Soul Digging: Early Trauma

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Nowadays it is fashionable to weave various psychological terms into everyday tar-talk. The concept of trauma (as "depressive" and "bipolar") has long gone into the people. But little is understood what trauma is

Early trauma is always sudden. You cannot prepare for it. And in general - nothing. Because the child is still too small and weak for this event. Trauma brings the little man to the bottom of his own helplessness. The most common reaction is its absence. That is, the event is so sudden that it is not clear whether to be angry or defend, therefore internally it freezes. Emotions can catch up only later and then shame, fear or horror appear.

People with early trauma, to put it mildly, are not happy with the unexpected twists of fate. Everything should be in order and under control. Such a person always goes hand in hand with his own anxiety, and the need for maximum control becomes as necessary as air.

Don't assume that trauma is necessarily one big event. Often this is a series of constant drops on the crown of the head from a feeling of uselessness, one's own badness, guilt for doing something “wrong” all the time. Over time, such children turn into adults with fairly clear attitudes: "no one really cares about me", "any other is more valuable than me", "everyone needs to be liked."

Each such thought is a repetition of old traumas in real time. Working with these attitudes is not an easy task, because most often there is no memory about them and the question "why is Masha more important than you?" The answer is not found, and how to live without these questions is also not very clear.

Early trauma dramatically changes the feeling of the world around you. If before her the little person believes that he is loved, important, valuable and will be protected, then the trauma makes very harsh changes with a cleaver. The world ceases to be safe, a big loved one can hurt painfully, the body becomes shameful or dirty, and the small person himself becomes unworthy of love, attention and simply terrible.

In the adult life of such a traumatized child, a logical thing happens regularly - retraumatization. That is, the space around must be organized in such a way (unconsciously, of course) so that the emotional components of the trauma are repeated. And here it is not at all necessary that the events be repeated literally. Having cold parents who do only duty and do not give emotional warmth, you can easily find the same partners and wonder how it is. Having an alcoholic stepfather, you can easily find so far only a partner who loves to drink on weekends and soothe yourself with the absence of binges and beatings.

To be truly happy with these grown up traumatized children is a luxury that you cannot afford. Because the happiness sparkling in the sun was before the injury. There was a warm mother for whom you were the whole universe, safe adults who did not use your body, there was someone to lean on and with whom to build a halabuda out of blankets and chairs. And then it happened and life changed. Since that time, happiness has been such a harbinger of misfortune that will certainly happen.