TRAUMA: EXPERIENCING TERROR AND POWERLESSNESS
Trauma is defined like this:
‘A psychologically distressing event that is outside the range of usual human experience, often involving a sense of intense fear, terror and helplessness.’
Perry. (2011)
An alternative explanation is that:
‘Trauma happens when any experience stuns us like a bolt out of the blue; it overwhelms us, leaving us altered and disconnected from our bodies. Any coping mechanisms we may have had are undermined, and we feel utterly helpless and hopeless. It is as if our legs are knocked out from under us.’
Levine (2006)
Trauma can be defined as any experience which causes the person to feel terror, powerless and overwhelmed and that challenges their capacity to cope. It leaves an imprint on the person's nervous system, emotions, body, learning and relationships.
de Thierry. B. (2020)
Trauma can impact a person’s body, brain, memory, emotions, relationships, learning and behaviour.
What is trauma?
This website looks at trauma experienced as a child and the impact it can have. The way a child reacts is often buried in the subconscious of the adult and as such it can be helpful for the adult to recognise the symptoms in childhood and see what remains. So this website is aimed at adults helping children and young people who have experienced trauma and adults helping other adults who experienced trauma as a child.
Trauma can be defined as something that happens which causes terror and powerlessness. When a child experiences events that make them feel powerless and terrified such as constant anger in the home, an accident, domestic abuse, abuse, neglect, being fostered, adoption and the transitions (the reason for the adoption), rape, a parent with mental health issues, a family member being seriously or terminally ill, the death of a parent or sibling etc.
The good news is that people can recover from the impact of trauma when we can understand more about it.
Children often feel powerless because they want to ‘fix’ the problem but they realise they can’t. Sadly children also tend to blame themselves when things go wrong because they have an natural, inbuilt sense that they are the centre of their world (normal and healthy for young children) so when things go wrong, they draw the conclusion that it must be their fault. This adds to their feelings of fear and means that it can be powerful to say and repeat in gentle conversations with them that it isn’t their fault.
Adults do not just recover from their trauma because they have a good job or a new family- the trauma leaves an imprint on them and behaviours and trauma symptoms which can be life hindering. They can recover but usually need some professional trauma recovery help or someone to help navigate them along the road of trauma recovery.
Telling us what happened
Some traumatic events are such that the adults involved with the child know what happened to them (usually things like divorce, parent with mental health, car crash, hospitalisation of parent, parent in prison, death in the family etc). Other experiences eventually come to light because someone else tells a caring adult or the child themselves finds the courage to tell. At other times the child and the parents may not be aware that the child is experiencing trauma because it could be a familiar home setting to the adults- such as neglect or domestic abuse, emotional abuse, manipulation or there could be blatant threats and reasons that the child just can’t tell anyone.
Children don’t often tell people what is going on unless there is a reason to. They tend to try and make sense of it through their play.
How do we know if they are traumatised by what’s happened?
Children don't often know how to let us know verbally how they feel when they are frightened and so we learn to recognise that it is the behaviour that often tells us that something is worrying them instead. We don’t want to draw conclusions or jump to any conclusions and we certainly never want to make an accusation or secretly have concerns about a child’s home life. We need to work in teams, where we are professional and confidential and follow safeguarding policies around how and when we seek external support, guidance and help.
When children are scared they often don't even realise that they are frightened because coping mechanisms kick in to protect them from feeling some of these feelings. Instead they can exhibit some things on the following list of trauma symptoms:
Cry a lot
Whine and moan more than usual
Have anxiety issues
Have problems with wetting, soiling
Irritable, restless, ants in their pants
Get angry, aggressive
Have separation anxiety, get clingy
Become withdrawn, they don't talk much
Sad, lacking in energy, lose interest in activities
Have friend and social problems
Struggle to concentrate at school
Act as it they are much younger than their physiological age
Hate you and love you
Have troubles with sleeping
Have low self esteem
Self-harm
Suicidal ideation
Eating disorders
Numbness, frozen
Difficulty sleeping
Have meltdowns that feel dramatic
Become dependent on alcohol or drugs
Sexual inappropriate behaviour
This list is not exhaustive, but shows the diversity of how children can respond to feeling very scared.
Written by Betsy de Thierry (2018)