As children grow up, there are bad things that happen in life. Some are obvious, such as a natural disaster that destroys a home, physical abuse or the death of a parent. Others may also disturb a child’s sense of safety and well-being, such as violence in the community or parental drug abuse. Something as simple as being in a car accident or a child hearing frequent intense arguments between their parents can be traumatic for some children.
Learning to understand, process and cope with difficulties – even tragedies – is a natural part of a child’s development process. But sometimes children get confused. An experience or repeated experiences can leave a child with an overwhelming sense of fear and loss, making them feel that they do not have the security or control of their lives. For some children, these feelings become so intense that they impede their continued physical, emotional, social or intellectual development. Trauma is defined by the way a person reacts to certain events. So, what for one person can be traumatic, for another, it may not be. Some people can deal with the trauma and move on quickly. Others, however, may not be able to cope.
Addressing the issue of childhood constitutes a complex universe that refers us to a diversity of cultural, social, historical, political processes, economic, power relations and gender in a period of life of great importance. As the authors of the article called Complex Trauma in Childhood try to explain the difficulties some of their interviewees went through while they were in a foster care. The study was conducted in Australia, where according to the authors in 2013 the demand for out of home care services increased by 8.55% (Lynne McCormack, 2018). The method that the authors used was four adults who had been in foster care when they were children, now they are adults and their ages are above twenty-five years old respectively.
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All the participants were women. The results were that after being in foster care, participants in adulthood did not have the ability to trust others. Also, and important result was that although the participants negatively had a trauma in their childhood, they had a normal psychological development. The person who has been exposed to an environment of mistreatment, neglect, sexual abuse or any kind of harmful environment in childhood, will have had to develop a series of strategies to survive that in the best of cases can lead to a person who is known as resilient: has survived very adverse conditions as he could. However, sometimes, when these kids grow up and get out of these dangerous and traumatic situations, they tend to repeat the patterns that they have lived in some way in their childhood, although often they are not aware of it.
Traumatized kids sometimes have serious difficulties in distinguishing which relationships are safe and which are not, which are good, and which are not, which ones wants for their life and which ones are not. The same to set limits and be able to protect themselves, from what is harmful to their life. Traumatic experiences rigidify the boundaries or make it very difficult to put them in interpersonal relationships. As the authors state “it is more likely that neurological changes and distorted coping mechanism will be entrenched and future interpersonal relationships will be negatively affected” (2018).
In addition, many psychology manuals describe childhood traumatic events as events that endanger the life or integrity of people. For instance, attacks, rapes, accidents, deadly diseases, or robberies with violence, whether they are lived directly or closely witnessed. However, it has been seen that childhood trauma can come from any situation that a person has lived at a given time and for which they feel overwhelmed, without knowing how to assimilate that experience, which of being maintained over time, becomes traumatic. This study emphasizes the clinical repercussions for therapists. Their findings reveal opportunities to support psychological growth after a complex childhood trauma involving Out-of-Home-Care (2018).
Traumatic events evoke feelings of fear and helplessness, although each child manifests a different reaction according to their experience and development and cultural factors, this is what can be extremely traumatic for one child or less so for another. Some children may show signs of stress after the traumatic event, other children who do not show serious symptoms may feel a certain degree of emotional distress, which may worsen over time.
“The wide range of behaviors exhibited by young children impacted by trauma can present challenges in an early childhood education setting as effects may be seen in multiple domains: affective, behavioral, physiological, and relational” (Cheryl Holmes, 2015). Children are born with the need and desire to connect with the things around them. When teachers, medical professionals, parents and caregivers establish positive relationships with children from birth and during their first years of life, and value their different cultures and languages, children feel safe, thus laying the foundation for the development of social health and emotional.
This process affects how children know the world, express themselves, manage their emotions and establish positive relationships with others. For this reason, it is important that in the head start programs the personnel know how to distinguish the children that suffer from some trauma, in order to be able to intervene early. Head Start Trauma Smart helps young children, and the adults who care for them, to calmly face the difficult challenges of life by combining practical tools and effective coping strategies and practices. It is very important that teachers and caregivers are prepared and have the skills they need to help children who have been through trauma, this will help to improve the school environment for all children.
Children who have a traumatic experience are prepared to succeed in school and have the skills and relationships to be resilient in the future. Understanding and considering the specific needs of traumatized kids and knowing the level of their development can help them adjust their care, environment and daily activities. The parents who were surveyed and filled out the CBCL form reported an improvement in their children in externalized and internalized problems. HSTS is now being used in urban settings to explore how the intervention will work in settings with different cultures and availability of resources (2015).
Now, the study carried out by Wildschut, Swart, Langeland, Hooogendoorn, Smith, and Draijer 2018, propose a two-dimensional model that could serve as a guide to help people who are trauma survivors when they were children or suffered from emotional neglect. The model considers both the influence of trauma and emotional neglect in the development of traumatic disorders, Dissociative Disorders, Personality Disorders, and the spectrum of a sign of the possibility of treatment. The method they used was to recruit patients who were already in consultations with psychiatrists. One group consisted of forty-nine patients who were referred for having had a trauma in their childhood and who had a dissociative personality. The other group consisted of 101 patients who were referred for having personality disorder. A variety of structured interviews were used to measure the hypothesis of the researchers. The study gave three clusters which is identified as mild, severe and moderate.
Their hypothesis was confirmed because in the left quadrant of the clusters it was found that due to the lack of warmth by the mothers of the patients, these could be bound with the problems of dissociative and personality disorders. Once again it could be said that the trauma of a child comes in many presentations, the affective lack is the situation in which a child who has suffered or suffers from the lack of care of his mother, or a maternal substitute, and it lacks the affective attention and the necessary protection in the first years of life. This lack of warmth may be due to multiple circumstances in which the child is emotionally neglected. The authors recommend that in order to have more accurate results, future researchers should take more information from other agencies, such as protective youth services (2018).
As we have seen so far, childhood is a decisive and transcendent stage in the life of the human being. The physical and psychological impressions that are received during this stage leave lasting traces in the lives of those children. That is why the traumas of childhood completely permeate the personality and its influence extends over time. This does not mean that they cannot be overcome, or in the worst case that they cannot be overcome to a reasonable extent. That someone has lived a difficult childhood does not mean that he/she cannot lead a full life.
However, this usually requires therapeutic processes or deep personal development. Another one of the cases that involves the trauma in a child is the concept of body image which refers to the way in which one perceives, imagines, feels and acts with respect to one’s own body. This definition contemplates the perceptive aspects and the subjective aspects: satisfaction or dissatisfaction, worry, cognitive evaluation, anxiety and behavioral aspects (Mia Scheffersa, 2017).
In the article called negative body experience in women with trauma in early childhood: associations with the severity of the trauma and dissociation, the authors investigate cases of trauma in children and their repercussions to adulthood regarding body satisfaction (2017). In their research, they highlight important characteristics in a study of eighty patients, the majority being women. They used different measures such as, PTSD, Dissociative experiences, body attitude, body satisfaction, and body awareness. In the results, they found very significant results regarding the trauma in childhood and dissatisfaction with the body. Finding a relationship between the trauma received in children and their dissatisfaction with the body in some domains, such as, in body awareness, dissociation, and body attitude.
It would be important to emphasize that body image is the mental representation we make of our physical appearance and that we believe others have of us. It would be logical to think that the image one has of oneself should be equal to the real appearance because in the end one’s appearance is what it is. But this is not so simple: in fact, the body image of a person can be very different from its objective reality. One of the implications the authors recommend is that “…it will be useful to add self-report scales that measure body experience, as well as somatic dissociation to diagnostic tools that are already widely used and that focus on the severity of trauma symptoms and other comorbid psychopathologies” (2017).
Another type of trauma is that of children who have alcoholic parents. Alcoholic parents leave many traces in the minds of their children. The specificities of each case should always be observed, because the effects depend on the severity of the addiction and its manifestations, the age of the children, the position of the mother and the rest of the family and of other multiple factors. However, there are common patterns in the children of alcoholic parents and what varies is its intensity. Almost always these children grow up in an environment in which chaos predominates. His way of being and seeing the world is permeated by the experiences with alcoholism of his parents and all this leaves a mark on his way of relating to emotions (Susanne Stolzenburg, 2018).
These traces are difficult to detect, both for alcoholic parents and their children. They are installed underground in the personality and often are translated into apparently positive attitudes. However, deep down, there is an open wound that sooner or later must be treated and cured. Children of alcoholic parents usually have a very low self-esteem, limits in relationships with others ill-defined, lack of self-confidence and respect for others. It generates an environment of denial, isolation, excessive responsibility, anxiety, pain, guilt, humiliation, loss of childhood and, when they grow up, awareness of having lost it, shame, anger, psychosomatic problems, aggressiveness, impulsiveness and difficulties for develop emotionally and socially.
They become distrustful of themselves and of others, with those who learn not to tell; they tend not to express what they think or encourage and to be excessively complacent with others and disconnect from themselves. They usually choose badly in their personal relationships. In some cases, they isolate themselves, they do not know how to establish intimate relationships, they fear being hurt, they may be highly vulnerable and adopt defensive or challenging and manipulative positions. The study conducted by (Stolzenburg, et al., 2018) tries to explore if self-stigma in alcohol dependence is stronger in people who have had a trauma in their childhood. The study consisted on 60 in-patients and 26 outpatients.
The measurements were the SSAD scale, Child trauma questionnaire, depressive symptoms, and severity of alcohol dependence (2018). Their conclusions were accurate because in their hypothesis, the authors hypothesized that people who “had suffered a child trauma could have an impact on their self-stigma and make them more vulnerable by applying negative stereotypes to themselves” (2018). Their results show a relationship between the alcoholism of their parents and the trauma received when they were children, and in this way, those children, now adults, besides of applying negative stereotypes, they suffered from depression and loss of self-esteem. The authors recommend a detailed study to measure shame on people who suffer of this addiction and the measurement of other substances in addition to alcohol to compare the present study with others in the future.
As we will continue to see in the topic of trauma in childhood and its repercussions in adult life. The study conducted by (Mitchel, et al., 2017) inquires whether traumas in childhood increase the risk of elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) which causes obesity and inflammation in a pregnant woman. Now, through trauma we have seen that in childhood, we can understand those events that are frightening, dangerous, violent or life threatening and that happens to a child.
There are different types of traumatic experiences, for example, physical, sexual or psychological abuse; Negligence and bullying. It has been observed that these events can result in physical and psychological alterations for a lifetime. Of course, not every person exposed to adverse events during their childhood ends up developing a disorder, but it has been observed that their risk is greater. The researchers aimed to analyze if the type of trauma to which a person is exposed in childhood, or the period in which they had that experience, influenced in some way the risk of developing CRP during pregnancy. Their research consisted on eighty-four women from the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center (2017).
Participants were assessed about demographics, childhood trauma, depressive symptoms, and blood parameters. Based on a meta-analysis, in which 25 studies with a total of 881 participants, the researchers calculated that the risk of obesity was higher among adults who had been abused as children than in those with no history of trauma. These findings indicate causality, where abuse is the cause of obesity in the future. However, not all those who undergo abuse will develop obesity, and not all obese individuals have been abused, so there are other causes as well. At the same time, it is important to remember that child abuse is more common than we think, and that it must be brought to light.
These studies indicate that it is necessary to adopt a much more holistic approach in the treatment and prevention of obesity, where more attention is given to the child’s childhood, as well as the psychological and emotional aspects (2017).
This is how it happens with respect to the development of people and their mental health. Living with violence has negative consequences, fully documented, about physical health and is associated with a wide variety of chronic conditions, in addition to certain behaviors in individuals to having had some trauma in childhood.
Another type of trauma in childhood would be that considered in domestic violence and violence in the community and its relationship with the use of weapons. Gun violence is a phenomenon with high levels of lethality that afflicts many places and people (Wamser,Nanney,Conrad &Constans,2018). This type of violence that involves the use of firearms, seriously impacts on the welfare and quality of peoples’ life and societies, which represents an obstacle to human development.
This report offers evidence that individuals who live in communities where violence prevails, they are at increasing risk of a wide range of negative effects on health and behavior. In the context of violence prevention by firearms, research suggests that living in violent communities puts at risk the ability of residents to break intergenerational cycles of violence. Indeed, without large-scale interventions, a neighborhood becomes incapable of protecting itself against the perpetuation of a culture that is regulated by violence. According to the authors, exposure to childhood traumas, such as domestic violence and community violence, may increase the risk of assault, although this connection has not been investigated in the context of gun violence.
The purpose of the present study was to examine whether different ecologies of childhood trauma are related to greater participation of violence with firearms and risk factors of violence with firearms among people hospitalized for a firearm injury. The participants in this research were seventy-two victims of violence with firearms reported their participation in violence with weapons and risk factors of violence with weapons such as, possession of weapons, carrying weapons, arrests by firearms, impulsivity, and perceptions about violence when they were hospitalized because they were wounded by firearm. The results showed that exposure to childhood in the domestic and community violence was associated with a greater participation of violence with firearms, as well as with numerous risk factors of violence with firearms. (Wamser, et al., 2018).
Traumatic events in childhood, such as domestic and community violence, can be important risk causes for violence with firearms. The authors emphasize that childhood trauma is probably an important precedent for participation in violence with firearms. Childhood trauma often leads to violence with firearms and the development of risk factors for violence, which is important that childhood trauma is prevented. Understanding from the root the trauma of childhood in relation to violence with firearms and the risk factors for violence, can help to improve the efforts of early detection and prevention. It is necessary to determine whether trauma-related symptoms exacerbate the use of violence, and whether prompt attention to these symptoms can help reduce violence and related risk factors (2018). The trauma in childhood, as we have seen, is a range of different colors and each color has its own nuances.
For instance, empathy is the ability to understand both affectively and cognitively (Greenberg, Cohen, Rosenberg, Fonagy, & Rentfrow 2018), the situation that another person lives or experiences, this capacity is influenced by biological, social, cultural factors, among others. Therefore, not all the empathic level is the same, it can happen that empathy reaches very high levels due to life experiences that have deteriorated the social skills of a subject; one of them is a psychological trauma, which is defined as an event that exceeds the capabilities of the individual to assimilate and therefore leads to a psychological disorganization. The levels of empathy in a person can be modified by a wide variety of situations, including a traumatic experience.
A psychological trauma is an event that affects the individual not only emotionally, but at the neurological level as well. In the person’s brain there could be a trace that it is sometimes difficult to erase because not only processes of memory, such as the recording of the event in the amygdala, but also social factors such as support and the context that surrounds it afterwards. In order to determine the level of empathy in people who have suffered a trauma during their childhood, on this investigation, it was applied the Empathy Quotient and the Interpersonal. Reactivity Index. 387 Participants were recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. 117 were male and 269 were female, in addition, one was gender unspecified (Greenberg et al., 2018).
The results of this research provided interesting results since according to them, the trauma received in childhood has a connection with the high level of empathy in the people involved in this study. They highlight that these results could be connected to the fact that these people could have sought support, therefore , they were able to have social relations to ease their trauma (2018).Since this study was correlational, the authors emphasize the use of other studies that should include psychological mechanisms, altruism, longitudinal research, neurobiology, and other ethnicities (2018).
The study of personality since childhood and adolescence has always been treated with the precaution of not pathologizing the behavior of the youngest and not causing stigmas in them. However, this vision has made the study of adaptive behaviors, which could be framed within the early dysfunctional personality style, has not become a topic of interest, reflecting a lack of empirical evidence that allows us to intervene at a preventive level in risk personality patterns. This becomes even more relevant if one considers the importance that it would suggest being able to treat dysfunctional personality patterns and styles from the beginning, so that they do not have a greater chronicity that would generate a very high cost in the quality of life of children and adolescents.
Borderline personality disorder is one of the great challenges of psychiatry. Although research points to biological factors in its appearance, more and more experts emphasize the importance of childhood experiences. (Nieuwenhove, Truijens,Meganck, Cornelis, & Desmet, 2019). And, specifically, in the relationship with the main caregiver usually the mother, but in some cases the father. In fact, the influence of childhood traumatic experiences on personality disorders in adult life is clear, but there is little empirical evidence regarding the possibility that from childhood they would develop patterns that define a pathological personality; that is, that personality disorder can be defined as such from the beginning of adolescence.
In their article, the authors have pointed out that abused children tend to incorporate a negative model of internal representation of attachment figures, which can affect the development of the sense of self and relationships with others, poor socialization and deficit in their skills social (2019). In their study, they analyzed the case of a woman who had been mistreated as a child by her father. She attended therapy because she felt insecurity and instability with their relationships. Her therapist was a thirty-year-old woman. In their study, they analyzed the case of a woman who had been mistreated as a child. He attended therapy because she felt insecurity and instability with their relationships. His therapist was a thirty-year-old woman. Her therapy consisted on twenty sessions, one each week with a duration of 58.6 minutes. The authors emphasize the use of a therapy and its therapeutic alliance was an important part of the recovery of this person (2019).
As we have seen, the relationship between traumatic experiences in childhood and the later appearance in the adult of symptoms such as depression, is an observable fact in many patients which has awakened the interest of numerous lines of research. Both severe traumatic experiences such as being near death, rape, kidnapping or as prolonged exposure in childhood to other types of experiences such as family violence, parental rejection, insecure bond with parents for negligent care, sexual abuse, or abandonment, could create a condition or a chronic inability in adults to modulate their adaptation with emotions. “Amongst chronically depressed patients up to 80% are estimated to have experienced childhood trauma” (Negele, Kaufhold, & Leuzinger, 2016).
In the study conducted by (Negele et al, 2016), fifty-two patients thirty-five women and seventeen men who were diagnosed with depression and twenty-four licensed psychoanalysts were used. After using various types of assessments such as Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV, BDT-I, QIDS-C, GSI, and CTQ.
This exhaustive investigation has managed to predict with amazing success on average that a person whose childhood is marked by childhood traumas compared to a ‘healthy’ person that there is a link between childhood trauma and depression. The authors concluded that psychotherapy helps patients to better expose their traumas, thus having a better result in the lives of these people. The intention, precisely, is to try to find the causes. It is imperative to know the form that the childhood traumas affect the body and mind, leaving its mark. And the results so far are astounding as well as disturbing.
To conclude all things considered, trauma in childhood can have long-term effects on the quality and duration of a person’s life.
References
- Alexa Negele, J. K.-B. (2016). Childhood trauma from a patient and a psychoanalyst perspective: linking chronic depression to relational multiple trauma. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, 300-328.
- Amanda M. Mitchell, K. P. (2017). Examination of the role of obesity in the association between childhood trauma and inflammation during pregnancy. Health Psychology, 114-124.
- Cheryl Holmes, M. L. (2015). A Model for Creating a Supportive Trauma-Informed Culture for Children in Preschool Settings. J Child Fam Stud, 1650-1659.
- David M. Greenber, S. B.-C. (2018). Elevated empathy in adults following childhood trauma. Plos one, 1-13.
- Kimberly Van Nieuwenhove, F. T. (2019). Working Through Childhood Trauma-Related Interpersonal Patterns in Psychodynamic Treatment: An Evidence-Based Case Study. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 1-11.
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- Marleen Wildschut, S. S. (2018). Profiling Psychopathology of Patients Reporting Early Childhood Trauma and Emotional Neglect: Support for a Two-Dimensional Model? Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 1-9.
- Mia Scheffersa, M. H. (2017). Negative body experience in women with early childhood trauma: associations with trauma severity and dissociation. European journal of psychotraumatology, 1-9.
- Rachel Wamser, J. T. (2018). Childhood Trauma Exposure and Gun Violence Risk Factors Among Victims of Gun Violence. Psychological trauma: theory,research,practice, and policy, 99-106.
- Susanne Stolzenburg, P. W. (2018). Childhood Trauma and Self-Stigma of Alcohol Dependence: Applying the Progressive Model of Self-Stigma. Stigma and health, 417-423.
