present and past can happen if we cannot somehow manage to NAME the past as the past and the present as the present — because our body-brain was not built in/by/for trauma with this information included.  WE HAVE TO DO THIS CONSCIOUSLY.

This is all a very gradual process.  Somewhere in our time-confusion body-brain we have to make room for our SELF as it exists NOW with every breath we take and with our every heartbeat NOW to experience the good things of life!!  Our earliest years all but buried this SELF alive!  We are the only ones who can find ways to let our SELF live NOW.

And we can share with one another and with other people who care what this entire experience is like for us.  While we cannot walk another’s path or follow another’s journey exactly, there are far more experiences that we share that not as survivors.  This is because there are patterns of trauma-altered body-brain development changes that we share in common (to one degree or another).  Sharing our journey helps ALL of us gain more confidence that we are MAKING A POSITIVE DIFFERENCE both to our own self and to somebody else.

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NEXT POST:  +PITY HURTS, COMPASSION HEALS: KNOWING THE DIFFERENCE

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