Questions frequently asked
about
recovering from childhood trauma
A: There
is a common belief system around at the moment which says that the past
can just be 'let go of'. What the people who propose this don't
understand is that we are shaped by our upbringing at a very deep and
biological level. When we are raised within a dysfunctional
family system, and even optimistically this means over 95% of Western families, it can require some significant and specific attention in order
to recover from the impact of this.
The belief that one can
'snap out of it' is another erroneous one proposed by people who either don't realise the implications of unhealed past trauma or else themselves have not yet been able to actually address issues from their own personal
history and therefore have an emotional investment in not letting you address
yours either.
You will shortly find information on this website
about the biological changes to the brain, autonomic nervous system,
hormone, cardio-vascular and immune systems directly linked to growing up in a dysfunctional family and which cannot be ignored.
A: Each
person is an individual and has their own unique needs. Having said
that, there are a number of common areas that are likely to require attention.
Firstly
you need to begin to understand that something has happened to you, it
was not your fault, nevertheless you are left with it's legacy. This is
called 'coming out of denial' by many people.
In order to do this it
is important to have at least some people and resources around you who can support
you. This is likely to include a specialist therapist who understands the issues involved and it may also mean attend groups and workshops focused specifically on recovering from your childhood, which is not the same as a 12 Step meeting.
12 step groups by themselves are usually not sufficient for recovery from significant childhood trauma. They can be useful in early recovery to stabalise symptoms and to help a person stay away from addictions before entering a more extensive and deeper recovery program.
Reading
books by people experienced in the field such as John Bradshaw and
Charles Whitfield is important as you can learn more about the
actual issues involved and also then how to recover from them.
Simply reading books on their own however is not sufficient
- your damage was sustained in relationship with others and it is in
relationship with safe enough others that you will aid your recovery.
There are links to useful reading and other material on the resources links page.
There
is now a growing realisation of the role of the of non-touch body
psychotherapy as a powerful pathway to recovery. This is partly because when you have a
feeling, where do you feel it? you feel it in your body, and by using body
psychotherapy it is possible to by-pass some of the strategies set up in the past as part of how you survived and go directly to the core of problems.
There
is also a greater understanding of ways to work with the human energy
field to help clear the past and this type of work can be a useful
addition.
With any of these it is important that the
practitioner/therapist has an understanding of the issues involved
in recovery from childhood trauma and has also been through their own
experiential recovery process.
Many 'highly qualified' people have not yet done
either and are not useful for recovery, and conversely a person who seemingly has a basic qualification may actually be a very skilled companion on your journey to recovery.
All together a package that includes: one to one
therapy with a specialist therapist, attending a recovery based therapy group,
going to relevant workshops and courses, and reading books by people really experienced in
recovery is going to significantly improve your healing.
A:
If you have ever been a car when it has a flat tyre you will know how
much more bumpy and unstable the car becomes. At best the car can limp
along - that is until there is a good tyre on it again. Well if you
have grown up within a dysfunctional family you will have one or more
tyres on the vehicle of 'you' that are giving you an unnecessarily bumpy ride in life.
For
some people the tyres are simply a little low so their whilst they can
get along they are held back from their full potential.
If
you like you can look at it as though such people are expressing into
the world in low definition, like a low definition TV. You can see a
film
on it but the richness and depth of colour is missing and it seems
'flat'.
Millions of people carry on their whole lives with reduced capacity, when they
could in fact switch up to experiencing the world in High Definition
once they were no longer held back by their past.
For
others their journey is made so difficult that they have pretty much
come to a stop and cannot really avoid addressing the issues from their
childhood, and paradoxically such a person can come out the other side
of their recovery process able to enjoy and express the richness of
life in a way that is usually not even dreamed of.
I find it
interesting to observe that if you get a flat tyre whilst driving nobody in their right mind says "Well you got that flat back down the
road so you mustn't dwell on the past but carry on regardless" !! and
yet that's exactly what is often the belief about healing from 'back
down the road' in your past.
Albert Einstein said that "The only source of knowledge is experience"
and when a person shuts themselves off from the felt experience of their
childhood, as they must do in order to survive a dysfunctional family,
their access to knowledge in the present is also shut down into dogma.
Recovery opens the door to knowledge, growth, health, creativity, relationships, energy, wisdom and happiness.
A:
Many areas and topics will be visited as you recover, and you will come
to experientially understand the role of co-dependence, boundaries,
shame, fear, grief, distorted thinking, unconscious patterns in relationships, addictions, trust, safety, body armouring, love........ and much
much more as you recover from your past and grow into a future that you
could never have envisioned.
It is not because you are not intelligent
that it cannot be envisioned, but because you will become a whole new
you. A caterpillar cannot imagine what it is like to become a butterfly with wings and
be able to fly.
A: Both
of these beliefs are designed to avoid looking at, and then having to address, the large scale
dysfunction within society.
They are also part of the belief system
that makes the 'victim' responsible for what happened to them. This is
in itself a strategy to avoid underlying feelings of helplessness and
impotence at what happened.
Until
you fully embrace what happened to you you cannot fully mourn it, and
until you can fully mourn it you cannot finally be free.
If a person is given a healthy
enough home, community and societal environment in which to grow up within they will
automatically, and organically, go through their natural developmental stages
and blossom into their full potential as part of an ongoing journey throughout their whole life.
Going through a recovery process allows you to pick up the pieces of 'you' that got 'left
behind', process these and then integrate them. Then you get a life
which can be truly soulful.
A:
What a diagnoses does is ring-fence a variety of symptoms and then give
that collection of symptoms a name such as Bi-Polar, Depression, Anxiety or OCD and the many others.
However when examined the symptoms are most usually those of
unhealed childhood issues and once these past issues have been appropriately
addressed, the symptoms begin to disappear and can clear up completely.
There is a belief that these disorders are simply biological or genetic and caused by a chemical imbalance and so require medication. What people who hold this belief don't realise is that when you address unhealed childhood issues your biology changes automatically anyway. The mind, emotions and body are constantly involved in a 3 way and bi-directional dialogue
Until you have actually, and actively, addressed the past no-one can be in a position to know exactly what medication might, or might not, ever be needed.
The more life destroying the symptoms, in general, the more issues from childhood are likely to be involved.
NEW Since this was written I have added a new page to the site on the connection between childhood trauma and adult mental health problems.Childhood Trauma & Mental Health
T.E.A.M
Recovery from childhood trauma takes T.E.A.M.
Time
Education
Application
Money
Time
Recovery
takes time, however what is less recognised is that time itself is not sufficient, it is what you actually do with the time that is important.
You
will need to set aside a significant amount of time specifically for
your recovery and find a therapist specialising in trauma, there are
only a few, and then spend as much time working with them as is possible.
General
therapy, 12 step groups etc. will not be sufficient if the trauma is
the result of severe and long term child abuse including sexual abuse,
physical violence, emotional deprivation or psychological abuse etc, as
recovery requires very specialised knowledge and skills.
Spending time on yourself can go against
toxic messages given to you by your abusers - which can make recovery
more difficult as it is erroneously seen as ‘self indulgent’
There are no 'one minute'
processes that will do the recovery for you - but if you work through
the issues involved in your personal recovery you can process, and
finally integrate, what happened to you.
At which point the past will
no longer have the hold it once had over you.
Education
You will be learning about what actually happened to you in your
childhood so that you can recover from the fear, shame and low self
esteem that got set up because of it, You will be learning how to connect with
yourself and maintain your internal boundaries, you will be learning
the stages involves in actually working through what happened to you,
you will be learning how to connect with , and relate to, people and the world in a whole new way - and most of all you will be learning to love who you really are.
Application - 'it will work if you will work'
Recovery
takes application and effort. Application to consistently self- care, application to attend
therapy sessions regularly, effort to explore issues at depth and
perhaps travel long distances to see a specialist or attend workshops.
Spending effort on yourself can be difficult as you may have internal
unconscious messages not to focus on yourself and your needs.
You might also need to budget your energy so that you can get the most out of healing opportunities.
Some of the common ways to avoid recovering is to read books about recovery without doing the exercises, or go to a few 12 Step Meetings,
or think about recovery now and then.
If you have significant childhood
trauma just doing this will not be sufficient for you to recover.
Money
You
cannot recover on your own, your childhood trauma happened in relationship
with others and it is in relationship with safe enough others, including your
therapist, that you will heal.
When
you
work with an experienced therapist they are going to facilitate your
escape from the traps of your childhood that are laid down within your unconscious - however specialists will have undertaken an in depth recovery process of their own, together with a decade or more of training and experience - and this cost money, often tens of thousands of pounds.
You will also need to almost certainly buy a number of books and attend courses and workshops to give you the information, tools and support you need.
For some people low self esteem can make it difficult to spend money on themselves, and whilst it is important not to overstretch your budget, it is equally
important not to limit yourself as a false economy .
Consider what your
priorities really are and also make sure that you are not repeating patterns
of deprivation from the past.
Sometimes I have heard a person say that they cannot afford to go into
recovery, whereas the reality may be that they cannot afford not to.
On this site you will find details of a number of resources I have
created to facilitate your recovery..... and I continue to adapt and
improve these and add more each year.