Trauma Brain

Once it hit me square in the face that yes, my children suffered TRAUMA, I was able to learn a bit more about how it affects developing brains.  Sometimes, when I say to someone that my children have suffered trauma, they ask, "Oh, no, what happened to them?"  This might have been my thought before.  Now I want to scream at them (and at the past me) - they lost their primary care givers, their mama, their daddy, the people whom they most loved in the world without any ability to understand or control what was happening to them!  What else would need to happen for you to understand they had trauma?  My heart hurts just writing that.  What happened to them and countless other children was so traumatic for such vulnerable little brains trying to make sense of the world. What is a little brain to do when the floor drops from beneath their feet?  Rewire?  Halt?  Go backwards?  Disconnect?

Beyond Consequences, Logic and Control gave me the best understanding of the effect of trauma on a developing brain.  Here are some points that I want to remember from the book and from my attachment parenting therapist:

• traumatic memories get stored at the state level - part of the emotional, not the rational brain
• when triggered, children who have trauma backgrounds receive the information at the state level, which activates the "fight, flight or freeze" responses.  All negative behavior arises from an unconscious, fear-based state of stress (p.4).
• what may seem like a trivial thing to some, feels like life or death for those with a trauma brain and may induce reactions that are way over the top for the situation
• you learn self-soothing and how to emotionally regulate in the first couple of years of life