20/08/2021
The overall effect of trauma can be described as a “Loss in the feeling of aliveness, motivation, excitement, and purpose.”
If Children’s care givers neglect their needs, they learn to anticipate rejection and withdrawal. The child may learn to cope by blocking out their parental figures neglect or hostility and acting as if it doesn’t matter. But as Dr. Bessel van der Kolk explains “The Body Keeps the Score”. It remains in a state of hyper vigilance, prepared to protect from deprivation, or abandonment. This can have devastating effects leading the individual to feel empty and disconnected in other words “not feeling real inside”. When you suffer from this level of disconnection nothing matters. It becomes incredibly difficult to understand or attend to your own needs. Self-destructive behaviours such as self-harm, eating disorders and addiction may develop to compensate for these unmet childhood needs. Chronic emotional abuse and neglect can be just as devastating as physical and sexual abuse.
Through a neuroscience lens, brain-imaging studies of clients with chronic trauma have found abnormal increased activation of the insula. This area of the brain integrates and interprets information from sensory organs, which activate the amygdala the part of the brain that signals the nervous system into the fight, flight or freeze response.
If you have suffered trauma, these signals can fire most of the time. Without any conscious influence – for no apparent present-day reason you can feel angry, depressed, shut down, anxious or on edge. You may have a sense of impending doom always fearing that the worst will happen. These powerful emotions are generated as a survival response deep inside the brain and cannot be changed by reason or understanding.
True healing, recovery – coming back into connection can only occur when we synchronise the healing of the mind, brain and body. 🧠👤❤️🩹🌿
