Psychological

and Physiological

Trauma Research

Seize Your Journeys

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Traumatic stress is found in many competent, healthy, strong, good people.  No one can completely protect themselves from traumatic experiences.  Many people have long-lasting problems following exposure to trauma.  Up to 8% of persons will have PTSD at some time in their lives. People who react to traumas are not going crazy.  What is happening to them is part of a set of common symptoms and problems that are connected with being in a traumatic situation, and thus, is a normal reaction to abnormal events and experiences.  Having symptoms after a traumatic event is NOT a sign of personal weakness.  Given exposure to a trauma that is bad enough, probably all people would develop PTSD.

By understanding trauma symptoms better, a person can become less fearful of them and better able to manage them. By recognizing the effects of trauma and knowing more about symptoms, a person will be better able to decide about getting treatment.

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Secure Attachments as a Defense Against Trauma

“All people mature and thrive in a social context that has profound effects on how they cope with life’s stresses.  Particularly early in life, the social context plays a critical role in suffering an individual against stressful situations, and in building the psychological and biological capacities to deal with further stresses.  The primary function of parents can be thought of as helping children modulate their arousal by attuned and well-timed provision of playing, feeding, comforting, touching, looking, cleaning, and resting—in short, by teaching them skills that will gradually help them modulate their own arousal.  Secure attachment bonds serve as primary defenses against trauma-induced psychopathology in both children and adults (Finkelhor & Browne, 1984).  In children who have been exposed to severe stressors, the quality of the parental bond is probably the single most important determinant of long-term damage (McFarlane, 1988).”

van der Kolk, Bessel, Alexander C. McFarlane, and Lars Weisaeth, eds.  1996. Traumatic stress: The effects of overwhelming experience on mind, body, and society.  New York and London: Guilford Press. .p. 185

 Affect Dysregulation in Traumatized Individuals

“As children mature, they gradually become less vulnerable to over-stimulation and learn to tolerate higher levels of excitement.  Over time, their need for physical proximity to their primary caregivers to maintain comfort decreases, and children start spending more time playing with their peers and with their fathers (Field, 1985). Secure children learn how to take care of themselves effectively as long as the environment is more or less predictable; simultaneously, they learn how to get help when they are distressed.  In contrast, avoidant children learn how to organize their behavior effectively under ordinary conditions, but they remain unable to communicate or interpret emotional signals.  In other words, they know how to handle cognition, but not affect (Crittenden, 1994

            Cole and Putnam (1992) have proposed that people’s core concepts of themselves are defined to a substantial degree by their capacity to regulate their internal states and by their behavioral responses to external stress.  The lack of development, or loss, of self-regulatory processes in abused children leads to problems with self-definition: (1) disturbances of the sense of self, such as a sense of separateness, loss of autobiographical memories, and disturbances of body image; (2) poorly modulated affect and impulse control, including aggression against self and others; and (3) insecurity in relationships, such as trouble functioning in social settings; they tend either to draw attention to themselves or to withdraw from social interactions.  Thus, they tend to display either angry, threatening, fearless, acting-out behavior or meek, submissive, fearful, incompetent behavior.  Problems in articulating cause and effect make it hard for them to appreciate their own contributions to their problems and set the stage for paranoid attributions.”

van der Kolk, Bessel, Alexander C. McFarlane, and Lars Weisaeth, eds.  1996. Traumatic stress: The effects o overwhelming experience on mind, body, and society.  New York and London: Guilford Press. .p. 187

 Manifestations of the Absence of Self-Regulation

“The lack or loss of self-regulation is possibly the most far-reaching effect of psychological trauma in both children and adults.  The DSM-IV field trials for PTSD clearly demonstrated that the younger the age at which the trauma occurred, and the longer its duration, the more likely people were to have long-term problems with the regulation of anger, anxiety, and sexual impulses (van der Kolk, Roth, Pelcovitz, & Mandel, 1993).  Pitman, Orr, and Shalev (1993) have pointed out that in PTSD, hyperarousal goes well beyond simple conditioning.  The fact that the stimuli that precipitate emergency responses are not conditioned enough and that many triggers not directly related to the traumatic experience may precipitate extreme reactions is merely the beginning of the problem.  Loss/lack of self-regulation may be expressed in many different ways: as a loss of ability to focus on appropriate stimuli; as attentional problems; as an inability to inhibit action when aroused (loss of impulse control); or as uncontrollable feelings of rage, anger, or sadness.  The results of a study by McFarlane, Weber, and Clark (1993) of event-related potentials in people with PTSD illustrate these various effects.”

Van der Kolk, Bessel, Alexander C. McFarlane, and Lars Weisaeth, eds.  1996. Traumatic stress: The effects o overwhelming experience on mind, body, and society.  New York and London: Guilford Press. .p. 187

 Self-Mutilation

 Eating Disorders

 Substance Abuse

 Dissociation

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