18/03/2024
Trauma formation is an unavoidable part of life. Bessel van der Kolk calls it the "thief of pleasure".
In an ideal world, everyone would be taught what trauma is, how it changes your relationship with yourself and how to resolve it.
The problem is that growing up is filled with influences designed to fill you up from the outside, including the guidance and demands in your family of origin, your cultural context, and, for many people, your religious upbringing. Add to this the role of school and friends in forming character; there was only a little space left over. Moreover, it's only been recognised relatively recently that trauma as a subject is being recognised as worthy of broader attention. It has certainly become a buzzword in recent times, with lots of attention being placed on being "trauma-informed" and learning at least the basics of the polyvagal theory.
This last training I completed focussed on developmental trauma (which is distinct from shock trauma). Shock traumas are things most people can identify as traumatic: accidents, abuse, etc. Developmental trauma is less immediately visible. It's woven into how your body and mind have adapted to your early experiences. Research by people like Rachel Yahuda identified that shock traumas experienced three generations before you were born will shape your biology. This is to say nothing of the way stress experiences in the womb shaped your development, and then come the stresses of your birthing process. This is all before you had your early childhood (0 - 5 years) experience, which has a far more significant impact on setting up later life than used to be understood.
Developmental trauma has the effect of shaping what your body sets as normal (aka your allostatic set point). This is like setting the idle speed of an automatic car. If the idle speed is set at 4,000 rpm, then the amount of wear on the engine and brakes is significant whenever the vehicle comes to rest. Over time, it hobbles performance and leads to catastrophic (and expensive) failures later on in life. It also means that you might not even identify that this is the problem because you're focused on driving - avoiding potholes, repairing accidents, and generally getting where you want to go.
What is clear is that shock trauma becomes interdigitated with developmental trauma. The result is that resolving shock trauma ultimately will necessitate working on your developmental trauma.
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