Developmental trauma is unknown to most people
Distinguishing Developmental Trauma from High Sensitivity – Part 3 of 3
In the third part of the article – “Distinguishing High Sensitivity from Trauma,” you will learn the difference between shock trauma and developmental trauma. Most people are unaware that the course of birth or the form of upbringing can also result in traumatization.
Don't feel like reading? Here you can watch the post as a video.
Shock Trauma
is the generally common trauma. Here, a one-time situation, for example an accident, served as the trigger. The negative experience is stored in the brain. Our organism now wants to protect us from further experiences of this kind and hormonally goes into "alert mode". The consequence is an inner alertness, which often manifests as restlessness and tension and an increased reaction to sensory stimuli. If there is later a stimulus that reminds us of this situation (trigger), we are emotionally thrown out of the stress tolerance window and react with strong fight/flight reactions (the sympathetic nervous system is activated, the stress tolerance window is exceeded) or we collapse (the parasympathetic nervous system is activated, we go nervally below the stress tolerance window).
After processing the trauma, those affected return to their original level of arousal and sensory perception.
Developmental trauma or complex trauma
Here the affected person is repeatedly overwhelmed by toxic stress. The forebrain and hippocampus switch off, and we react instinctively with archaic defense mechanisms. Developmental trauma actually concretizes the concept of complex trauma, as it specifically relates to our early childhood experiences.
- How are we raised?
- What shapes us during this time?
- What is the bond with caregivers like?
Especially when we grow up with constant negative experiences in the first year of life, we experience this as toxic stress. This stress usually results in developmental trauma. Toxic stress can arise from:
- Experiences of psychological and physical violence.
- Overprotection
- Raising children with fear (the world out there is bad, only here are you safe)
- Coercive environment
- Very rigid upbringing
- Neglect
- Permanent boundary violations
- Lack of mirroring of the child's perception and feelings
- No support for stress regulation by parents (e.g., letting the baby cry)
- Lack of contact – physical and emotional. Many people can no longer adequately engage with their child. They themselves lack the corresponding experiences.
Upbringing is a reflection of our experiences and possibilities.
Our upbringing is still shaped by the ideas of the Third Reich. Babies should be left to cry so they learn to regulate themselves and don't walk all over their parents. The upbringing propagated at the time was a guide to attachment disruption and thus to early childhood trauma.
Unfortunately, some extremely damaging parenting ideas still persist stubbornly today. Parents who treat their children as mentioned above do not do so because they don't care about their children. They themselves are shaped by their own history, their attachment experiences, and their knowledge. Many are traumatized themselves. Everyone parents to the best of their ability. For some, these abilities are simply limited.
High sensitivity and trauma summarized:
- There are highly sensitive traumatized HSP and exclusively traumatized people.
- If you suffer greatly from high sensitivity, the probability that you are traumatized is high.
- Many HSP are exclusively traumatized. They are over-sensitized by the trauma, but not highly sensitive in the true sense. The technical term for this is hypervigilance.
- A distinction is made between shock trauma and developmental trauma.
- To resolve traumatization, competent therapeutic support is needed.
Here you will find parts one and two of the trilogy – Differentiating High Sensitivity from Trauma
If you would like support with classification, you will find my here Coaching for Highly Sensitive People .
