AMAC

INFANT

Critical Developmental Question:

Will others meet my needs?

*pre-verbal trauma (minimal words or memory about trauma so it gets stored differently)

Early Childhood

• Age of curiousity

• All about new things

• Want to take care of self

Critical Developmental Question:

Can I do things myself or do I have to rely on others?

Preschool

• Desire to master things

• Develop a sense of judgement

• Risk taking behaviors (taking off training wheels)

Critical Developmental Question:

Am I good or am I bad?

*Negative beliefs tend to start forming here

School Age

• Aim for productivity instead of play for fun

• Self perception starts forming based on value

Critical Developmental Question:

How can I be good?

If I feel like I am bad, how can I not show it? (survival)

Adolesence

• Look at how they fit in society

• Future thinking

Critical Developmental Question:

Who am I and where am I going?

*Influenced by negative beliefs

Let's try and see for ourselves:

Mildly Distressing Event:

What does that say about you?

Can you think of another time you thought/believed that?

Can you remember the first time you believed that or thought that?

Ex: Sunny falling off countertop

NEGATIVE BELIEFS (negative cognition)

Negative Cognition become a “lens” through which we view and experience the world.

We begin to look for evidence of negative cognition, and the developing brain finds it in every space and every relationship—unless we experience effective shifts in cognition or interventions.

In the process of organizing distressing experiences and information, the developing brain looks to assign blame.

• This is your fault, something is wrong with you
• This is my fault, something is wrong with me.

Which Option provides a sense of power or ability to influence the situation?

Cleint Example #1

Ray

I started scouts when I was 8 years old. My parents were worried about me because I didn’t have any friends, and they wanted me to make friends. My scoutmaster always took a special interest in me and said it was because I reminded him of his favorite brother. He picked me up every week and dropped me off. He bought me my first camping gear because my parents couldn’t afford it. When he asked to sleep next to me at the first camp out, I felt really important. The other kids thought I was important too. In the middle of the night he started molesting me. I didn’t know what was happening, and was confused about what to do. I really did want him to like me. He told me that it wasn’t wrong because we cared about eachother. I did care about him, and I knew If I told anyone, I couldn’t come to scouts anymore. I knew if I told, I’d lose my scout friends.

Group Dialogue: What came up for you? What reactions did you notice in your body? Did you have any judgements or thougths about how Ray “should have felt or acted.” What made sense to you, or seemed congruent with Trauma exposure?

Client Example #2

Sarah

Every other weekend I had to go with my mom because my parents were divorced. We always stayed at my grandparent's house. They were both nice. All the kids would sleep out in the living room because their house was small. One night my grandpa came in and raped me while everyone was sleeping. I froze and didn't know what to do. My grandma came in the room after and took my underwear off, threw them away and put me in the bathtub. My mom helped her bathe me. I felt so ashamed. After awhile I knew this happened because I was bad. It had to be the answer because my mom and grandma didn't help me. The rape was awful but knowing that my mom and grandma knew I was bad was the worst part.

Group Think: What came up for you? What reactions did you notice in your body? Did you have any judgements or thoughts about how Sarah “should have felt or acted.” What made sense to you, or seemed congruent with Trauma exposure?

Client Example #3

Elias

My dad remarried my step mom when I was in middle school. I never liked her that much, she always seemed a little creepy to me. She was always saying stuff about how handsome she thought I was. One night she came into my room and started molesting me. I froze and didn’t know what to do. I tried telling my dad but he didn’t believe me. After that night I became paranoid that the same thing would happen to my younger siblings. Everytime she came into my room at night I just laid there, frozen, because if I let her do this to me, then maybe she wouldn’t do it to them. And I really wanted to protect them.

Group Dialogue: What came up for you? What reactions did you notice in your body? Did you have any judgements or thougths about how Elias “should have felt or acted.” What made sense to you, or seemed congruent with Trauma exposure?

1. Negative Beliefs & Personal Narratives of Abuse

As they grow older, childhood survivors of abuse are prone to carry these negative assessments of themselves and others into adulthood.They may become aggressive, defensive, or overly shy when presented with social opportunities. As a result, many adult survivors of sexual abuse are unable to create close, intimate relationships with other people.

The story of abuse is one that is unique to every adult survivor. Much of their lives unfold as a continuation of their history of abuse. Thinking in stories is a very human condition, and maintaining and referring back to a personal history of abuse presents adult survivors with many complex questions.

For example, an adult survivor can “replay” scenarios from their childhood to assist them throughout recovery. Keeping their stories in mind helps guide them toward asking important, difficult, and fundamental questions about who they were, are, and wish to be. Unfortunately, this sense of story can also allow for “misreadings” of their experiences, potentially cementing ideas of blame, shame, and helplessness deeper inside their minds.

The stories of our lives are powerful forces. With careful monitoring and guidance, adult survivors can learn to read their histories with more healthy awareness.

2. Overwhelming Emotional Reactions

Adult survivors may also experience intense emotional responses to situations and events that trigger their traumatic memories of abuse. These triggers take many forms—specific words, for instance, or finding themselves in situations that remind them of their past.

These triggers take root during their childhood years, and can make day-to-day adult living a whirlwind of intense emotion.

There is often no way to avoid triggers during daily life as an adult. Because of this, adult survivors may find the simplest chores and tasks too emotionally painful. Adult survivors may find it draining, challenging, and often times impossible to act in routine ways if their triggers from childhood abuse affect them intensely and routinely.

3. Remembering Abuse through Bodily Sensations

Many adult survivors report intense and unwanted physiological sensations that appear during situations that evoke their past abuse. During childhood, children lack the verbal and mental skills needed to describe their experiences. Because they cannot mentally label and think about how they feel, their feeling of powerlessness, vulnerability, shame, and guilt manifest in the form of physical sensations.

Called “implicit” memories, or “body memories,” when an adult suddenly remembers a traumatic event from his or her childhood, the way their body recorded their experience as a child resurfaces. Adult survivors may find themselves reliving, through bodily sensations, the intense emotional experiences they felt as a child.

However their young body “recorded” the emotional experience—a chill, an arousal, a shaking—arrives full-force with the memory itself. From start to finish, these “flashbacks” are often horrific, visceral experiences that many adult survivors endure.

4. Acting on Unconsciously Buried Abuse

Even though childhood abuse is often “memorized” by bodily sensations, many memories of abuse go unnoticed, yet still have a strong influence over adult lives.

Children who are abused lack the mental tools necessary to label properly and express their experience of abuse. As often happens, during their mind’s frantic search to make sense of their situation, they pull the plug, essentially “disconnecting” from the memory altogether, often acting as if the experience never happened.

While this is a natural reaction for children developmentally unable to do much different, these childhood experiences can remain “buried” inside an adult survivor’s mind and guide their behaviors. Without a proper recovery treatment, these hidden experiences, though they never surface, come to dictate how adult survivors interact with others, perceive their worth, or act or don’t act during sexual encounters.

Examples: sometimes survivors choose to stay in abusive or unhealthy relationships. Oftentimes this happens due to lack of self worth and trauma history. For examp;le, a suvivor could unconsciously be in similar situations as they were in childhood, thus reliving traumatic memories in the moment--as a way to heal the issues from the past.

5. Engaging in Avoidant Coping Styles

Adults who have survived sexual abuse as children may also fall into patterns of avoidant behavior. They may distance themselves from other people, never risk getting close to others, even purposefully hurt relationships they already have.

As children are forced into terrifying situations, they are denied many key developmental skills and experiences. Their childhood was developmentally interrupted, and to lessen whatever pains they feel or remember in the present, adult survivors often seek to avoid the attention and closeness of others.

Avoidance behaviors take many forms. Some adult survivors isolate themselves from any social contact. Others turn to alcohol and drugs, engage in self-harm, or completely dissociate from their need to express pain.

Resources

http://keepkidssafe.org/6-ways-molestation-affects-adult-survivors/

https://www.psychologynoteshq.com/erikerikson

https://lessonsinlife.ca/category/depression/