Be A Smart Consumer: Understand Shock vs Developmental Trauma
You see it everywhere. Military veterans return home with it. Families break apart and relationships become violent. School teaches see its consequences daily in their classrooms.
Perhaps, you, too, have experienced an overwhelming or traumatic event and now you want some counseling help. Being informed about shock and developmental trauma is one way to become a smart consumer. Having an understanding of these two forms of trauma can be a starting point for a dialog with a perspective therapist. It can guide you as you seek to learn more about the therapist’s understanding of trauma and how she imagines she might work with you. Your increased awareness about these two categories may save you precious time, money and avoid the possibility of being misdiagnosed. In this article I examine the causes of shock and developmental trauma; how they affect you and some of the elements of effective therapy.
Shock trauma results from feeling overwhelmed usually by just one event. The event is usually sudden and unexpected with a distinct beginning and end, and it usually is over relatively quickly. It abruptly interrupts the flow of life and you feel frozen in the event. As a result, you feel as though your world has suddenly fallen apart or shattered.
Many kinds of events can lead to shock trauma. These include:
· falls
· accident,
· assault
· suffocation
· acts of war
· near drowning
· natural disaster
· invasive medical procedure
Shock trauma can occur in children and adults who witness or experience these events. An intense shock trauma or a series of shock traumas have the potential, however, of becoming developmental traumas in children.
DEVELOPMENTAL TRAUMA
Developmental trauma results from events that are so overwhelming to a child that her nervous system cannot mature in an age appropriate manner. The disruption in her nervous system is often great enough to cause long-lasting changes and delays in her physical maturation, behavior and her capacity to think, handle emotions and to socialize with others. If the abuse is sever and depending on the age of the child at the time of the abuse, the child’s brain structure may be physically damaged.
Some childhood experiences that can lead to developmental trauma include:
· neglect
· prenatal or perinatal trauma
· loss of a significant person during the early childhood years.
· physical, sexual or emotional abuse
The abuse, neglect or loss impairs how a child bonds or attaches to her caretaker and this may affect the child in two significant ways. A child is born wanting to be seen and understood by her caretaker. If this does not happen when the child is young, she may give up all attempts to reach out to others. She collapses inwardly, becomes emotionally numb or dissociated.
Second, a child’s nervous system, up until the age of two, does not have capacity to self soothe. She must rely on a caretaker to guide her to a calmer state. If the caretaker is unable to do so because she is too dysregulated and she is frequently angry, anxious or depressed, then the child’s brain may not develop properly. As a result, the child grows up with a decreased capacity to control her emotions and behaviors. To cope, the adult may either avoid situations, which provoke strong emotions or act them out impulsively. This can lead to social isolation or frequent conflicts with other. In conclusion, if the child cannot trust that the caretaker will be there consistently; be there at all; or without causing intense fear, the child will find ways to adapt to the abusive or neglectful behavior that can seriously impair her ability to function as an adult.
Shock trauma interferes with your ability to easily transition between feeling upset, anxious or depressed and feeling relaxed. Using the analogy of a car, the shock trauma can leave you feeling as though you suddenly pushed your foot to the accelerator or slammed on the brake and then the pedal got stuck there. Other times, the symptoms are similar to when you learned how to drive a stick shift; you feel jerked back and forth between going fast, which you experience as anxiety or mania, and then crashing to a halt which you experience as depression. This alteration in moods and behavior often mimics that of manic-depressive or bipolar disorder.
Symptoms of shock trauma include:
· rage
· exhaustion
· panic attacks
· depression
· withdrawal from family or friends
· loss of interest in activities you use to enjoy
· sense of hopelessness and helplessness
· disturbing memories or flashbacks of the event
· feeling the need to be on guard even when there is no real threat
While these symptoms may last a long time, they do not interrupt one’s development into adulthood.
DEVELOPMENTAL TRAUMA
Adults whose caretakers did not bond with them as children can suffer emotionally and in the way they think about things. Symptoms may develop slowly and increase in intensity over time. It is not uncommon to have symptoms of developmental trauma without having specific memories of the underlying causes of the abuse. Although many of the symptoms are similar to those of shock trauma. their duration and intensity are generally greater. When these symptoms appear in children, clinicians may mistake them for childhood bipolar disorder or ADHD.
Symptoms of developmental trauma include:
· unstable or painful moods
· feeling of an uncontrollable fear
· feeling isolated or emotionally distant
· hypersensitivity to sounds, sights, touch
· difficulty bonding with your own children
· unrealistic dread of what might happen in the future
· feeling disconnected from parts of your body or from others
· inability to control emotions or to adapt easily to mild stress
· unpleasant sensations that move randomly throughout the body
· migraines, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue, chronic pain
· thoughts of not belonging on the planet, that everything is your fault and no one if there for you
SHOCK TRAUMA
Duration of Treatment:
This tends to be shorter than developmental trauma. In some cases, the symptoms may significantly ease after a few sessions. The duration of treatment can be longer if you have experienced multiple shock traumas.
While being able to recount what happened during the traumatic event may satisfy your need to know, it will not significantly reduce the trauma symptoms. This will happen only when the body releases the tension that became trapped when the event occurred. A therapy that supports you to pay attention to body sensations at a pace that does not further overwhelm you will be the most effective in reducing the emotional, mental and physical pain of the traumatic event.
Techniques:
Each king of trauma therapy incorporates unique techniques and principles which influence how the therapist works. I have listed below some of those that I use as an SE therapist.
· Resourcing- inviting the nervous system to experience what it is like to feel calm and focused on the present moment. This can lead to you breathing more deeply, feeling tense muscles relax, or a slowing of your thoughts.
· Looping- moving gently between feeling calm and charged. When you are not overwhelmed, your body does this automatically. You get nervous about something then you relax; you are able to swing back and forth between different emotions without getting stuck.
· Titrating- inviting the system to experience just tiny bites of the traumatic material. If you tried to absorb the entire traumatic event at once, you could feel overwhelmed again.
· Discharging- allowing the nervous system to let go of unused energy that was roused when the threat came. This could be experienced as sensations like tingling, vibration or heat.
DEVELOPMENTAL TRAUMA
Duration of Treatment
Traumas during childhood have the potential to affect the entire central nervous system and thus the entire body. Consequently, the length of treatment may take months or years because of severe dysregulation that makes change hard to ‘stick”. Evaluating your progress at six and 12-month intervals instead of weekly may make the changes more obvious. The good news is the brain is extremely plastic. Even if you are in your 60’s, change is possible!
Techniques
Effective techniques include those listed above as well as the following:
· Work with a team of healthcare providers including homeopaths, naturopaths, psychiatrists. Their expertise can help you to address the trauma symptoms holistically.
· Learn techniques on how to recognize when you are becoming stressed and how to settle your nervous system. Meditation, yoga and reading can supplement what you learn during therapy.
· Celebrate any reduction, however small, in the intensity of the symptoms. This will help you to become less discouraged.
· Avoid labeling yourself as a failure when minor shock trauma happens. As your system becomes stronger and more stable, you will be less overwhelmed by relatively minor events.
· Avoid regressing into childlike states during which you lose awareness of what is happening in the moment. This can prevent further retraumatization.
· As your system relaxes, know that terror, rage and shame that you have held in for years may come up. The presence of these feelings does not mean you are a bad person.
· Grieve what you missed as a child. Childhood traumas can cause you to miss out on the joys of childhood.
Summary
1. The causes of shock and developmental traumas are different. Shock trauma results from one distinct event. Developmental traumas usually occur over a longer period of time and they interfere with the maturation of the child.
2. Symptoms of shock and developmental traumas are similar, but those of developmental trauma can affect the entire body and be more intense and last longer.
3. Developmental trauma tends to disrupt the nervous system to a greater degree than shock trauma and treatment can take longer.
Next Step?
If you would like to read more about developmental trauma, consider the books:
Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing by Peter Levine, PhD and Maggie Kline, MS MFT. Peter Levine is the founder of Somatic Experiencing and Maggie Kline is an instructor of SE.
The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are by Daniel Siegel, MD
If you would like to learn more about SE, contact the Foundation for Human Enrichment at www.TraumaHealing.com or call me at 720-635-7943. I offer a complimentary 30- minute consultation to help you decide if this approach will work for you.
